It is a rare privilege to stand as we do at the meeting-point of the centuries, bidding a reluctant farewell to the old, while simultaneously we cry “All hail!” to the new; first looking back over the open book of the past, then straining eager eyes for a glimpse of the mysteries that the future holds hidden, and which are to be revealed only moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day.
The nineteenth century, so preëminently one of progress in almost every line of mental and material activity, has witnessed a marvelous growth in the paper industry. It was in the early years of the century that crude old methods, with their meager machinery, began yielding to the pressure of advanced thought, and the development since has kept full pace with the flying years. The hundred years that have written the modern history of paper-making mark also the period during which the J. W. Butler Paper Company, or its immediate predecessors, have been associated with the industry in this country. It has therefore seemed to the present representatives of the company that the closing year of the century was an especially fitting time to put into story form the history of the wonderful and valuable product evolved almost wholly from seemingly useless materials, and they consider it their privilege, as well as the fulfillment of a pleasant obligation, to present this account to their friends and associates in the paper, printing, and auxiliary trades. We
“Know not what the future hath
Of marvel and surprise,”
but we feel confident that the incoming century will bring changes and improvements as wonderful as any the past has wrought, and we hope that it may be our good fortune to in some measure be instrumental in promoting whatever tends to a greater development of the industry with which our name has been so long associated.
J. W. Butler Paper Company.
CHAPTER I
ARTICLES EARLY USED FOR PURPOSES NOW SUPPLIED BY PAPER
Full of dignity, significance, and truth is the noble conception which finds expression in Tennyson’s verse, that we are the heirs of the ages, the inheritors of all that has gone before us.
♦We are the heirs of the ages♦
Through countless cycles of time men have been struggling and aspiring; now “mounting up with wings, as eagles,” now thrown back to earth by the crushing weight of defeat, but always rising again, undaunted and determined. “The fathers have wrought, and we have entered into the reward of their labors.” We have profited by their striving and aspiration. All the wisdom of the past, garnered by patient toil and effort, all the wealth of experience gained by generations of men through alternating defeat and triumph, belongs to us by right of inheritance. It has been truly said, “We are what the past has made us. The results of the past are ourselves.”