Statistics bring out the interesting fact that over one-quarter of the paper output is roll and sheet news paper. If an average value of 2¼ cents per pound at the mills be allowed for this, it is evident that the users of news paper pay out some thirty-two million dollars every year for this important product. Notwithstanding the fact that this paper is sold for one-sixth of the current price of twenty-five years ago, it is yet greatly improved in quality. As a staple in this country, paper has come to rank third in importance in the list of man’s wants. The products of mother earth hold first place, including foodstuffs, raiment, etc.; and the second place must be given to iron and steel, the bulwark of our commercial life. Paper follows next, as the keystone of our intellectual life, and promises in the years to come to play even a more important part in the upbuilding of our modern advancement and business. The conditions of civilization are such that intelligent reading is one of the essentials in individual progress. Affording as it does food for the mind, and opening up the way to profitable employment through which the bodily wants are supplied, reading might almost be classed as next in importance to the food that nourishes and gives strength to the body. On account of its large production of the higher grades of writing, book, and ledger papers, Massachusetts leads in the value of the output; if our estimates are correct, the value of the paper of all varieties manufactured in the state was about $25,000,000 for the year 1900, or one-sixth of the entire estimated product. New York follows with an almost equal amount in the value of the product, while Maine, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will show about $10,000,000 each, the five states thus making, in value, over one-half of the paper manufactured in the country. In considering these figures it must be taken into account that by increasing the width of the webs and the rate of speed at which the paper passes over the machine, the possible output has in many plants been more than quadrupled during the past ten years, which in part explains the doubling of the value of the output since 1890, during which year, according to the government census, the output amounted in value to $74,308,388.
♦Number of mills and their value♦
The number of paper-making establishments is placed at 762, operating 1,070 mills, and the value of the plants is $107,759,974; 52,391 persons find employment in the industry, and are paid wages aggregating $23,575,950, while the value of the material used reaches $78,067,882.
♦Average output per plant♦
During the decade between 1880 and 1890 the number of paper plants proper had decreased from 692 to 567, 125 in all, or eighteen per cent. In 1880 the average number of employes to each factory was thirty-five, with an average yearly output from each plant of $79,639. During the ten years that followed, the average number of employes in a factory rose to 53, and the average yearly output from each plant to $131,056. With a decrease of 125 mills during that period, there must have been an increase of 5,831 employes and of $19,198,564 in the value of the output.
While the stately array of figures already marshaled is an impressive reminder of the wonderful development of the paper industry, which we accept unthinkingly as one of the benefits of a marvelous century, mere numerals can never tell the whole story. They must be forever silent as to the aims and purposes, the patient efforts, the determination and perseverance, the alternation of defeat and triumph which are embodied in the perfected product of to-day. It is not for them to chronicle the crude beginnings of the industry in the days of the dim and far-away past, nor to trace the slow steps by which it has advanced to its present commanding position. As our earlier chapters recount, its most marvelous strides forward have occurred during the hundred years just past.
♦Paper aids other industries♦
The century that has marked such material progress in the production of paper has been pre-eminently one of vast intellectual and industrial activity and advancement, and it is a fair statement that paper has not only contributed largely to the general progression that has taken place, but through it as a medium standards have been reached that must have remained unknown were it not for its efficient service. Through man’s inventive genius the utility of this valuable product has been increased a hundred-fold, and its wider use has been the means of broadening and extending other manufactories. It has aided invention, and is the medium through which new discoveries, theories, and conclusions have been proclaimed. It is the handmaid of literature and music, and through its fostering agency the highest culture is to-day placed within the possible reach of the masses. Formerly, any considerable degree of learning was confined to the favored few—they were the “wise men” and the “magi”; those who could read even the simplest forms of language were the decided exception, and works to be read were rare, and confined to the libraries of the great cities. To-day, through the abundance and cheapness of publications, all men may hold close communion with the minds of leading thinkers past and present, and the melodies of the great masters are brought within the hearing of all. ♦Paper’s service to the fine arts♦ In art it has served as noble a purpose as in literature and music. The fineness and delicacy of surface, attained through modern processes, make possible the half-tone and other fac-simile reproductions, which cultivate an appreciation of the beautiful and carry into even the humblest of homes the refining influences of great works of art; reproductions used in illustration also elucidate and render great assistance to the correct interpretation of scientific and other publications.
But do these material attainments mark, in themselves, man’s greatest achievements? Vast and complete as they are, our answer must be no. Each, within itself a type of highest thought, becomes an integral factor in the progression of the race, the perfectability of man, his nature and condition.
♦Paper aids great reforms♦