PHILADELPHIA, MARCH, 1854.
EVERYDAY ACTUALITIES.—NO. XVII.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PEN AND GRAVER.
BY C. T. HINCKLEY.
Fig. 1.—PAPER-MAKING BY HAND.
THE MANUFACTURE OF PAPER.
The advantages which the civilized world owe to the invention of paper are beyond calculation, and almost out of the reach of thought. The great blessing of knowledge which it has conferred on mankind, together with its peculiar mission, renders it a subject of interest to all classes of society. The material of which the sheet of paper which the reader now holds in her hand, a few months ago, perhaps, hung with its ragged fellows from the back of some mendicant, fluttering along the street—or perhaps commenced its career in the lining of some dress, in all its purity of white and stiffening, and gradually descended through the various grades of usefulness, until at last it was fished up out of the gutter and thrust into the rag-picker's bag to meet a host of others that had travelled over the same despoiling scenes of ragdom. Rags have, at times, held no mean position in the political arena, for we read that "the chiffoniers, or rag-dealers of Paris, rose against the police some years ago, because it was ordered, in certain municipal regulations, that the filth of the streets should be taken away in carts, without time being allowed for its examination by those diligent savers of capital."
Many experiments have been made upon substances proposed as substitutes for rags in the manufacture of paper. The bark of the willow, the beech, the aspen, the hawthorn, and the lime have been made into tolerable paper; the tendrils of the vine, and the stalks of the nettle, the mallow, and the thistle, have been used for a similar purpose; and bind of hops; and patents have been granted for making paper of straw. The process of bleaching the coarser rags, so as to render them fit for the purposes to which only those of the finest qualities were formerly applied, will, however, render the use of these inferior substances unnecessary for many years. The advance of a people in civilization has not only a tendency to make the supply of rags abundant, but, at the same time, to increase the demand. The use of machinery in manufactures renders clothing cheap; the cheapness of clothing causes its consumption to increase, not only in the proportion of an increasing population, but by the scale of individual expenditure; the stock of rags is therefore increasing in the same ratio that our looms produce more linen and cotton cloth. But then the increase of knowledge runs in a parallel line with this increase of comforts; and the increase of knowledge requires an increase of books. The principle of publishing books and tracts to be read by thousands, instead of tens and hundreds, has already caused a large addition to the demand for printing-paper. If, therefore, the demand for books in all civilized countries should outrun, which it is very likely to do, the power of each individual to wear out linen and cotton clothing to supply the demand, paper must be manufactured from other substances than rags.
A species of paper was manufactured at a remote period in Egypt, from the papyrus or paper-reed, a plant growing freely on the banks of the Nile. A manufacture of paper from the bark of trees and other substances existed also in China from a very early date; but among the nations of antiquity, before the introduction of paper, such substitutes were used as lead, brass, bricks, and stone, on which national edicts and records were written or engraved; or tablets of wood, wax, and ivory, skins of fishes, intestines of serpents, backs of tortoises, and the inner bark of trees for ordinary purposes. Indeed, there are but few sorts of plants that have not been used for making paper and books, and hence have arisen the terms biblos, codex, liber, folium, tabula, tillura, philura, scheda, &c., which express the several parts of the plant which were written on. The use of these was discontinued in Europe after the invention of papyrus and parchment, but they are still used in other parts of the world. The two early kinds of manufacture above alluded to must first be noticed, before we describe the later invention of making paper from cotton and linen rags, which, in the greater part of the world, has superseded all other methods of producing a material for writing on. The Egyptian papyrus was made by laying thin plates of bark, taken from the middle of the paper-rush, side by side, but close together, on a hard, smooth table: other pieces of the same size and thinness were then laid across the first at right angles; the whole was moistened with the water of the Nile, which was supposed to have some agglutinating property (though this probably resided in the plant itself), and pressure was then applied for a certain number of hours. Thus a sheet of paper was formed which required no other finishing than rubbing and polishing with a smooth stone, or with a solid glass hemisphere, and drying in the sun. This very simple process was rather a preparation of a natural paper than a manufacture—properly so called. The process adopted by the Chinese comes more legitimately under that head. The small branches of a tree resembling our mulberry-tree, are cut by them in lengths of about three feet, and boiled in an alkaline lye for the sake of loosening the inner rind or bark, which is then peeled off, and dried for use. When a sufficient quantity of bark has been thus laid up, it is again softened in water for three or four days, and the outer parts are scraped off as useless; the rest is boiled in clear lye, which is kept strongly agitated all the time, until the bark has become tender, and separates into distinct fibres. It is then placed in a pan or sieve, and washed in a running stream, being at the same time worked with the hands until it becomes a delicate and soft pulp. For the finer sorts of paper, the pulp receives a second washing in a linen bag; it is then spread out on a smooth table, and beaten with a wooden mallet until it is extremely fine. Thus prepared, it is put into a tub with a slimy infusion of rice and a root called oreni; then it is stirred until the ingredients are properly blended: it is next removed to a large vessel to admit of moulds being dipped into it. These moulds are made of bulrushes cut into narrow strips, and mounted in a frame; as the paper is moulded, the sheets are placed on a table covered with a double mat. The sheets are laid one on the other, with a small piece of reed between; and this, standing out a little way, serves afterwards to lift them up leaf by leaf. Every heap is covered with a board and weights to press out the water; on the following day, the sheets are lifted singly by means of the projecting reeds, and are placed on a plank to be dried in the sun. This paper is so delicate that only one side can be written on; but the Chinese sometimes double the sheets, and glue them together so neatly that they appear to be a single leaf.