MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 109 



true. Therefore it is that toe chemical department of American manufac- 

 turing is far inferior to the mechanical. Until within a recent period, there 

 has been no applied chemistry in the United States our processes are 

 foreign, learned from foreign books, and oxir chemical artisans are also 

 foreigners. And here it may be remarked, that chemical improvements of 

 practical value, originating in Europe, do not find their way into text- 

 books and magazines for the information of the many until they have 

 been long known, to private manufacturers, or have been replaced by other 

 improvements of greater value. 



Empirical experiment rarely leads to success in chemistry. The ma- 

 terials from which paper can be manufactured exist in abundance ; but 

 this avails nothing so long as the cost of converting them into paper 

 exceeds a certain limit. The attempt to convert straw into white paper is 

 an example. That it can be effected is no question, but that it can be 

 effected profitably is yet to be demonstrated. The process as ordinarily 

 pursued is a simple one, and not covered by any patent. The heads, grain, 

 and all knots and joints must be removed by chopping and winnowing ; 

 a process involving considerable expense, and much loss in weight. The 

 silica investing the straw, together with much gum and coloring matter, 

 must be then removed by the action of a caustic alkali. The alkali effects 

 the separation of these substances by uniting with them and forming 

 soluble silicate of soda, or potash and soluble soaps. It is claimed that a 

 large part of the alkali so expended may be recovered by evaporating the 

 residuary liquors and calcining the deposited matters. Theoretically this 

 can be done ; practically, with economy, it cannot. In these operations, 

 and in bleaching, the straw suffers a depreciation in weight of at least 60 

 per cent., and is then inferior to rag stock. From long and careful expe- 

 rience, we are convinced that white paper cannot profitably be manufactured 

 from straw, or analogous materials, by any of the processes now in use. 



The direction in which improvements in the manufacture of paper are to 

 be sought for is in diminishing the waste which the ordinary stocks now 

 used experience in their manufacture, in availing ourselves of the refuse 

 fibres of the hemp and flax plants, (thousands of tons of which are now 

 , annually wasted in the United States and India,) and in discovering a 

 method of bleaching and working the fibres of various endogenous plants, 

 as rnanilla, sisal hemp, and the fibre of the corchorus (gunny), the Sun 

 Hemp (Crofu-taria'), and the " Coir" fibre. 



The ordinary method of cleaning rags and "cotton waste" from the 

 dirt and other impurities, is by boiling them under steam pressure, with a 

 mixture of caustic lime and a little soda-ash, for twelve to twenty-four 

 hours. In this treatment, the most violent and powerful among chemical 

 reactions, the lime is often used in the solid, or pasty state, as well as the 

 soda-ash, by which 110 small portion of the cellulose is absolutely' de- 

 stroyed, converted in soluble compounds, to be washed away in the first 

 engine. By this treatment some varieties of rags lose fifty per cent, in 

 weight after washing, and on ordinary cotton waste the depreciation is 



