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ARBORICULTURE. 



about three squares back from the river. After 

 the water receded the yard looked like a lake of 

 mud, and part of Saturday' and all day Sunday 

 the railroad employes were engaged in cleaning 

 and putting it in condition for business Mon- 

 day. It was the worst flood ever experienced 

 in Pittsburg, and many firms lost thousands of 

 dollars." 



And yet river men want to raise the bottom 

 of the Ohio River by dams, which will increase 

 the height of water many feet at the surface, 

 as shown in our last issue. 



RICE-STRAW-PAPER PULP. 



While the demand for that class of paper 

 used in the printing of newspapers is contin- 

 ually increasing and promises to be in greater 

 demand as the years go by, the material from 

 which it is manufactured is rapidly disappear- 

 ing. The wood from which the pulp is made 

 is fast being exhausted, and it would require 

 years of forest cultivation to supply the trees 

 which have been used in the manufacture of 

 the tons of papers daily consumed in this and 

 other countries. Unless vast forests of the 

 wood are discovered in some remote quarter of 

 the globe within a very short time, a new ma- 

 terial must be used to supply the presses of the 

 world. 



Wood pulp has made printing so cheap that 

 it will not be possible to return to the fibers 

 used before the discovery that wood pulp would 

 make a satisfactory quantity of "new'S." In the 

 search for a substitute for the wood many dif- 

 ferent materials have been suggested, but for 

 one reason or another obstacles have presented 

 themselves to its manufacture. The material to 

 be used must be cheap and be of almost un- 

 limited quantity to meet the demands of the 

 market. The leveling of forest after forest to 

 supply the demand indicates the necessity for a 

 bountiful supply of the material before capital 

 will be invested in mills to turn it into paper. 

 It is gratifying, therefore, to know that a cor- 

 poration has been organized in the East to go 

 into the manufacture of paper pulp from rice 

 and wheat straw. There is no obstacle what- 

 ever in the way of the manufacture of paper 

 from these materials, or at least one of them, 

 for paper has been manufactured from rice 

 straw for years. The only thing to be consid- 

 ered in this connection, so far as rice straw is 

 concerned, is the financial problem of making 



a paper at such cost as to be able to compete 

 with wood-pulp paper. Twenty years and more 

 ago one of the principal papers in this country 

 was printed on rice paper, and the quality of 

 the material was the envy of other competitors. 

 It would appear to the uninformed that if rice 

 straw can be used for this purpose, wheat straw 

 might also be utilized, and there is grown an- 

 nually enough of this material to supply the 

 demand of the world. The quality of the paper 

 is better than that made from wood pulp, and 

 if it can be manufactured at about the same 

 price, the new company will soon have all the 

 customers it can supply. Besides, the advan- 

 tages to the printing trade growing out of the 

 "news" consumed in this country will be manu- 

 factured from straAV, the supply of which is 

 constantly increasing. 



We have before us now a specimen of the 

 pulp made from rice straw, the process of pro- 

 ducing which required but a few hours' time. 

 The pulp is as near a sample of that made by 

 wasps and hornets — the original and perfect 

 papermakers — as anything could well be. Mr. 

 L. La Trobe-Bateman, of New York, who is 

 the representative of the capitalists owning the 

 patents which make the production of this pulp 

 from rice straw possible, has been in the Texas 

 and Louisiana rice belt some time, talking up 

 the matter of papermaking with the rice people. 

 The purpose is to establish pulp mills at va- 

 rious points in the belt, to be in the hands of 

 local manufacturers, the parent company selling 

 them the machinery and charging a royalty on 

 the patent rights. It would seem that at last a 

 means has been devised to dispose profitably of 

 the vast mounds of rice straw that now have 

 no use, and must be given to the torch. — Ex- 

 change. 



Oriental countries make most excellent paper 

 from rice straw. There is no reason for not 

 using all this material, which Texas, Louisiana 

 and the Carolinas produce, in making paper. 



TIME TO REVISE THE TARIFF. 



Ten or twenty years ago, though there was a 

 great popular demand for a reduction of tariff 

 duties and an enlargement of the free list, the 

 powerful manufacturing interest was almost 

 solidly against any such policy. Since that time 

 there has been a great change. For now the 

 manufacturers themselves are many of them 

 warm advocates of tarifif reform. As long as 



