5l6 FULLING 



ing order, of balsam fir, pine (mostly southern yellow, some jack pine, and a 

 little white pine), beech, maple, white fir, and cottonwood. Still smaller 

 quantities of chestnut, cottonwood, Douglas fir, tamarack, elm, basswood, 

 birch, gum, sycamore, and cucumber also entered into the mills. 



In the 1920's the great stands of western hemlock {Tsuga heteraphylla) 

 and mountain hemlock {T. mertensiana) , large forest trees in western Canada 

 and the Pacific Northwest, were increasingly exploited for pulpwood. From 

 half a million cords in 1906, and 13 per cent of all pulpwood in 1919, that 

 utilization rose to about one million cords in 1925, to 20 per cent in 1939 and 

 close to three million cords in 1948. Today these hemlocks and Sitka spruce 

 are the leading pulpwoods for American and Canadian mills on the Pacific 

 Coast, but Douglas fir is becoming increasingly important there for kraft pulp. 



Increases and decreases in the utilization of one kind of wood over or under 

 others in the manufacture of paper pulp have not been occasioned by finding 

 more technically suitable material — spruce fiber is still unexcelled. The 

 changes have come about because of economic factors and technological ad- 

 vances — availability of pulpwood in various regions of the country, prices of 

 standing timber, and development of processes permitting broader utilization. 

 It was these factors that provoked the phenomenal rise in southern pine pulp- 

 wood from 69,000 cords in 1906 and less than 5 per cent in 1919 to more 

 than 35 per cent in 1939, when it first surpassed spruce, and to over 10 mil- 

 lion cords in 1948. 



This great increase in the utilization of woods once regarded as too 

 resinous for pulping had its inception in the discovery of the sulfate process 

 in Germany in 1883. Because of the strength in the pulp and paper produced 

 by this method, they are commonly referred to as "kraft" pulp and paper, 

 from the German word "Kraft," meaning "strength." The first kraft pulp 

 in North America was made at East Angus, Quebec, Canada, in 1907. 



The first attempt to make paper from southern pine was at Pensacola, Fla., 

 about 1903. The effort was unsuccessful, but in 1911, after the mill equipment 

 had been bought and moved to Orange, Texas, the process was changed from 

 the soda to the sulfate technique, and manufacture of paper in the South 

 became a reality — the first sulfate pulp from yellow pine in the United 

 States. That same year, it is claimed, witnessed a sulfate pulp mill at Roanoke 

 Rapids, North Carolina. Which of these two mills blew the first digester, as 

 the expression goes in the industry, will probably never be known. Not until 

 a decade later, however, did southern pine appear in paper on a commercial 

 scale — that was in the issuance of the Birmingham Age- Herald on June 20, 

 1921, in which the pulp was referred to as having been made from "Alabama 

 spruce pine." The trees had been cut in Alabama but were shipped to Niagara 

 Falls for pulping and manufacture into paper. 



Credit for the pioneer work in utilizing wood for paper pulp goes to Koops 

 of England and to Keller and Dahl of Germany, but for the boom in southern 



