520 FULLING 



H. Straus. Alarmed by the impending cataclysm that soon engulfed Europe, 

 he began efforts in the mid-1930's to Americanize his industry by moving it 

 to the New World. But linen rags were not sufficiently abundant in the United 

 States to assure a supply of raw material, and the flax being grown by farmers 

 in 19 States to produce a prewar annual output of 6 to 15 million bushels of 

 flaxseed for the paint industry was of the low, branched type, productive of 

 abundant seed but not suitable for fiber. Only on a relatively few acres in 

 Oregon was the taller, less-branched linen flax being grown. 



By 1939, however, and through the coordination of financing facilities, the 

 investigations of engineers, organic chemists, and plant geneticists, American 

 production of cigarette paper first began on a large scale at the Ecusta Paper 

 Co., Pisgah Forest, N.C. The first shipment of paper to cigarette manu- 

 facturers was made on the day Hitler's tanks rolled into Poland, and since 

 then the manufacturers have been freed of foreign sources. Equally important 

 has been the very lucrative market for the huge mounds of deseeded flax stalks 

 which annually accumulate on flax farms in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other 

 States, and which formerly were disposed of, to a large extent, only through 

 fire. In 1937, when almost all needed cigarette paper was still imported from 

 Europe, only some 10,000 tons of such seed-flax straw was sold to industry, 

 but for uses other than paper. By 1950, 40 times that quantity, 400,000 tons, 

 was reported as providing the paper for nearly all the cigarettes produced in 

 this country. Half a million tons of waste flax thus will saturate the market 

 for this outlet, and increased production of airmail, bond, bible, and other 

 high-priced papers will gradually absorb the surplus flax straw which in 1948 

 amounted to 4% million tons. The rag pickers of America may not be able 

 to gather so much old linen as their European prototypes, but the demands 

 of the American paint industry for linseed oil and the achievements of cellulose 

 chemists will very likely henceforth assure a domestic supply of flax for fine 

 papers and a remunerative market for flax waste. 



Tanning. Tannins are chemically complex, dark, organic compounds, 

 characterized as a group by certain chemical and physical properties and 

 widely distributed throughout the Plant Kingdom. Nearly all plants contain 

 them, to some degree at least, in bark, wood, leaves, and/or fruits; in certain 

 genera they accumulate to a marked degree. 



Among their properties are water solubility and that of acting in aqueous 

 solution on the protein of animal skins in such manner as to render pelts 

 strong, flexible, impervious to water, imputrescible, and resistant to decay and 

 wear — in other words, to convert them into leather. Advantage was taken of 

 this quality by primitive man, perhaps as early as 12,000 years ago. Subse- 

 quent development in Egypt, 5,000 years ago, then in China, over 3,000 years 

 ago, and later in Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe brought vegetable 

 tanning to modern times as probably the oldest of plant-utilizing arts along 

 with charcoal production. 



