172 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 34 



from it. The application of scientific method in this case has demon- 

 strated in actual farm tests that the per-acre yield of sugarcane 

 can readily be increased fourfold to sixfold, and in special test plots 

 the yield has been raised to 20 or 30 times the usual average. Even 

 with present yields of corn it is estimated that the United States 

 produces annually about 31,000,000 tons of cornstalks. This is dry 

 weight, free from leaves and husks, and should yield, in the form of 

 paper or board, about 9,000,000 tons, or a little more than the total 

 amount of paper and paperboard produced in the United States in 

 1932. In other words, assuming the solution of economic problems, 

 -such as the collection at a central point of sufficient quantities to 

 permit of operation on a proper scale and the storage of enough 

 material to keep such a mill going for the better part of a year, it 

 still would be necessary to find new outlets for cellulose to make the 

 collection of any considerable proportion of the stover from our 

 annual field crops economically desirable at this time. 



In transportation as in so many other activities, man was long 

 dependent on cellulose. His earliest boats, in the form of hollowed 

 logs, were essentially cellulose, as were the paddles and later the oars 

 that propelled them. The sailing ships on which man relied until 

 so recently, were made of wood and the cloth of the sails was cellulose 

 ir a purer form. Even the modern ocean liner requires cellulose in 

 the form of boat covers, collapsible boats, curtains, deck covering, 

 fenders, hatch covers, life preservers, and tarpaulins, not to men- 

 tion what might be termed the household requirements such as sheets, 

 towels, upholstery, draperies, and table damask. 



For land transportation, also, man long depended on cellulose. 

 His early sledges and carts were of wood, as were also the stage 

 coaches of a later day. The modern limited train, in which cellu- 

 lose now is only of minor importance, is the outgrowth of experi- 

 ments conducted only a hundred years ago in which the fuel was 

 wood, the cars were of wood, and in some instances even the rails 

 were of wood. When we turn to the modern automobile, so essen- 

 tial a part as the tires are quite as much cotton cellulose as they are 

 rubber. 



While for thousands of years man had turned to cellulose for so 

 many of his needs, it had, until the last 100 years, always been as 

 the naturally occurring cellulose or as the simple derived products, 

 charcoal and paper. With the development of chemistry it was 

 only natural that chemical derivatives of cellulose should begin 

 to make their appearance. The surprising thing to any critical 

 observer might be that the chemistry of cellulose was so slow in 

 developing, since the use of cellulose itself was centuries old. To the 



