436 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



MAIZE-PAPER AND MAIZE-CLOTH. 



BY J. R. DODGE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



In the search through the vegetable kingdom for textile fibres, who thought 

 of looking in the cornfields 1 Yet coarse textures of good quality, made from 

 the husks (or " shucks," as often called) of Indian corn, can be seen at the 

 Department of Agriculture. 



And paper-making, an art very ancient, has levied upon the grasses, reeds, 

 bamboos, the tender inner bark of trees, asbestos, flax, cotton, and to fill the 

 cavernous maw of the insatiable printing-press has even stripped the beggar of 

 his rags. But rags are getting dear ; people, in these war-times, who were 

 formerly covered with them, have not one to their backs, and the paper-maker 

 is compelled to seek a substitute. Straw, a product of our fields, its stacks so 

 profusely studding the area of every farmstead with an effect so picturesque and 

 golden, yet so generally and contemptuously cast under foot of cattle as worthy 

 only of speedy disorganization and subsequent food for living plants, was also 

 sought as a material for paper ; and the experiment has only met with partial 

 success. 



The amount of paper consumed is constantly and rapidly increasing in quan- 

 tity and widening in its range of uses, which are now so numerous as almost to 

 defy enumeration. For printing, writing, drawing, architectural decoration, 

 cigarette-making, parcel wrapping, and box and basket making, among other uses, 

 it has long been valuable ; and now it is invading the domain of cloth, .ranging 

 from the delicate counterfeiting of a linen collar for the neck of man or woman 

 to the seemly substitute for a seamless bag. With so much inflation of paper 

 issues, in so many forms, it is not amazing that the attention of paper-makers 

 should be turned to maize. 



Nor is this iise of corn fibre altogether original ; there is a record of two 

 maize-paper establishments existing in Italy in the eighteenth century. The 

 quality of this paper is not stated. Recently one Moritz Diamant, a Bohemian, 

 suggested to Baron Bruck, Austrian minister of finances, a process for making 

 paper from maize. The imperial paper-mill at Schlogelmuhl, near Gloggnitz, 

 undertook the manufacture, under Diamant's direction ; the product was not 

 quite satisfactory either in quality or cost of manufacture. His first application 

 for government aid was in 1856. After the unsuccessful experiment, followed 

 by ineffectual efforts to induce private individuals to continue the work, he 

 made a second request of the minister of finance, fortified with recommendations 

 from judicious, practical men ; and the experiments were continued, but were 

 not yet fully successful. To reduce the cost, a " half-stufl' factory" was erected 

 in a maize district, designed to cut ofl' the heavy expense of transportation of 

 the crude material. The product was so infcrix^r that Diamant became dis- 

 heartened, absented himself, and was released from his position, leaving the 

 question unsolved. The cost of this experiment was about $13,000, which had 

 been advanced by the imperial paper-mill. 



The direction of the Schlogelmuhl paper-mill, not disposed to discontinue the 

 effoit to make a good and cheap paper, continued the experiments, aiming first 

 to reduce the cost of production ; and secondly, to investigate the cost of using 

 only the finest husks enclosing the ear, rather than the leaves of the stalk entire. 



