486 PAPER, MANUFACTURE OF 



ordinary beating-engine, and made into paper. Tho other invention is very simple, 

 consisting merely of a wooden box enclosing a grindstone, which has a roughened 

 surface, and against which the blocks of wood are kept in close contact by a lever, a 

 small stream of water being allowed to flow upon the stone as it turns, in order to 

 free it of tho pulp, and to assist in carrying it off through an outlet at the bottom. 

 Of course the pulp thus produced cannot be employed for any 'but the coarser kinds 

 of paper. For all writing and printing purposes, which manifestly are the most 

 important, nothing has been discovered to greatly lessen the value of rags, neither is 

 it at all probable that there will, inasmuch as rags, of necessity, must continue 

 accumulating; and before it will answer the purpose of tho paper-maker to em- 

 ploy new material, which is not so well adapted for his purpose as the old, lie 

 must be enabled to purchase it for considerably less than it would be worth in 

 the manufacture of textile fabrics ; and, besides all this, rags possess in themselves 

 the very great advantage of having been repeatedly prepared for paper-making by the 

 numerous alkaline washings which they necessarily receive during their period of use. 



With all the drawbacks attending tho prepiration of straw, it is an exceedingly 

 useful material for the manufacture of certain kinds of paper. A thick brown 

 paper, of tolerable strength, may be made from it cheaply; but for printing or writing 

 purposes only an inferior description can be produced, and of little comparative 

 strength to that of rag-paper. Its chief and best use is that of imparting stiffness 

 to common newspaper. Some manufacturers prefer for this purpose an intermixture 

 of straw with paper shavings, and others, in place of the paper shavings, give the 

 preference to rags. The proportion of straw used in connection with rags or paper- 

 shavings varies from 50 to 80 per cent. 



The cost of producing two papers of equal quality, one entirely from straw and 

 the other entirely from rags, would be very nearly equal ; the preparation, which 

 includes power, labour, and chemicals, being very much greater in the case of the 

 straw ; indeed from two to three times as much as that of rags. 



In order to reduce the straw to a suitable consistency for paper-jnaking, it is placed 

 in a boiler with a large quantity of strong alkali, and with a pressure of steam equal 

 to 1201bs., and sometimes to 1501bs., per square inch ; the extreme heat being at- 

 tained in super-heating the steam after it leaves the boiler, by passing it through 

 a coiled pipe over a tire, and thus the silica becomes destroyed, and the straw 

 softened to pulp, which, after being freed from the alkali by washing it in cold water, 

 is subsequently bleached and beaten in the ordinary rag-engine, to which we shall 

 presently refer. 



The annual consumption of rags in this country Jilone far exceeds 120,000 tons, 

 three-fourths of which are imported, Italy and Germany furnishing the principal 

 supplies. 



All that can be said as to the suitableness of fibre in general may be summed up 

 in very few words : any vegetable fibre having a corrugated edge, which will enable 

 it to cohere in tho mass, is fit for tho purpose of paper-making. Among the many 

 fibres that have been introduced for use in this manufacture, the most important un- 

 doubtedly is the coarso grass known as Esparto in Spain, and as Alfa in Northern 

 Africa. It was first imported by Mr. Noble in 1851, but it was not until the scarcity of 

 cotton was felt during the American War that paper-makers fully realised the value of 

 esparto fibre; in 1868 as much as 96,000 tons were imported. Other fibres have 

 recently been used, such as those of the diss-grass, the dwarf-palm, tho baobab-tree, 

 and the New Zealand flax ; but it is said that none of these can successfully compete 

 with esparto. Canada rice has recently been recommended as an excellent paper-making 

 material. 



In considering the various processes or stages of the manufacture of paper, we 

 have first to notice that of carefully sorting and cutting the rags into small pieces, 

 which is done by women ; each woman standing at a table-frame, the upper surface 

 of which consists of very coarse wire-cloth ; a large knife being fixed in the centre of 

 the table, nearly in a vertical position. Tho woman stands so as to have the back 

 of tho blade opposite to her, while at her right hand, on the floor, is a large wooden 

 box, with several divisions. Her business consists in examining the rags, opening the 

 seams, removing dirt, pins, needles, and buttons of endless variety, which would .T>n 

 liable to injure the machinery, or damage the quality of the paper. She then cuts 

 the rags into small pieces, not exceeding 4 inches square, by drawing them sharply 

 across tho edgo.of the knife ; at the same time keeping each quality distinct in the 

 several divisions of the box placed on her right hand. During this process, much of 

 tho dirt, sand, and so forth, passes through tho wire-cloth into a drawer underneath, 

 which is occasionally cleaned out. After this, the rags r.ro removed to what is called 

 the dusting-machine, which is a largo cylindrical frame covered with similar coarse 

 iron wire-cloth, aud having a powerful revolving shaft extending through the intc- 



