148 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



paper from wood and those round, grey nests so commonly 

 hanging from house eaves and trees are really made from wood 

 into a rough paper. The wasps' simple process of manufacture 

 consists in chewing a mouthful of dry wood until it becomes 

 a little ball of paper pulp. Then it is flattened out into tiny 

 sheets of paper, just as truly paper as the sheets that make up 

 this book. Man has improved on the process and modified the 

 product, but he has not fundamentally changed it. In the eigh- 

 teenth century a Frenchman had studied the methods of the 

 wasp and was struck with the possibility of making paper from 

 wood, but almost down to the time of the Civil War flax, linen, 

 and even cotton rags were the materials from which Europe 

 and America made its paper. So it is probably to the wasp that 

 we must give credit for first suggesting the possibility of using 

 trees as a raw material for paper making. Today, nine-tenths 

 of our paper is manufactured from wood. 



A story is told illustrating how quickly trees can be turned 

 into a newspaper. In Germany three trees were cut down at 

 7:55 in the morning. They were taken to the nearest paper 

 mill, manufactured into paper and made ready for the news 

 presses a few minutes after 9:00. Immediately the presses began 

 turning and by 10:00 o'clock the newsboys were selling these 

 papers in the streets. A little over two hours from the forest to 

 the printed page! 



As a matter of fact, paper making became possible in its 

 present tremendous volume only with the use of wood. The 

 discovery that paper could be made from this abundant raw 

 material revolutionized the industry through the entire world. 

 Today in the United States paper ranks next to lumber in 

 importance as a forest product. The industry employs one 



