14 ON THE PAPER MANUFACTURE. 



his capital could at any time command. Foreign competition in the 

 markets of the world, in finished paper, was a state of things to which 

 they were well accustomed, and knew how to be victorious when they 

 chose ; hut foreign competition at home, within the very shadows of our 

 British mills, was a possibility never seriously contemplated. So, when 

 the inevitable abolition of all fiscal imports on paper came, and with it, 

 an army of Teutons, invading the counting-houses of their customers, 

 offering good-looking papers, in startling quantities, at prices fabulously 

 low, and on terms temptingly inviting, our makers incontinently lose 

 heart of grace, instead of girding their loins for the coming struggle, 

 with a stern determination to vindicate our manufacturing supremacy. 



How far the present state of things is exceptional and temporary*, 

 rather than consequent and fixed, is worthy of calm consideration. Our 

 paper-makers state that while the price of rags has advanced, the value of 

 finished paper has rapidly declined, and that whilst the rise in rags and 

 decline in paper must be treated in the relation of cause and effect, the 

 former is simply the effect of increased consumption in countries which 

 either entirely prohibit, or place a high duty on the export of the raw 

 material, the increased consumption again being the effect of the foreign 

 makers being admitted to free competition with the English makers in 

 their own market. This mode of stating the case may seem rather in- 

 volved, but the inquiry is surrounded with peculiarities — for example, it 

 would be fair to expect that the prices of our home collection of rags 

 would have closely assimilated to the enhanced price of rags abroad. 

 Yet London " fines" and "seconds" are very much the same in price as they 

 have been for many years past. Again, it is well known that immedi- 

 ately on the repeal of the duty on paper, several makers increased their 

 prices for fine sorts, and not the least puzzling circumstance is, that mills 

 which, prior to the abolition of the excise on paper, had been shut up 

 for years, were started again, quite twelve months after the duty had 

 ceased, and that by one of the largest makers of printings in the trade, 

 an anomaly for which we have never been able satisfactorily to account. 

 For all the purposes of argument it may be stated, that in the matter 

 of quality, no foreign paper has yet been brought into the English 

 market which our own makers are not prepared to equal, at prices which 

 shall properly remunerate the foreign makers, be they made from rags, 

 or the veriest rubbish that ever defiled an engine, did the question of 

 character not intervene. Almost every mill in this country has a repu- 

 tation, laboriously acquired, for excellence in the make of some descrip- 

 tion of paper, and consequently to lower their standard of quality is a 

 question of very serious import. A buyer of English paper almost in- 

 variably looks for the mill number on the wrapper, confident in his 

 knowledge of the quality of paper made at that particular mill, but this 

 is not true of the continental mills, either in sense or extent. The word 

 foreign covers a multitude of sins, and the consequence is that our 

 market has been flooded with large quantities of stuff in the sem- 

 blance of paper, which for a time has successfully ministered to the 



