August 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



NEW MATERIALS FOR PAPER-MAKING. 33 



able. I do not say that is the only fibre, for I cannot conceive that in 

 all the resources of Nature there is not some fibre such as Esparto, and 

 far more suitable if we could only get it. I should like to see the trade 

 addressing themselves to some such expedient of getting out of the dif- 

 ficulty, because I am perfectly certain that Government will never do 

 it for us ; and my suggestion is that a fund be set up for making in- 

 quiries, instead of spending our money in parliamentary expenses on 

 one thing or another, to send a practical man abroad, to India or some 

 other tropical climate, where fibre is in abundance, to find some new 

 material." 



The Chairman, John Evans, Esq., F.R.S., thus replied to these re- 

 marks : 



" As to Esparto, to which Mr. Scott has alluded, the importations have 

 increased from a very small quantity to something like 20,000 tons per 

 annum, and even more than that ; and there is no doubt that to some 

 extent the importation of Esparto has made up for the loss of materials 

 which we have sustained in consequence of the failure of the cotton 

 trade (hear, hear) ; but it must be borne in mind by this meeting, and 

 by the trade generally, that any question as to new materials is, as it 

 were, beside the question of free trade in rags. (Hear, hear.) You will 

 bear in mind that it is only when rags are at a certain price that you 

 can use those new materials at all, and if by the introduction of this 

 new material to any great extent there is a fall in the price of rags in 

 this country, a corresponding fall will take place in those countries 

 where the export duties are levied. The result will then be that the 

 foreign makers, instead of having an advantage, it may be of a percent- 

 age of twenty per cent, in the shape of export duties on their raw mate- 

 rial, may have it to the amount of thirty per cent. For instance, if you 

 have an export duty as now of 5/. upon rags costing 201., you have the 

 present percentage ; but if rags go down to \bl, it comes to thirty -three 

 per cent, upon the value of the rags ; therefore the introduction of this 

 new material, though extremely desirable in every possible point of 

 view, does not bear immediately upon the question of the grievance 

 under which we are suffering. It is not a question as to the quantity of 

 materials we can command, but a question of the relative prices at 

 which we can procure them, compared with our foreign competitors. 



" While Mr. Wrigley also opposed new materials, it ought to be re- 

 membered as a fact, and one which we should never lose sight of, that 

 this new material in question has been the great bugbear — the thing 

 which we have been taunted with constantly. We have been told to go 

 and get new material. Now, in the first place it ought to be quite suf- 

 ficient to consider that the trader has to buy the material ottered. I 

 admit the necessity and desirability of a new material to the fullest ex- 

 tent, in order to increase the base from which we have to work ; but 

 then people talk about a new material, and always talk as though we 

 were to have the exclusive advantage of that material. They speak of 



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