Feb. 1907.] 



91 



TIMBERS. \l:l,U 



THE USE OP WOOD PULP FOR PAPE R- M A%| NX*. , ; 



By S. Chas. Phillips. 

 It was with peculiar pleasure that I accepted the compliment you were good 

 enough, to pay me, when you invited me to read a paper on the subject of '' Wood 

 Pulp." I have been reminded of the fact that there are in this Society many members 

 who have no practical acquaintance with paper-making or with the subject lam 

 trying to deal with and, therefore, I hope to avoid technicalities as much as 

 possible, altnough I think you will readily see it is necessary in a paper ot this kind 

 to deal in a general way with the evolution of the wood pulp industry, and particul- 

 arly in its application to paper-making, and in this connection, to deal historically 

 with the progress of pulp-making, and its chemical treatment. I think, perhaps, I 

 need scarcely say at the outset, that in the cheaper forms of paper, as we know it 

 to-day, the raw material is substantially wood. I am aware that if you were to ask 

 " the man in the street" of what paper is made, you would probably be told " rags" ; 

 but although that used to be the case, the use of paper to-day is so extensive that it 

 would be impossible to meet the demand for one- thousandth part of the total con- 

 sumption, if the paper maker had to rel v on rags, and I think I may here say that it 

 is due to the engineer and to the chemist that we owe our cheap Press, and largely 

 to the fact that wood has been taken full advantage of in its application to paper- 

 making. For reasons which I may refer to later on, it is obvious that although 

 England holds its own very comfortably at present as a paper-making country, it 

 is not at all probable that Greac Britain will ever produce wood for paper-making 

 on a commercial scale. Not long ago, one of our leading paper-makers, whilst 

 referring to this subject, observed that we might hope to make wood pulp here when 

 we had the water falls and timber forests of Canada, Norway or Sweden. There was 

 a great deal of truth in that remark, and although there are gentlemen who are 

 sanguine that we might make very much more use of our forests and unproductive 

 land than we do, that we might turn it to good account for timber growing, I do not 

 think that for practical purposes we need, at the present moment, take that into 

 consideration. We may (and I am speaking from practical knowledge) dismiss Great 

 Britain out of the calculation when we are dealing with the great countries which 

 are providing us with timber for the production of wood pulp, and are likely to do so 

 for very many years to come. It may, I think, be said, roughly, that the wood-pulp 

 industry has established itself and attained its present position during the past 

 quarter of a century. There was a time within my own recollection when the manu- 

 facturers of high grade papers in this country looked askance at wood, and I know 

 of a gentleman in the wood-pulp business who told me that about twenty years ago 

 when he waited upon a well known Maidstone firm, and tried to induce them to give 

 a trial to good chemical wood-pulp, the owner of the mill was very rude to him, 

 and almost ordered him away from the place. But times have changed since then, 

 and at the preseut moment many of the mills which in the early days of wood pulp 

 derided its possibilities would not hesitate to place a very large order for the same, 

 at what they might consider a reasonable price. To those who are uninitiated in 

 what I may term the elementary details of the wood pulp industry, it may be 

 necessary to mention that for the purposes of a paper of this kind, we must bear in 

 mind that there are, to put the matter broadly, two methods of transforming raw 

 wood into pulp. 



I have, I may say, travelled a great deal in the principal pulp-producing 

 countries, particularly Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United States, and Canada, 



