August, 1911.] 



103 



Fibres. 



him to employ Esparto grass, and, when 

 his supplies of this material ran short, 

 he resorted to pulp made of trees which 

 were of little value for any other pur- 

 pose. It may be asked why at this 

 stage in the industry India has not 

 developed into a great paper-making 

 country. The reason is not very evident. 

 A demand for wood-pulp has already 

 arisen in India. Owing to the fact that 

 the grasses used in paper-making yield a 

 considerable percentage of waste, the 

 cost of carriage becomes an important 

 factor. Mr. Raitt states that 2£ tons of 

 Bhabar and Munj grasses are required 

 to produce a ton of paper. Consequently, 

 when the local supply became exhausted, 

 a point was soon reached when railway 

 rates made profitable manufacture im- 

 possible, and, indigenous wood-pulp not 

 being available, Indian mills have been 

 driven to import wood-pulp to eke out 

 their local resources. The cheapness of 

 foreign wood-pulp is accounted for partly 

 by the abundance of timber of the kind 

 required, and partly by the enterprise 

 and business acumen which have led its 

 manufacturers to locate their factories 

 in the immediate vicinity of the forests, 

 so that the waste portion of the wood is 

 eliminated on the spot, and only the 

 actual paper-making pulp is sent by ship 

 or rail. It is the adoption of this mode 

 of economising in freight charges which 

 is required in India. " The Indian paper 

 trade," says Mr. Raitt, "has shown no 

 want of enterprise in the past, and the 

 best proof of that is in the fact that it 

 has now expanded up to the full econo- 

 mic limits of its present raw material 

 supply. Provide new sources of that, 

 and the paper-maker will do the rest. 

 In suitable localities erect pulping mills 

 to reduce the local raw material to half- 

 stuff, eliminating on the spot the 60 per 

 cent of waste and reducing the freight 

 and handling charges in the proportion 

 of 24 to 1. Briefly and simply, in that 

 lies the future of the Indian paper indus- 

 try." And the sooner the enterprise is 

 taken in hand the better. The recent 

 rise in the price of both pulp aud paper 

 points to the diminishing supply and 

 increasing dearness of the timber resoui- 

 ces on which Europe has hitherto relied. 

 The wonder is that the enormous con- 

 sumption has not told earlier upon prices. 

 According to Mr, Raitt, a London daily 



paper devours in a year the arboreal 

 produce of 5,000 acres, with (the result 

 that " whole districts once clothed with 

 virgin forest— nay whole provinces— have 

 gone galloping down the ever-open maw 

 of a hungry press until now a condition 

 of things has been reached in which the 

 pulp-wood resources of the United States 

 of America are admittedly exhausted 

 and those of Europe considerably curtail- 

 ed." India has, in these circumstances, a 

 splendid opportunity. Happily this coun- 

 try is rich not only in spruce and fir, which 

 offer only a limited supply, but also in 

 the bamboo which is, as Mr. Raitt says, 

 literally inexhaustible. A mill erected 

 in a suitable locality for pulping bamboos 

 will never be rendered useless by the 

 disappearance of its raw material. It can 

 easily perpetuate its supplies. On this 

 ground alone Mr. Raitt is, it seems to us, 

 justified in predicting that bamboo pulp 

 will ultimately become the leading staple 

 of the paper industry. It is strange how 

 long it has had to wait for recognition. 

 More than thirty years ago Mr. Thomas 

 Routledge wrote his pamphlets on the 

 merits of bamboo as a paper-making 

 material, but only as recently as 1905 was 

 the importance realised of ascertaining 

 by skilled investigation the practical 

 possibilities of this giant grass, which 

 flourishes over huge areas in India. In 

 thatyear the Indian Government request- 

 ed Mr. R. W. Sindall, a London Paper 

 expert, to visit Burma and report on the 

 feasibility of using bamboo for the manu- 

 facture of paper. The conclusions at 

 which he arrived were favourable, and 

 have since been confirmed by the actual 

 conversion of bamboo into paper. The 

 experiment was carried out by Messrs. 

 Thomas and Green, of the Soho Mills, 

 Wooburn Green, who were agreeably 

 impressed with the admirable qualities 

 of bamboo paper, its strength, and the 

 suitability of its surface for both letter- 

 press and lithographic work. Unfor- 

 tunately the conditions on svhich the 

 Government of Burma were prepared to 

 make concessions to the pioneer s of a 

 new industry were too onerous, and 

 nothing has been done, so far as we know, 

 to put Mr, Sindall's calculations to a test 

 on a commercial scale. Possibly Mr. 

 Raitt's paper may rouse new interest in 

 a promising industry which has all the 

 essentials of success. 



