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printing and publishing. One orator recently denounced yellow 
journalism, not for its moral bane or its menace to the nation’s 
peace, but for its voracity in eating up “the forest primeval” to 
furnish wood pulp for paper making. Often the newspapers and 
periodicals of Hawaii have discussed the possibility of finding 
raw material for paper-making in various products or by-prod- 
ucts of the islands. Bamboo has probably been mentioned in 
this connection at various times. Just now bamboo paper manu- 
facture is an object of large investments in the Orient. In view 
of the inviting paper situation in the United States and the 
world, the raising of bamboo for making into paper might well 
be a subject of practical investigation here. Some facts regard- 
ing the Oriental industry may excite the interest of local capi- 
talists. 
An exchange copies an article from the Far Eastern Review 
which tells about two considerable enterprises of the kind men- 
tioned. One is that of the Tonkin Pulp and Paper Co., Ltd., 
with a capital of $660,000 (Haiphong currency), organized by 
Hongkong and Indo-China capitalists for the purpose of estab- 
lishing a factory and manufacturing paper from bamboo pulp. 
A concession of forty-three square miles of territory in Tonkin 
has been acquired and it is understood is capable of furnishing 
50,000 tons annually. The other instance is contained in the 
statement that the manufacture of paper from bamboo pulp has 
been successfully demonstrated in Formosa, where the jMitsu 
Bishi Paper Mill Company is installing a plant with a capacity 
of about 300 tons of paper a month. The experiments were 
carried out at the scientific station at Kobe. According to a 
consular report this company has secured a concession of 8,000 
acres of bamboo forest near Kagui. It is stated that for genera- 
tions the Chinese have carried on this industry in their homes, 
but their methods are exceedingly primitive — no chemicals enter- 
ing into their process. The Chinese use only bamboo shoots, for 
the evident reason that the shoots can be more readily worked up. 
“The new company,” the account proceeds, “will use all kinds of 
bamboo, young and old, but particularly a variety called kei 
chiku, of which there is an unlimited quantity. The question of 
the supply of raw material will never puzzle the company, for 
the growth of bamboo is very rapid. It verily grows inches in 
a night.” So far the experiments have been made by mixing 
bamboo pulp and wood pulp in varying proportions according to 
the quality of paper desired, but it is intended later to make 
paper entirely from bamboo pulp, the only difficulty standing in 
the way of this process now being that the cost of an entire 
bamboo paper is greater than that of a wood pulp paper. The 
pulp will be shipped to Japan in the form of roots or sheets, 
where it will be manufactured into two grades of paper — news 
and book. 
What the Far Eastern Review says in conclusion is worthy of 
