HOW UNITED STATES CAN MEET PULP- WOOD REQUIREMENTS. 31 
RAW PULP MATERIALS OTHER THAN WOOD. 
All plants are potential pulp and paper materials, and a widespread belief still 
clings that the solution of the paper problem is through the use of other forms 
of plant growth than wood. Wood is a newcomer in the pulp world. The entire 
history of pulp and paper making is the story of a search, still continuing, for 
new and more satisfactory materials. Hardly a day but witnesses the discovery, 
or more often rediscovery of some new paper-making material. Recent history 
is covered in a preceding section and need not be repeated. The resultant to 
date of the competition between wood and other materials, a competition in 
which properties, availability, costs, and other factors have come into play, is 
expressed in Figure 1, where wood is shown to be far in the lead of all other 
materials combined. If, therefore, the present is any indication of the future, 
wood will continue to be the dominant pulp and paper material. 
Among the reasons why materials other than wood have not proved successful 
for large-scale use the most important are the high cost of assemblage, transpor- 
tation to the mill and storage, and the fact that many are seasonal crops with 
comparatively low yields per unit of pulping chemical. In the case of wood the 
growth of decades can be harvested in a single crop. Furthermore, the paper 
industry has become so accustomed to handling wood-pulp papers that pulp and 
paper from other materials are not accepted readily. Each reacts differently 
under pulping processes and the final product is slightly different and requires 
special manipulation in handling or printing. These factors have relegated the 
use of other materials than wood almost entirely to special-purpose papers, many 
of them of great economic value. The more promising of the materials now 
known warrant more detailed consideration. 
Linen and high-grade cotton rags make a strong, flexible product which is the 
standard for high-grade book and writing papers. Very little paper even of these 
high grades is, however, made entirely of rags; wood pulp is usually added, 
forming as a general average much more than half of the pulp material used, 
Low-grade rags are largely used in building felts and sheathing papers, where 
bulk and absorption qualities are necessary. Manila stock, including both rope 
and jute threads and waste, are used in the strong, porous papers which are so 
satisfactory as containers for products like cement. 
For linen, the best rag stock for paper, the United States is largely dependent 
upon foreign countries. Demand and hence the price of linen rags is high, both 
in Europe and the United States; consequently their use is confined solely to 
very high-grade papers where low cost is not so essential. This automatically 
restricts use. 
Considerable use has been made of cotton rags, but here cost is important, and 
an active demand immediately advances price. 
Straw is now restricted almost entirely to corrugated boards, to which it alone 
imparts the requisite properties. Straw was once used for printing paper but it 
has long since yielded this place to wood. Tremendous quantities of straw are 
available for paper manufacture in the United States, but it is available in rela- 
tively small units and present use is confined almost solely to the cereal-producing 
regions. Straw is bulky and has been costly in comparison with wood. Cost 
alone has so far eliminated it as a serious competitor for the general manufacture 
of paper. 
Cotton linters have since the war been used to some extent in writing and book 
papers. This use has been made to supplement the rag supply rather than to 
compete with wood pulp. Although cotton-linter pulp is made from a waste 
product, the costs of production are usually above those of a similar pulp made 
