Importance of Rags. 203 
many years one of the housewife’s perquisites, and many 
a shining treasure in the kitchen, and many an elegant tea- 
pot on the table, has borne witness to the thrift of the good 
woman in her practice of economical saving. All these 
rag-savings find their way to the paper mill. The price 
has more than quadrupled since the diminution in the 
supply of cotton caused by the war. But the supply of 
this country is wholly inadequate to the demands of the 
manufactures and the public. Once writing paper was not 
very generally used—at least, the people generally required 
but a small portion compared to the quantity they now de- 
mand. It might have been supposed that the increasing 
facilities of travel would have diminished the necessities for 
writing ; but the contrary seems to be the case. Personal 
contact and mutual acquaintance beget new commercial 
alliances, and correspondence is necessary. The rags made 
in this country constitute but a small portion of those used 
by American manufacturers, We imported for the quarter 
of the present year ending June 30th, rags to the value of 
426,766 dols.. In the ten years ending with 1865, the 
amount of rags imported was 200,883,718 pounds. Italy 
furnishes a large proportion of the rags brought into the 
United States. Everybody has heard of the Italian lazza- 
roni, who wear the scantiest dress of the filthiest rags; yet 
from this unpromising source nearly three-fourths of our 
supply comes. 
Italy is the country of the open palm, and begging and 
rags go together. Begging there, and in other parts of 
southern Europe, is as much a profession as any industrial 
pursuit in this country, and the uniform of rags is more im- 
portant to its successful prosecution than is the Govern- 
ment livery to the soldier. Still, valuable as rags to the 
professional beggar, and important as they may be to 
abject poverty, they are far more important to the world at 
large; for up to the present time, no other material has 
been found to usurp their place as the basis for paper. 
Their scarcity and constantly enhancing value have stimu- 
lated ingenuity to provide a substitute, but it has not been 
so successful as could have been wished. Straw, wood, 
and other substances have been, and are now, extensively 
used in the manufacture of the coarser papers, but nothing 
equals linen and cotton for the production of the firmer 
and finer qualities. Some of the European Governments, 
for this reason, have prohibited their exportation. 
It is a little singular that advances in knowledge and re- 
