We believe, however, that it was owing rather to the want of skill, than, as has sometimes been supposed, to the inferior quality of the linen, that the manufacture of paper was not carried on with much success in England till a com paratively recent period. The manufac ture is said to have been considerably improved by the French refugees who fled. to England in 1685. In 1690, how ever, the manufacture of white paper was attempted ; and, within a few years, most branches were much improved. In 1721, it is supposed that there were about 800,000 reams of paper annually produced in Great Britain, which was equal to about two-thirds of the whole consumption. In 1783, the value of the paper annually manufactured was esti mated at £780,000. At present, besides making a sufficient quantity of most sorts of paper for our own use, we an nually export about £100,000 worth of books.
In 1818, Dr. Colquhoun estimated the valise of paper annually produced in Great Britain at £2,000,000; but Mr. Stevenson, an incomparably better autho rity upon such subjects, estimated it at only half this sum. From information obtained from those engaged in the trade, we incline to think that the total annual value of the paper manufiteture in the United Kingdom, exclusive of the duty, may at present amount to about £1,200,000 or £1,800,000. There are about 700 paper-mills in England, and from 70 to 80 in Scotland. The number in Ireland is but inconsiderable. About 27,000 individuals are supposed to be di rectly engaged in the trade; and, besides the workmen employed iu the mills, the paper manufacture creates a considerable demand for the labor of millwrights, ma chinists, smiths, carpenters, iron and brass-founders, wire-workers, woollen manufacturers, and others in the ma chinery and apparatus of the mills. Some parts of these are very powerful, and subject to severe strain ; and other parts are complicated and delicate, and require continual renovation. Most of the American printing-paper is of cotton, on account of the extensive use of that article ; and hence it is soft, easily torn, and perishable. The paper i manufacture has rapidly increased in this country. In 1829, the quantity made in this country amounted to from live to seven millions a-year, and employed ten to eleven thousand persons. Ma chinery is almost altogether employed, and the quality of the paper is improved. It becomes better by keeping, and is therefore difficult to obtain in this coun try, the interest of capital being too high. Much of the linen paper now made is from rags imported, of which there were, at the port of New York alone, during 1846, 1847, and 1848, the following quan tities imported:— 1848, Bales, 7,066 1847, „ 15,463 1S48, 28,318 The exports of paper and stationery in the years 1847 and 1848 were, respec tively, of the value of $88,781 and $78,807.
We pass on from this brief account of the history and statistics of paper to the mechanical process of its production ; only remarking, that many articles have been resorted to in its manufacture—the tendrils of the vine, the stalks of the nettle, the thistle, and mallow ; the bark of the willow, the hawthorn, the beech, the aspen, and the lime. Some patents
have been obtained for making it of straw; and the pine of the hop, it is pre sented, might furnish material for the supply of paper ; but, leaving these in ferior substitutes, we shall confine our selves to the description of paper made from linen rags, that being the staple of the manufacture.
The rags are sold to the manufacturers according to their respective quality: fine, being wholly linen, and of the best quality, is used for the finest writing paper, and so in their gradation down to the commonest, which is coarse, often canvass, and can only be made into an inferior printing-paper when it has been thoroughly bleached. In these inferior papers some cotton is mixed. There are also the strong, coarse bags in which the rags are picked, and the colored rags, only fit for the most common papers ; though out of these the blue are usually sorted for the purpose of making blue paper. It is necessary that these rags should be dusted ; and, to accomplish this, they are either placed in a cylinder, formed of wire net, turning on pivots at each end, and enclosed in a box which receives the dust as it falls through the net-work, or else their sorting takes place over a table frame covered with wire net, through which the dust falls into a box beneath, as the workwoman proceeds in her labours. The first of these modes, however, is a great preservation of the health of those employed in the work. The rags are then cut into pieces not ex ceeding three or four inches square, the parts that have seams being thrown into a separate heap, or the sewing-thread might make filaments in the paper. In this process the rags are scrupulously sorted according to their texture and de gree of strength, not according to their color; for, were they not carefully ar ranged by this rule, the fine in texture would be reduced to a pulp long before the coarse, and be lost in the prepara tion ; or, if preserved, when reduced to a pulp, would not be found of the same consistency as the coarser sorts, and the paper, when manufactured, would neces sarily be clouded and inferior. It is for these reasons that this part of the pro cess is important. When carefully sort ed, and the different degrees of texture having, by a longer or shorter process, been reduced to a pulp of similar con sistency, they may then he mixed to gether; but this cannot be previously done. While in this state the rags often appear so dirty and discolored as to pre clude all hope, to an inexperienced eye, that they can ever assume the purity of that beautiful fabric so valuable co the artist and the scribe. This purification used formerly to be effected by water running through a receptacle filled with the rags, which in its passage eventually carried off their soil ; but the present more expeditious process is that of boil ing them, mixed up with lime, in a spe cies of chest, so perforated as to allow the admission of steam • and by this means they are partially bleached. Bleaching takes an important place in the process. The superfluous moisture is squeezed from the rags, and they are placed in a sort of chamber or receiver, which is air.