RAGS. Until some better and cheaper material can be discovered, linen and cotton rags will continue to be the staple of the PAPER as described in the article under that name, and will continue to be an object of great solicitude to governments and manu facturers. Linen rags are imported mostly from Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Ancona, Leghorn, Messina, Palermo, and Trieste. Those from the first three ports are mostly German rags ; those from the next four are Italian and Sicilian rags ; while Hungarian rags are shipped at Trieste. The rags are closely packed in bags of about 4 cwt. each ; and the bags are marked according to quality. The foreign rags are darker, dirtier, and coarser than English ; but as they comprise a larger ratio of linen and a smaller of cotton, they are better for the paper-maker's purposes than English rags—especially as they can now be bleached as white as the latter by boiling in a ley, and then exposure to chlorine. Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal, as a means of protecting the paper-manufacture, prohibit the exporta tion of rags altogether; and France is only now (1860) beginning to depart from that system, as one of the counterbalances for the advan tages she receives through the new Commercial treaty with England. The United States compete seriously with England for the purchase of European rags, and overbid her for those of Northern Italy. Taking an average of recent years, the price paid by English paper-makers for foreign rags ranges between 20/. and 30/. per ton, including freight.
When England made 120,000,000 lbs. of paper annually, she used 10,000 tons of foreign rags; if the same ratio prevails now, when the product, reaches 210,000,000 lbs. (as it did in 1859), the foreign rags must be nearly 20,000 tons; but there are reasons for thinking that the English portion of the supply, owing to the greater use of cotton and straw, has increased faster than the foreign.
Woollen rags are not available for paper-making. If of loose texture and not too much worn, they are reserved for shoddy; that is, they are torn up by machinery into fibres, and mixed with new wool to make cheap woollen cloths. Some of the pilot cloths, as they are called, now made in enormous quantities about the neighbourhood of Dewsbury and Batley, consist of three-fourths or seven-eighths shoddy, with only a small proportion of new wool. Some of the woollen rags are made into flocks for beds, by washing, grinding, tearing, and pulping. All that is too bad for these purposes is used as manure. Besides our own woollen rags, the chief foreign supply is from Hamburg and Bremen. The prices are generally about 15/. or 20/. per ton for good white, 10/. or 12/. for good coloured, and Si. or 6/. for common.