Paper and Pulp Industry

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PAPER AND PULP INDUSTRY

PAPER AND PULP INDUSTRY. With origins in China over 2,000 years ago, the paper and pulp industry produces the different kinds of paper used for printing, bags, signs, cardboard, and more. William Rittenhouse, a German immigrant, introduced the industry to colonial America in 1690. Coming from a family of papermakers, Rittenhouse settled near Philadelphia, built a log mill, and began making paper. The Rittenhouse family continued to operate the mill until 1820. The American Weekly Mercury, Philadelphia's first newspaper, was founded by Andrew Bradford, the son of one of Rittenhouse's partners, and was printed on Rittenhouse paper.

During the pre-Revolutionary years, the industry spread slowly. The papermaking process was long and complicated. Cloth rags were balled and kept wet for six to eight weeks, turning the rags into pulp. The rags that did not rot were then put in bowls and pounded by levers attached to an axle turned either by hand or by water power. Once the substance was made batter-like, the vat man dipped a mold with a screened bottom into the vat to collect a layer of the pulp and drained excess water. He then passed the mold to the coucher, who skillfully turned the mold over on a piece of felt. The two did this until they had 144 sheets each, separated by felt. Workers using a large wooden screw press, which removed the remaining water and compacted the rag fibers, then pressed the 144 sheets. The pages were separated by a layman and hung to dry. Once dry, the sheets were dipped into a mixture of boiled animal hides to reduce the absorbency of the porous paper. They were pressed and dried again, and the last step was to polish the paper with agate or soapstone.

This time-consuming and labor-intensive process, combined with the scarcity of rags, made paper a valuable and expensive commodity. While Philadelphia and the surrounding area remained the center of papermaking in the colonies, the demand for paper required importation.

When the colonies declared their independence and the importation of paper stopped, drastic measures were taken. Paper was rationed, interest-free loans were awarded to those opening mills, and papermakers were even exempt from military service. As a result, a number of new mills were opened during and in the years immediately following the Revolution. At the end of the war, an estimated 80 mills were in operation, and by 1810 that number leaped to almost 200 mills, producing 425,000 reams and an annual income of over $1 million.

After the Revolution, entrepreneurs began addressing the two main problems in papermaking: the long process and the scarcity of rags. A French veteran of the Revolutionary War developed the first paper machine around 1799, but Thomas Gilpin of Delaware is credited with inventing the first machine in America in 1816. Around the same time another man, John Ames from Springfield, Massachusetts, also invented a machine that, like Gilpin's, used a cylinder washer and finisher. The various machines, operated by fewer workers, were fed pulp and made larger and longer sheets of paper. Experiments using plant fibers sought to alleviate the problem of rag shortages, but the only fiber used commercially was straw.

With science and technology addressing the issues of time, labor, and raw material, papermaking continued to grow. Before the Civil War, the U.S. had approximately 440 mills, with the bulk of them in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The Civil War and the depression of 1873, however, meant losses for all industries. The remaining papermakers organized themselves into trade presses and organizations. The International Paper Company, formed in 1898, represented twenty mills from five states. It grew to control 90 percent of newsprint and own 1 million acres of timberland in the U.S. and 1.6 million acres in Canada.

In 1866, Frederick Wuertzbach traveled to Germany to purchase a new machine that used water to grind wood into pulp. Developed by Heinrich Voelter, the machine offered papermakers an abundant raw material with which to replace rags. The first paper made from wood pulp was made 8 March 1867 at the Smith Paper Company. While wood pulp did not produce paper of such high quality as rag pulp, and initially met with some resistance, wood pulp became the primary material for paper.

As the industry gradually accepted wood pulp, it shifted geographically to areas with large forests, first to the Northeast and then to the South. Science and technology continued to find ways to make quality paper from different kinds of timber. In the South, Dr. Charles Herty, a chemist and professor, developed new techniques for using Georgia's high-resin pine for wood pulp.

From the onset of World War I until the Great Depression, the paper industry boomed. The wartime demand for paper gave workers the leverage, sometimes through strikes, to lobby for better working conditions and salaries. During the depression the government stepped in to help the paper industry, largely through the National Recovery Administration. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was good for the industry, but it opened the door to increased governmental control. At the start of World War II the industry was producing approximately 6 million tons of paperboard. The demands of the war, however, meant shortages in just about every area of life, including pulpwood as well as the labor to harvest trees and work in mills. Further challenges came in the environmental movements of the 1970s, as concern grew about forest lands and the disposal of hazardous waste from chemicals used to bleach, dye, and make pulp.

Despite war shortages and other challenges, the industry grew throughout the twentieth century. The United States remains the largest consumer of paper products in the world, with a 1995 per capita consumption of 736 pounds. Of the 555 U.S. facilities, approximately half produce both paper and pulp, and the industry employs over 200,000 people.