Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

141 HOW PAPER IS MADE. SHEDS WHERE THE PULP IS STORED, SITTINGBOURNE. upon our superiority to our remote ancestors than might at first be supposed. What does the very word “ paper ” come from but from “ papyrus,” the reed which the ancient Egyptians manufactured into a writing material ? Even the conversion of wood into paper was no discovery of the nineteenth century. In the dim and distant past the Chinese, who plagiarised so many things besides, were able to make paper out of sprouts of bamboo, and later they pressed bark into the service, besides hemp and rags and old fishing- nets. Yet no self-respecting person would say of these old paper-makers of far Cathay that everything was fish that came to their nets! If, however, the ancients were able to make paper—of a sort— out of the same unpromising things as we ourselves, we none the less have something of which we may vaunt ourselves. The raw materials are much the same, but how marvellously have the processes changed ! That which had to be done slowly and laboriously by hand is now effected with almost inconceiv- able rapidity by complicated and delicate machinery, so true in its con- struction, so nearly perfect in operation, that it may almost be left to look after itself. In these days a single machine, turning out its thousand miles of paper in a week, gets through as much work in four-and-twenty hours as would have occupied an army of men for a year under the old conditions. ARRIVAL WHARF, SITTINGBOURNE.