Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

HOW PAPER IS MADE. 143 its original condition that no one not in the secret, seeing- a bale of wood-pulp, would ever guess that these flakes of what looks not unlike rough, thick cardboard were once spruce firs—for this is the kind of tree which, owing to its fibrous nature, is most suitable for conversion into paper. By two quite different processes is the wood reduced to Photos .* F, Downer & Son, Watford. THE PAPER MACHINE, CROXLEY MILLS. THE OVAL PICTURE SHOWS THE “ WET END ” AT WHICH THE PULP ENTERS, THE WHITE FLAT SURFACE BEING THE ENDLESS WIRE-NETTING (p. 144). THE LOWER PICTURE GIVES AN IDEA OF THE SIZE OF THE MACHINE THROUGH WHICH THE PULP PASSES AND BECOMES PAPER. pulp—by mechanical pressure and friction on the one hand, by the action of sulphide of lime on the other. These two species of pulp, known respectively as mechanical and chemical pulp,have to be commingled together in the process of manufacture. The chemical pulp it is which yields to paper its strength, while to the mechanical pulp it owes its substance and bulk ; and paper made of wood- pulp unmixed with any other material depends for its quality upon the proportion which the chemical bears to the mechanical pulp. To convey some idea of the process by which the pulp is converted into printing paper I cannot do better than give my im- pressions of a recent visit to the Sittingbourne mills of Messrs. Edward Lloyd, Limited, whose courteous manager o could not conceal a justifiable pride in the splendid ma- chinery which has, so to speak, grown up under his supervision. These mills, which turn out from forty to fifty thousand tons of paper in the year, mainly, though not exclusively, for news- papers, are the largest in Europe ; in size and output, indeed, they have but two rivals in the whole world, and them we must seek in the United States, the land where everything runs big. For the manufacture of the wood-pulp Messrs. Lloyd have mills of their own at Honcfos, in Norway, no great distance from Christiania. Having been cut down, the trees are flung into the river above the Hönefos Falls, and in this inexpensive fashion are