Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

HOW PAPER IS MADE. 145 which travels with the netting, and prevents the pulp from running over the sides. Before it leaves the wire the pulp passes over a series of suction-boxes, and by the time it has run the gauntlet of these it has acquired a measure of cohesion and continuity : already is it easier to believe that what a moment ago looked like a thin stream of water will before this wonder-working machine has had much more to do with it be changed into paper. W hen the pulp leaves the wire-netting it is carried on to the first of a series of rolls. This first pair of cylinders is known as the couch-rolls, and in passing between them most of the moisture which has not been extracted by the suction-boxes is squeezed out of it. Then it is carried- on to press rolls, which squeeze out more and more of the moisture until at last the pulp is indubitably paper. Not yet, however, is its conversion complete. Still it moves on, for it has now to be dried by passing round steam-heated cylinders. This done, it is carried on to the calenders—metal cylinders with a smooth, polished surface, which by subjecting it to tremendous pressure give to its surface smoothness and gloss. 1 hen the edges are trimmed and it is divided into the required widths, and finally it is wound on to reels, the length of the roll being automatically registered. When the indicator 19 shows that the roll is of the required length, the paper is at length separated from the machine to which it owes its being, the reel is weighed, and then it is ready for delivery to the printer. That the paper should be weighed as well as measured may seem a work of supererogation, but of course it is nothing of the kind. The fact is that, nearly as these beautiful machines approach to perfection, rolls of paper of precisely the same length may differ a few pounds in weight, owing to variations^ in the pulp too slight for even this delicate machinery to recognise and correct. Of the two great driving-engines, with their enormous fly-wheels, of the twenty-two Gallo- way boilers with their hoppers for automatic stoking, and of the other wonders of these mills I may not speak. I must, however, just touch on one point that has not yet been mentioned. Nothing is more striking than the way in which everything in the nature of waste is avoided. Thus by a system of pipes spent heat is utilised on a scale that has resulted in a saving of not far short of £ 100 a week in the coal bill ; and in the same way the waste water is not allowed to escape until all the pulp which it contains has been yielded up in the form of thick slabs, which are consigned to the beating vats to be reduced once more to the oatmeal gruel of which I have spoken.