Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1898 — Our Fading Literature. [ARTICLE]

Our Fading Literature.

An expert in ink and paper has made a startling discovery. He announces that none of the books being printed now will be in existence by the middle of the next century. The- books that have survived for two or three centuries were not made of shoddy. The paper was hand made, and the material used was honest rags. The ink was made from nutgalls. Nowadays he says most of the paper is of wood pulp, treated with acids, and the ink is composed of substances that are foreign to the paper and eat into it. The books will all rot away. Will it be a disaster if the folk a hundred years from now do not have the piles and piles of books printed to-day to read? It will be a blessing, and save a considerable portion of the race from idiocy. All the drivel now being printed is doomed. Nature has her own remedies, and the one for this ink itch is poor paper and rotten ink, evidently. So, most of the novelists and poets might as well give up the idea of having posterity read their works. Posterity will be too busy trying to write something itself.—Pittsburg News.