Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1916 — YARNS FROM PAPER [ARTICLE]

YARNS FROM PAPER

New Industries Spring Up as Result of War. Factory In England tyow Spins Threads Fine Enough for Gas Mantles and Strong Enough to Tie Up a Ship.

London. —London has, no doubt, added many new industries to its * list since the war began, but few, perhaps, of greater importance and. fascinating interest than that of paper spinning and weaving. I have had the opportunity of seeing some wonderful things in the way of yarns and textiles manufactured from paper pulp, and also of seeing a demonstration plant at work spinning threads of paper into twine fine enough for gas mantles and strong enough to hold a ship. This wonderland is to be found in Southwark and at the .works of the Textilite Engineering company, which is now supplying British-made machinery, made according to its patents, for the manufacture of every kind of thing imaginable which formerly was made of hemp and jute and flax.

“The things you see around you,” said Mr. George Seaton Mills, the managing director of the company, “are new, and yet they are not new. What I mean is that the people of China, in the days of Confucius, probably twisted a strip of paper in the fingers absent-mindedly and found it had remarkable tensile strength, but what we have done is to make that idea into a practical proposition. “The Germans, with their faculty for imitation, have spun paper for years, but they never could spin it fast enough to make it pay,. We now have found means of spinning the paper four or five times faster than the