Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1920 — SALVATION ARMY HELPS COUNTRY IN CRISIS OF PAPER SHORTAGE [ARTICLE]

SALVATION ARMY HELPS COUNTRY IN CRISIS OF PAPER SHORTAGE

ORGANIZATION WHICH PLANS APPEAL FOR FUNDS MAY 1020 HAS BEEN COLLECTING PAPER FOR YEARS—RECORDS COME TO LIGHT WHEN FRIENDS f INVESTIGATE ARMY ACTIVITIES. '

The Salvation Army which is planning a nation-wide appeal for $10,000,000, May 10-20, to carry on ita relief work for another year, comes to the! foreground in the present' paper crisis with figures to show that it has done more than any other organization to help out the newspapers and magazines in the paper situation. Computations made at Salvation Army headquarters indicate that 50,000 tons of waste paper have gone back to the mills from ths various Army corps constituting a vast saving of valuable material for print paper manufacture. Realizing the Importance of saving waAe paper and returning It to the mills, the Salvation Army ten years ago became a pioneer In the business B collecting and baling paper for ren to the mills. Since then the ny has been responsible for saving more than a quarter of a million tons, according to computations made recently at national headquarters, 122 West 14th-street. New York city. Had the Salvationists not gathered this enormous volume of waste paper, baled it and returned it to the paper mills to be remanufactured, much of it into newsprint, the paper would have been destroyed by householders and stores, or otherwise destroyed and lost to the publishing Industry.

Give* Jeb* to Unemployed.

Collection and sorting of the paper was originally put in the hands of the countless unemployed men whom the Salvation Army never refuses to help. Money raised from the sale of the baled waste paper maintains eighty-four industrial homes in various parts of the country. Although no record of the vast amount of paper collected in Indiana alone has been computed, the books of Staff Captain Catlin of Indianar polls corps show that more than 7,000 tons of waste paper and 31,115 hundredweight In rags have been saved and sent out from that city. This represents the amount collected within a radius of 30 miles from the heart of the city, and the work of men and six horses and wagons kept constantly busy gathering up the paper. Homeless men, living at the Salvation Army Industrial home were employed to do the sorting and baling. None of the 3430,000 which is the Indiana state quota, set by the citizen’s state committee under the direction of Major Arthur R. Robinson, veteran of the world war, to bo raised during the home service appeal In Indiana, is used to promote the gathering of waste paper. This branch of Salvation Army work iskejit up merely as a means of giving employment to men in search of work, and to help support the Industrial home. At the present time when wgste paper is much tn demand at all paper mills, the revenue from bales of waste paper figures tn helping offset the expenses of maintaining the industrial home, according to Captain Catlin, of Indianapolis.

The task ot sorting the paper aft* er It is collected In the wagons end brought to headquarter* at 24 South Capitol avenpe, Indianapolis, is given to unemployed men who ooms'to the Salvation Army offlees looking for work. ' ■; J Ute Care The paper is dumped from rocopr tielee in which it has been collected to a flat top table setting beside a

hole in the floor about four by six • feet square. At first the uncrumpled newspapers are taken oat and sent down the hole in the/floor to the baling press directly below In the basement. After the press is full of paper up to the floor, It is closed and the loose papej- inside is compressed by the machine, with the aid of a great lever. Then it is tied automatically and when the press is opened a bale i Is ready to go—weighing on an average of eight to nine hundredweight to the bale. V After that the straight sheets and flat pieces, such as old envelopes and letters are sorted and tossed Into the bole, where they in turn areeoMP pressed and come out in bales weighing about 800 pounds. Next craft paper—the brown wrapping paper, valuable because of its qualities of toughness, is separated and baled. Bales of this paper usually weigh between five and seven hundredweight, owing to the bulkiness of the paper which prevents compression. Return Paper to Mills. Finally the crumpled paper is left * on the tables. It follows the same process as the rest, making balsa averaging five hundredweight. The bales are sent directly to the mills by the carload, whenever twenty-four bales are ready to go. An average shipment at Indianapolis headquarters, according to Captain Catlin, is one carload a week. "We would have obtained this year three times the paper we did if tbs thousands of men formerly given wort in house-to-house paper canvassing were not in good paying industrial jobs, and if the number of schools, churches and other organisations, had not Uken some of our “trade" away from us, by soliciting paper ahead of us for money for school libraries and pianos,” said Captain Catlin. “People who do not know that Industrial homes are not helped by the home service fund do not realise that *’.ey are greatly curtailing our opportunity to help the down and outer by refusing to let ushavo their waste paper as they did In the past. The Salvation Army can handle the return of the paper to the mills more efficiently than other organizations because it has made a business of doing this wort and has all the equipment for baling and sending it out.*