Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1888 — ALMOST A PAPER AGE. [ARTICLE]

ALMOST A PAPER AGE.

One of the Greatest Factors In Mod ern Industrial Development. ' Cleveland Leader. The president of the American Papei Makers’ Association has ‘ collected reliable data showing that the paper trade which stood twenty-first in rank among American manufacturers in 1880, 1 is now fourteenth, and that the capital invested has nearly doubled in the last eight years. The annual product has fai more than doubled in quantity, and in spite of lower prices is 75 per cent, greater in .value.- The number of employes » 40,000 against 24,500 in 1880, and the wages paid are more than twice the total in the last cennus year. The average per day for each worker was then $1.13, and now it is $1.50. These statistics simply demonstrate what every observing person must have noticed concerning the fast growing importance or paper as a factor in modern industrial development. Our age has been called the age of steel, the age of glass, the iron age, and has beeri christened from other great industries, but at the rate paper is booming the next generation may see-a paper age. When one considers the enormous importance of paper as a means of disseminating intelligence it can scarcely be ranked, even now, secand to any other branch of manufactures in worth to mankind. It is used for making car wheels, lining walls, for numerous household utensils, and in a constantly multiplying list of artes and industries. We may yet see buildings wholly of paper erected in the ordinary course of business. The world reads more than ever before, and the material on which books and periodicals are printed is bound to become more and more a vital element in the civilization of tbe age, whether it find 3 many new channels of usefulness or not. Paper may crowd brick and wood and metal out of some fields.now occupied by them, but if not it is sure of a vast and increasing demand in its own peculiar sphere.