hich time the others are all
packed into bales, when, after passing through various hands, they are
brought to the different paper-mills. Here the bales are hoisted to the
top loft of the building, where they are broken and their contents
turned over and over and subjected to a fanning process which removes a
large part of the dust. They are then passed through slides down into
the rag-room, where, as we have seen, they are sorted, cut in pieces,
and the buttons taken off. They are cut again, in the next room to
which they are carried, by a revolving cylinder whose surface is covered
with short, sharp knives, acting on each other much like the blades of
scissors. From here they are passed into the interior of a long,
horizontal, copper boiler containing a solution of soda and some other
chemical substances, and boiled for several days, at the end of which
time, the dirt being thoroughly loosened, the boiling mass is passed
through a long slide into vats, through which a constant stream of water
is flowing, and so thoroughly washed that it becomes as white as snow
and looks like raw, white cotton. It is then taken into another room,
packed into a "Jordan engine," and ground into an almost impalpable
pulp. This pulp is passed into other vats thoroughly mixed with water,
blueing, and some other substances calculated to give it a hard finish,
and then conveyed by pipes to the drying-room, where it is distributed
over the surface of fine wire netting stretched on cylinders and looking
much like "skim milk." It is now passed from cylinder to cylinder,
dropping the water with which it is mixed as it goes, and gradually
taking, more and more, the consistency of paper. At one stage--if it is
to be writing-paper, which was chiefly manufactured at Squantown
Mills--a certain amount of glue is poured upon it by means of little
tubes which are over the cylinders, and this gradually becomes pressed
into the fibre, giving the paper the shining surface to which we are
accustomed. This is called _sizing_. At another stage the wire netting
is changed for a blanket which passes over the cylinders and keeps the
weak, wet paper from friction, as well as from any chance of breaking.
Steam is now introduced into the cylinders, and the drying process goes
on so rapidly that, at the end of the long room, the pulp issues from
between the two last cylinders in sheets of firm, dry, white paper,
which are cut off in lengths by stationary knives, and c