This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...twenty-two cents; and at this time four to ten cents. In those figures we have the secret of the great dissemination of machine goods. The price of a good calico is now twelve yards to a bushel of wheat. Forty years ago, it was one yard for a bushel of wheat. The quality of the goods at the same time has improved in a ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...twenty-two cents; and at this time four to ten cents. In those figures we have the secret of the great dissemination of machine goods. The price of a good calico is now twelve yards to a bushel of wheat. Forty years ago, it was one yard for a bushel of wheat. The quality of the goods at the same time has improved in a greater ratio. The handsome prints that now replace the "factory checks" of that day, show as great a change as does the price. PAPER: ITS MANUFACTURE. CHAPTER I. MATERIALS--PROGRESS If the question were put, "What single article has been of the greatest service to mankind?" mature reflection would, we think, decide upon paper as hat article, since it has been the means by which thought and ideas have been diffused, not only among cotemporaries, but preserved, and, as it were, accumulated in magazines for future expansion and growth. All other inventions, and perhaps the whole growth of civilization, are due to the material of paper. Every branch of knowledge is reached, and every avenue to the wisdom of great minds and the results of genius are explored only by means of paper, and its blessings arc diffused through all ranks of society. Even he who, wrapt in his ignorance, despises " book laming," enjoys a part of those benefits of civilization whichp.iper has been the means of imparting to all. Like almost all great blessings, however, it has been developed most rapidly and completely in the United States. Almost all vegetable substances were used for the manufacture of paper by our ancestors, but it was not until the fourteenth century that linen rags became generally the material. The first German paper mill was established at Nuremberg in 1390; some English manuscripts, however, date as far back as 1340, on l...
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