Tiny Little Hairs to Tree-Free Papers

In a previous post, we talked about the history of Crane and cotton rags as a raw material. I receieved a package today from Mike Brown at Buckeye Specialty Cellulose in Memphis, the company that supplies another of Crane's raw materials for its papers: cotton linters.

Linters, or lint, as they are often called, are the tiny little hairs that adhere to the cotton seed after the staple fibers have been ginned off for textiles. Imagine a brand-new tennis ball and you can understand the fuzz factor. Much of these cotton seeds, with linters still attached, are used as a feed additive for dairy cows. But for many decades, Crane has been using cotton linters to make fine 100% cotton papers.

Linters are a recovered fiber, because they have to be removed in order to efficiently extract valuable cotton-seed oil. The linters act like a sponge, and soak up too much oil. So special machines were developed to remove the linters to better prepare the seed for squeezing. New infrastructures were also developed to recover this valuable source of cellulose for papermaking and other specialty cellulose applications.

I grew up on a small family farm. I have never been able to get my intellectual arms around the enormity of something like the cotton-seed oil industry. Millions of pounds of these tiny little hairs are used each year to make Crane's cotton papers. How big, then, must the cotton-seed oil and indeed the entire cotton industry be? It boggles.

Luckily, every day I can get my intellectual arms around the fact that these tiny little hairs, recovered from such huge enterprises, make an extraordinary paper.

I got a second delivery today as well. An envelope from Ms. Bliss with tickets to an upcoming Red Sox game! So to celebrate the timely confluence of these two disparate arrivals, here is a photo to connect them.

Cotton Rags and Crane Paper

Cotton rags and Crane paper have been inseparable for more than 200 years. Cotton rags were among the first raw materials used for papermaking in China, and they continue to be a mainstay for Crane to this day. There's a reason for this. Cotton rags make the finest-quality paper available - with a crisp rattle and a soft feel. Cotton rags are pure cellulose, the stuff of which paper is made. There are no contaminants; no need for the harsh chemical treatments required for other raw materials, so letters written on cotton rag paper will last for generations to come.

The cotton rags used to make Crane papers have a couple of additonal benefits as we attempt to become more environmentally responsible in our paper purchases. Crane's cotton rags are a recovered resource, diverted from the solid-waste stream, and they are completely tree-free.

Back in February of 1801, 23-year-old Zenas Crane and his two partners had just signed the deed to purchase land and water rights on the Housatonic River in Dalton, Mass., and were preparing to build their first mill once the Berkshire weather cooperated. They had everything they needed except perhaps the most valuable of commodities - cotton and linen rags. Back then, linen was a common material used to make garments, and was used either together with cotton rags or separately for an all-linen sheet. From Worcester, out in the middle of the state, Zenas and his partners sent advertisement copy to Phinneas Allen, publisher of the Pittsfield Sun, a local newspaper, asking the womenfolk of the area to save their rags. Here is their first ad.



We must assume that this eloquent request was indeed met with "due encouragement," as the mill began making Crane's first papers as soon as the ice was off the river.
The original building constructed in Dalton was a one-vat mill. The main part was two stories, with the upper part used as a drying loft. The mill had a daily output of 20 posts - a post being 125 sheets of paper.

After the mill got into production, it wasn't long before housewives learned the thrift of saving their rags. They left them at one of a series of pickup points throughout the area to be gathered by one of the three partners. Eventually, rags became so valuable that they became a form of barter currency along with meat, produce and dairy products.
Business quickly evolved into a good-news, bad-news scenario for young Zenas. He was an excellent salesman, making successful forays to Albany, N.Y. and Boston and all points in between. And his mill was turning out the most favored papers in these markets. That's the good news. The bad news was that every new order accentuated the need for more rags than local houseswives could supply.

In desparation, Zenas contacted a dealer in New York City, who could ship rags to Dalton up the Hudson River by packet boat to Troy and then from Troy to Dalton in horse-drawn wagons. Eventually, the scraps from textile mill would come all the way from Europe. The first indication of a successful delivery is in a letter from Zenas to his dealer in June of 1811:

"Our wagons arrived late last night from Troy with eleven bales of rags consigned to us by the sloop John Hancock. Upon examination, the contents met with our approval, and they promise ready conversion into our paper."

Thus began a long tradition of purchasing cotton rags from garment manufacturers. For almost two centuries, they have proved to be the highest-quality supply of cotton rags, as they are perfectly clean and easily sorted by color and grade early in the recovery process.

Each year, garment manufacturers produce millions of pounds of trimings while making all sorts of cotton clothing. These trimmings are destined for the landfill, with the exception of those selected by Crane for making its fine 100% cotton papers. So, just as was the case in 1801, cotton rags are an environmentally responsible raw material, and they just happen to make the finest paper available.