Paper in the Machine Age
Marjorie Plant · 2024
ONE of the most certain results of such an unprecedented growth in the textile industry as that of the late eighteenth century was surely a vastly increased supply of rags. The masses of the population, hitherto clothed in wool, could now afford frequent changes of the new, cheap cotton materials. So great was the expansion of printing, however, that at the end of the century rags were as scarce as ever they had been.