A printer in New York, named Strang, had already secured the United States rights of the new process.  He was engaged in the manufacture of calendered paper, and, therefore, had no occasion to use wood-pulp; so he was willing to surrender the patents in exchange for a small interest.

The Pagenstechers wanted water-power for their grinders, and they located their first mill beside Stockbridge Bowl, in Curtisville, now Interlaken, Massachusetts.  On an outlay of eleven thousand dollars their mill was built and their machinery installed.  Two or three trials, with cotton waste added to the ground wood, gave them their paper.  Their first product was completed on the 5th of March, 1867.

It was a matter of greater difficulty to dispose of the stock.  The trade fought against the innovation.  Finally Wellington Smith, of the near-by town of Lee, Massachusetts, was persuaded to try it.  Rag-paper had been selling at twenty-four cents a pound.  Smith’s mill still exhibits the first invoice with the Pagenstechers, which shows the purchase of wood-paper at eleven cents.

The paper was hauled to Lee in the dead of night, for Smith’s subordinates wished to spare him from the laughter of his fellow millmen.  It was sold, and proved successful, and the Pagenstechers were rushed with orders.  They built a second mill in Luzeme, New York, but abandoned it soon afterward for the greater water-power to be obtained at Palmer’s Falls, where now stands the second largest mill in the United States.

Manufacturers tumbled over themselves to get the benefit of the new process.  The originators in this country held the patent rights until 1884, letting them out on royalties until that time.  With each new plant the price of paper fell, until at one period it sold at one and a half cents a pound.

Trial had proved that spruce was the only suitable wood for the pulp.  Until 1891 rags were combined in about one-quarter proportion.  Then it was found that other coniferous woods might be used to replace the rags, after being submitted to what is called the sulfite process.  In this treatment small cubes of wood, placed in a vat, have their resinous properties extracted, and the wood is disintegrated.  A combination of ground and sulfite wood makes the paper now used for news-print.

As has been told, the primary advantage of the wood-pulp paper was its immediate absorption of ink.  This made possible much greater speed in printing, and led in turn to the development of the great modern newspaper and magazine presses, fed by huge rolls of paper, which they print on both sides simultaneously.  These wonderful machines have now reached the double-octuple stage—­monsters capable of turning out no less than five thousand eight-page newspapers in a single minute, or three hundred thousand in an hour.