picturesque, and they represent not a little care and thrift. Eventually they find their way to dealers, who sort, grade, and bale the rags and send them to the mills. Many of the rags used come from the Old World countries across the seas. No doubt enough rags are produced in this country to supply the demand, but most people will not take the trouble to save them.

White rags make better paper than colored rags, for the powerful chemicals used to remove the color injure to some degree the fiber of the material. Rags that are weak in fiber, through much wear, or exposure to the weather, or lack of care, are chiefly used for making blotting paper. New white cuttings are superior to all others. A great many of them are the clippings from manufacturers of shirts and underwear. Makers of clothing furnish much other material, as also do makers of bedticks; and the clippings from the irregular pieces of cloth used for shoe linings are an important source of supply. The finest and strongest writing papers, such as bonds and ledgers, are made from rags.

Let us visit one of the great modern mills where high-grade papers for correspondence are made. To see the process from beginning to end we first go to a portion of the mill where several immense rooms on the lower floors are given up to the storage of the raw material. The great bales of rags, weighing about eight hundred pounds each, rise tier on tier clear to the ceiling. Next we ride on the elevator to the fourth story. Here the bales of rags are being slashed open by a man with a big knife, the sacking is removed, and the closely packed mass within is pulled to pieces and thrown into a great hopper, where a swiftly revolving wheel, thick-set with jagged teeth, catches the rags on its spikes, and whirls them about so fiercely that you wonder to find any rags left after the process. Yet this is simply the first step