CONTENTS. TISSUE, BIBULOUS, AND FILTER PAPER AND THEIR MANUFACTURES. 233 4 4 4 6 7 7 7 Tissue paper. со Blotting paper. 8 Filter and litmus paper Imports.. 9 Prices. 10 Tariff history. Competitive conditions. 11 Statistical tables: Production in United States-tissue and blotting paper, 1899-1921 .. 11, 13 Prices of blotting paper, January and October, 1920, and January, 1921. Court and Treasury decisions.. 17 17 18 TISSUE, BIBULOUS, AND FILTER PAPER AND THEIR MANU FACTURES. ACT OF OCTOBER 3, 1913. PAR. 323. Papers commonly known as copying paper, stereotype paper, bibulous paper, tissue paper, pottery paper, letter-copying books, wholly or partly manufactured, crêpe paper and filtering paper, and articles manufactured from any of the foregoing papers or of which such paper is the component material of chief value, 30 per centum ad valorem. SUMMARY. Tissue paper (148,142 tons in 1921) ranks seventh in production among the different kinds of paper in the United States, being exceeded by paper boards, newsprint, book paper, wrapping paper, fine paper, and building paper. The production of blotting paper, the principal kind of bibulous. paper, in 1919 was about one-fourteenth that of tissue paper. Litmus paper, classified as bibulous paper, and filter paper are specialties produced in very small quantities. An estimate places the annual production of filter paper in the United States at 500 tons. There is no tariff problem in the tissue and blotting paper industries. Few of the other important paper-producing countries of the world have an exportable surplus of tissue and blotting paper. On the other hand, the United States exported in 1919, 5 per cent of the tissue paper production and imported in 1921 only one-third of 1 per cent of production. Imports of blotting paper into the United States are practically negligible now. It is probable that exports exceed imports. Litmus paper is unimportant. No import or export figures are available. This country produces only an ordinary grade of filter paper for clarifying liquids and for qualitative work in chemistry. The United States is dependent on England, Sweden, Germany, and France for practically the whole supply of high-grade filter paper for quantitative chemical analysis. 1 Available figures for bibulous and filter paper are too meager to permit the compilation of summary tables. Production figures for 1914 are from Bureau of Census; later figures from Federal Trade Commission. • Includes copying, stereotype, bibulous, tissue, and pottery papers. • Includes tissue and toilet papers. • Based on quantity. • Based on value. 7 Calendar year. • Value of production in 1919, according to the Bureau of Census, was $40,695,523. (The figure shown for quantity was compiled by the Federal Trade Commission.) Tissue paper.--Tissue paper is a thin paper of fine, soft texture, silky to the touch, translucent, and to a limited extent transparent; it is distinguished from other kinds of paper chiefly by its thinness. The better qualities are made from rag and the cheaper from wood pulp. Its principal uses are for toilet purposes, for napkins, and for wrapping articles, especially articles liable to tarnish. The antitarnishing quality results from special processes pursued in its manufacture which free it from sulphur or other chemicals that tarnish metal. Wrapping paper, which is also tissue paper, is considered as tissue paper for tariff purposes and bears a duty of 30 per cent instead of the 25 per cent duty on wrapping paper n. s. p. f. Copying, stereotype, pottery, and crêpe papers, as specified in paragraph 323 of the act of 1913, are special varieties of tissue paper, their output forming, however, only a very small percentage of the total output of tissue paper. Copying paper is a strong, unsized, usually cheap tissue paper used for the manufacture of letter books, in which copies of letters are kept, and also for the manufacture of carbon paper. The letter-copying books themselves are also dutiable under paragraph 323 at the same rate. Stereotype paper is an extra strong pliable tissue used in the manufacture of stereos (molds or matrices) from which printing plates are made. It is often an absorbent, unsized, so-called waterleaf paper. The sheets of paper, a considerable number together, and backed by matrix paper, which is an absorbent paper similar to high-grade hard blotting paper, and by ordinary brown paper, are pressed against the type to form the mold, the metal for the plate being then cast in the mold. Pottery paper, a term not used in the paper trade, is either a thin tissue of good quality, well glazed, used for wrapping pottery, or a special kind of tissue paper by which designs are transferred to pottery. Crêpe paper is a very thin, tough, strong tissue, made usually of com mon rags, colored and passed through heavy embossed rollers, which crinkle the paper into a form resembling crêpe. It is used for fancy and decorative purposes; also for paper towels. Kraft tissue paper is an unusually strong tissue paper, made wholly or in part of sulphate wood pulp. Bibulous and filter paper.--Bibulous paper is a porous, absorbent paper used for soaking up liquids. Blotting paper is the principal variety of bibulous paper. One kind of tissue paper, used for massage purposes, is called bibulous tissue paper. Litmus paper, a specially chemically treated paper, used to determine whether a solution is acid or alkaline in nature, is, for customs purposes, regarded as bibulous paper. Filter paper, although separately named in the tariff, is really a kind of bibulous paper; the domestic product in the main is a very ordinary grade, differing little from blotting paper and used principally for clarifying liquids. It is used by manufacturers, of soap, varnish, paint, sugar, color, and pharmaceutical products and by electrical companies to filter oil for transformers. It is also used for chemical qualitative analysis. The best grades for quantitative analysis are not made in this country, but must be imported. Recently, however, a beginning has been made in manufacturing the better grades. Toweling paper partakes of the characteristics both of absorbent or bibulous paper and of tissue paper. It is frequently a crêpe paper of somewhat greater thickness than ordinary tissue paper. Defects in the tariff classification of 1913.-The terms "bibulous paper" and "pottery paper" are now very little used in the American trade. They are likely to cause confusion in reporting imports. The tariff classification of the act of 1913 in grouping bibulous and filter paper with tissue paper is apparently based more on a desire to group together all papers bearing a 30 per cent duty than on any pronounced similarity of material, structure, or use. Thus, in the enumeration of the several kinds of paper provided for in paragraph 323, bibulous paper is between stereotype paper, which is a variety of tissue paper, and tissue paper itself, although bibulous paper in general is entirely unlike tissue paper. Filter paper is adjacent to crêpe paper without a comma between, as if to imply some particularly close relationship, whereas in reality the two varieties are unlike in material, method of manufacture, and use. That such a classification is liable to mislead is demonstrated by the articles imported under paragraph 323 of the act of 1913 as reported by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. The bureau in question, because the item, copying paper, is named first, records imports of these papers under the general heading "Copying and similar papers and manufactures of." This classification is a grouping of wholly dissimilar varieties of paper, viz, tissue and bibulous paper, under a minor subdivision of one of those varieties, copying paper being a relatively unimportant kind of tissue paper. Moreover, the figures for the imports of crêpe paper and those for filter paper are reported jointly, although, as noted, these varieties have little in common beside the fact that they are both paper. 40822—23——3—2 |