Important Enterprise: Boxes of Paper Stronger and Safer than Anything of Wood One of the most interesting developments in a commercial way that we have heard of for some time is the establishment in the very near future of a paper-box factory in Shanghai. A factory building has been leased by the China Fibre Container Company, the machinery is ready to be installed and it is estimated that samples will be turned out in less than two weeks. The President of the Company, Mr. A. E. Mandel, recently established a factory in Japan, near Tokio, and the management of the Company in Shanghai will be taken over by the vice-president, Mr. C. 8. Rutherford. The capitalization of the Company is Gold $250,000 and it is estimated that the factory, when started, will turn out 25,000 fibre cases in a day or seven and a half million is a year.
As to what these fibre boxes are used for, one might well ask what they are not used for. Cigarettes, rubber, oil, soap, condensed milk, sugar, salt, glassware, matches, are all sent out packed in paper-fibre, and each for a separate and special reason. Cigarettes are kept from losing their flavour- in air-tight boxes so that the cases need not be lined with tin; glassware is better protected because the packing material is not as resistant as wood; matches, because fibre boxes are fire-proof; soap, in order that the commodity shall not lose its required percentage of moisture.
Mr. Mandel is a_ representative of the Zellerbach Paper Company and has been in the paper business for 25 years, so that his comments on the history of box-board production in America are made from a complete knowledge of his subject. Tts production to-day, he says, exceeds that of newsprint and book-paper combined, while in 1898 only +600 tons were produced in the entire United States. Among the first to take it up for shipping purposes were shoe manufacturers, because pilferage of shoes was very common and the use of fibre made it impossible for the shoes to be stolen without destroying the box. The sample of boxes which were to be used for shipping matches, was submitted to the American Railway Bureau on explosives and combustibles, which recommended it as absolutely fire-proof, because it was air-tight. "In the history of fibre-boxes," said Mr. Mandel, "there has been no cargo of matches which has been burnt up." Another thing in favour of fibre is that such a box 15 per cent. smaller in outside dimension than the same box in wood, a point of great value in shipping.
An interesting point in the use of paper boxes in China is suggested by Mr. Mandel in regard to salvage. He says that the Chinese use cardboard for the soles of shoes and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.