The authorities stimulated the great national paper-chase by every possible artifice. Waste-paper organizers, to the number of thirty-five, were appointed to various parts of the country to foster and to supervise the collection of this refuse. Licences were granted to approved merchants authorizing them to deal in the article. Prices were fixed and graduated according to the quality of the waste, and upon a liberal basis to encourage one and all to conserve and to hand over their accumulations of what they considered to be sheer rubbish. In this way waste-paper was poured back into the British mills for remanufacture in a steady stream of 4,300 tons a week. For a time the volume was maintained, but then it gradually and persistently declined because as the founts became exhausted the quantity of paper put back into circulation suffered a steady decrease. Despite the elaborate precautions observed, and the salvage organizations instituted, a vast quantity of the refuse escaped recovery. Paper is something like the elusive pin: where it goes no one appears to know. During the period when salvage was being pressed home with all vigour the British mills were turning out about 700,000 tons of paper a year. Of this aggregate approximately one-fifth--150,000 tons--went to the army in the field in France in some form or other. A further 150,000 tons could not be expected to be recovered as waste, being either retained or submitted to certain necessary applications such as filing, the lighting of fires, and so on. This left a balance of 400,000 tons which went into circulation, but of which only 200,000 tons were retrieved to be sent back to the mills to be repulped. What became of the outstanding 200,000 tons it was impossible to say: it simply disappeared. Probably much suffered destruction through ignorance, while no doubt much was lost through being soiled to such a degree as to be beyond redemption. But the fact remained that of the 700,000 tons produced at least 50 per cent., or 350,000 tons--including the 150,000 tons sent to France--were completely lost, whereas by the exercise of a little forethought, care and trouble the greater part thereof might have been retrieved. Through negligence or ignorance the nation was losing a round £3,350,000--$16,750,000--a year, because the paper was worth at least one penny--2 cents--a pound in the waste form. From the magnitude of the absolute losses it is obvious that we could never have sustained ourselves for long upon the forthcoming supplies of waste-paper and the diminished foreign imports of pulp to serve as raw materials. Accordingly search was made for other potential raw materials of domestic origin, the governing principle of this mission being to place the country in such a position as to be quite independent of the foreigner in all matters pertaining to paper, not only during the war period, but after the cessation of hostilities.