♦Paper-makers exempt from military service♦ With the outbreak of hostilities came a keener realization of the importance of the paper interest, and the greatest care was exercised in providing for all details of the manufacture. In 1776 Massachusetts provided by law for the appointment of a suitable person in each town to receive rags for the paper-mills; and the inhabitants were admonished to be careful to save even the smallest quantity of rags. In anticipation of the coming conflict, New York, in the same year, by special enactment, exempted from military service the master workman and two attendants at each paper-mill. The Council of Public Safety of Pennsylvania went a step further. The Continental Congress having resolved on the retention of paper-makers, the Council took measures to prevent them from joining the volunteers who were about to march to New Jersey. ♦A sermon effectively delivered♦ These various provisions and enactments furnish a striking object-lesson as to the value of paper, even to the public safety. The wisdom of these precautions soon became evident. Notwithstanding all the care that had been exercised, the supply ran low, and after advertising for paper, and ordering the people to produce all they had, it was found necessary, just before the battle of Monmouth, to send files of soldiers to search for the indispensable article wherever there was a likelihood of finding it. In the garret of a house in which Benjamin Franklin had once lived and had his printing-office were found about twenty-five hundred copies of a sermon by Rev. Gilbert Tenant, upon “Defensive War,” which had been printed by Franklin. These were used for musket cartridges and “wadding,” and in the battle that raged about old Tenant church, where fought representatives from every one of the thirteen colonies, mingling their patriotic blood upon the historic field, the sermon proved one of the most effective ever delivered. The Rev. Mr. Tenant, when he penned his discourse, probably had no idea that it would ever be delivered in so forceful a manner, just outside the doors of his church. The fact that these sermons were stored in the garret of Benjamin Franklin, printer, and held for payment, will perhaps call forth a rueful smile from the modern printer, who has himself had some experience of similar sort, the final outcome of which was not so satisfactory as this use of these old sermons must have proved to the patriot printer Franklin. [Illustration: THE WASHERS AND BEATERS--PAGES 62 AND 64] ♦Great scarcity of paper♦