but we feel confident that the incoming century will bring changes and improvements as wonderful as any the past has wrought, and we hope that it may be our good fortune to in some measure be instrumental in promoting whatever tends to a greater development of the industry with which our name has been so long associated. J. W. BUTLER PAPER COMPANY. CHAPTER I ARTICLES EARLY USED FOR PURPOSES NOW SUPPLIED BY PAPER Full of dignity, significance, and truth is the noble conception which finds expression in Tennyson’s verse, that we are the heirs of the ages, the inheritors of all that has gone before us. ♦We are the heirs of the ages♦ Through countless cycles of time men have been struggling and aspiring; now “mounting up with wings, as eagles,” now thrown back to earth by the crushing weight of defeat, but always rising again, undaunted and determined. “The fathers have wrought, and we have entered into the reward of their labors.” We have profited by their striving and aspiration. All the wisdom of the past, garnered by patient toil and effort, all the wealth of experience gained by generations of men through alternating defeat and triumph, belongs to us by right of inheritance. It has been truly said, “We are what the past has made us. The results of the past are ourselves.” ♦Tradition untrustworthy♦ But to what agency do we owe the preservation of our inheritance? What conservator has kept our rich estate from being scattered to the four winds of heaven? For the wealth that is ours to-day we are indebted in large measure to man’s instinctive desire, manifested in all ages, to perpetuate his knowledge and achievements. Before the thought of a permanent record had begun to take shape in men’s minds, oral tradition, passing from father to son, and from generation to generation, sought to keep alive the memory of great achievements and valorous deeds. But tradition proved itself untrustworthy. Reports were often imperfect, misleading, exaggerated. Through dull ears, the spoken words were received into minds beclouded by ignorance, and passed on into the keeping of treacherous memories. As the races advanced in learning and civilization, they realized that something more permanent and accurate was necessary; that without written records of some sort there could be little, if any, progress, since each generation must begin practically where the preceding one had begun, and pass through the same stages of ignorance and inexperience. ♦Hieroglyphic records♦