When man has been set free from his fetters, whether they be the physical ones of iron or the no less binding chains of caste and custom, he is helpless until education and enlightenment restore to him the manhood, independence, and self-reliance which he has been denied. It is the chief glory of this century that mankind has been helped to a higher intellectual plane and the blessings of truth and knowledge have been more widely disseminated than ever before. “The statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.” Higher education has brought to man a quickened sense of the inherent nobility of his nature, and has changed his conceptions of the relations that exist between his own life and that which pulsates about him. To quote again from the great French writer: “This century proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people and consecrates man.” And this broadened enlightenment, this deepened sense of man’s dignity and nobility, have in their turn contributed to the humanitarian side of life, making it easier to redress wrong and establish justice. In all these great movements of the century, paper has been the means of transmitting intellectual force; it has been the messenger and herald of better things than the world had known. Its history has always been closely linked with that of man; it has been the pace-maker of his progress, in the realm of mechanics and of economics as well as in music, literature, and art. They have come up together out of the past; they are associated in noble and uplifting work in the present; together they go forward to such broader fields of usefulness as the future may disclose. Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed. Both “watermark” and “water-mark” occur frequently. Text uses “Pittsburg”, not “Pittsburgh”. Page 27: “Henry VI” was mis-printed as “Henry VII”; corrected here. End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Paper-making, by Frank O. Butler