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Chapter 4
The Last Days of Legal Cannabis
As you now know, the industrial revolution of the 19th Century was a setback for hemp in world commerce, due to the lack of mechanized harvesting and breaking technology needed for mass production. But this natural resource was far too valuable to be relegated to the back burner of history for very long.
By 1916, USDA Bulletin 404 predicted that a decorticating and harvesting machine would be developed, and hemp would again be America's largest agricultural industry. In 1938, magazines such as Popular Mechanics, and Mechanical Engineering introduced a new generation of investors to fully operational hemp decorticating devices; bringing us to this next bit of history. Because of this machine, both indicated that hemp would soon be America's number-one crop!
Breakthrough in Papermaking
If hemp were legally cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the United States and world today!
(Popular Mechanics February 1938; Mechanical Engineering, February, 1938; U.S. Department of Agriculture Reports 1903, 1910, 1913.)
In fact, when the preceding two articles were prepared early in 1937, hemp was still legal to grow. And those who predicted billions of dollars in new cannabis businesses did not consider income from medicines, energy (fuel) and food, which would now add another trillion dollars or more annually to our coming "natural" economy (compared to our synthetic, environmentally troubled economy). Relaxational smoking would add only a relatively minor amount to this figure.
The most important reason that the 1938 magazine articles projected billions in new income was hemp for "pulp paper" (as opposed to fiber or rag paper). Other reasons were for its fiber, seed and many other pulp uses.
This remarkable new hemp pulp technology for papermaking was invented in 1916 by our own U.S. Department of Agriculture Chief of Scientists, botanist Lyster Dewey and chemist Jason Merrill.
This technology, coupled with the breakthrough of G.W.Schlichten's decorticating machine, patented in 1917, made hemp a viable paper source at less than half the cost of tree-pulp paper. The new harvesting machinery, along with Schlichten's machine, brought the processing of hemp down from 200 to 300 man-hours per acre to just a couple of hours.* Twenty years later, advancing technology and the building of new access roads made hemp even more valuable. Unfortunately, by then, opposition forces had gathered steam and acted quickly to suppress hemp cultivation.
*See Appendix I.
A Plan to Save Our Forests
Some cannabis plant strains regularly reach tree-like heights of 20 feet or more in one growing season.
The new paper making process used hemp "hurds" - 77%of the hemp stalk's weight - which was then a wasted by-product of the fiber stripping process.
In 1916, USDA Bulletin No. 404 reported that one acre of cannabis hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/7 to 1/4 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. All this lignin must be broken down to make pulp. Hemp pulp is only 4-10% lignin, while trees are 18-30% lignin. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp papermaking process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp papermaking process requires), but instead substitutes safer hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process.
Thus, hemp provides four times as much pulp with at lest four to seven times less pollution.
As we have seen, this hemp pulp paper potential depended on the invention and the engineering of new machines for stripping the hemp by modern technology. This would also lower demand for lumber and reduce the cost of housing while at the same time helping re-oxygenate the planet.1
As an example: If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were in use legally today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer, printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
Pulp paper made from 60-100% hemp hurds is stronger and more flexible than paper made from wood pulp. Making paper from wood pulp damages the environment. Hemp papermaking does not.
(Dewey & Merrill, Bulletin #404, USDA, 1916; New Scientist, 1980; Kimberly Clark production from its giant French hemp-fiber paper subsidiary De Mauduit, 1937 through 1984.)
Conservation & Source Reduction
Reduction of the source of pollution, usually from manufacturing with petrochemicals or their derivatives, is a cost-cutting waste control method often called for by environmentalists.
Whether the source of pollution is CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) from refrigeration, spray cans, computers, tritium and plutonium produced for military uses, or the sulfuric acids used by papermakers, the goal is reducing the source of pollution.
In the supermarket, when you are asked to choose paper or plastic for your bags, you are faced with an environmental dilemma; paper from trees that were cut, or plastic bags made from fossil fuel and chemicals. We should be able to choose a biodegradable, durable paper from an annually renewable source - the cannabis hemp plant.
The environmental advantages of harvesting hemp annually - leaving the trees in the ground! - for papermaking, and for replacing fossil fuels as an energy source, have become crucial for the source reduction of pollution.
A Conspiracy to Wipe Out the Natural Competition
In the mid-1930s, when the new mechanical hemp fiber stripping machines and machines to conserve hemp's high-cellulose pulp finally became state-of-the-art, available and affordable, the enormous timber acreage and businesses of the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division, Kimberly Clark (USA), St. Regis - and virtually all other timber, paper and large newspaper holding companies - stood to lose billions of dollars and perhaps go bankrupt.
Coincidentally, in 1937, DuPont had just patented processes for making plastics from oil and coal, as well as a new sulfate/sulfite process for making paper from wood pulp. According to DuPont's own corporate records and historians,* these processes accounted for over 80% of all the company's railroad carloadings over the next 60 years into the 1990s.
*Author's research and communications with DuPont, 1985-1996.
If hemp had not been made illegal, 80% of DuPont's business would never have materialized and the great majority of the pollution which has poisoned our Northwestern and Southeastern rivers would not have occurred.
In an open marketplace, hemp would have saved the majority of America's vital family farms and would probably have boosted their numbers, despite the Great Depression of the 1930s.
But competing against environmentally-sane hemp paper and natural plastic technology would have jeopardized the lucrative financial schemes of Hearst, DuPont and DuPont's chief financial backer, Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh.
Chapter 4
The Last Days of Legal Cannabis
As you now know, the industrial revolution of the 19th Century was a setback for hemp in world commerce, due to the lack of mechanized harvesting and breaking technology needed for mass production. But this natural resource was far too valuable to be relegated to the back burner of history for very long.
By 1916, USDA Bulletin 404 predicted that a decorticating and harvesting machine would be developed, and hemp would again be America's largest agricultural industry. In 1938, magazines such as Popular Mechanics, and Mechanical Engineering introduced a new generation of investors to fully operational hemp decorticating devices; bringing us to this next bit of history. Because of this machine, both indicated that hemp would soon be America's number-one crop!
Breakthrough in Papermaking
If hemp were legally cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the United States and world today!
(Popular Mechanics February 1938; Mechanical Engineering, February, 1938; U.S. Department of Agriculture Reports 1903, 1910, 1913.)
In fact, when the preceding two articles were prepared early in 1937, hemp was still legal to grow. And those who predicted billions of dollars in new cannabis businesses did not consider income from medicines, energy (fuel) and food, which would now add another trillion dollars or more annually to our coming "natural" economy (compared to our synthetic, environmentally troubled economy). Relaxational smoking would add only a relatively minor amount to this figure.
The most important reason that the 1938 magazine articles projected billions in new income was hemp for "pulp paper" (as opposed to fiber or rag paper). Other reasons were for its fiber, seed and many other pulp uses.
This remarkable new hemp pulp technology for papermaking was invented in 1916 by our own U.S. Department of Agriculture Chief of Scientists, botanist Lyster Dewey and chemist Jason Merrill.
This technology, coupled with the breakthrough of G.W.Schlichten's decorticating machine, patented in 1917, made hemp a viable paper source at less than half the cost of tree-pulp paper. The new harvesting machinery, along with Schlichten's machine, brought the processing of hemp down from 200 to 300 man-hours per acre to just a couple of hours.* Twenty years later, advancing technology and the building of new access roads made hemp even more valuable. Unfortunately, by then, opposition forces had gathered steam and acted quickly to suppress hemp cultivation.
*See Appendix I.
A Plan to Save Our Forests
Some cannabis plant strains regularly reach tree-like heights of 20 feet or more in one growing season.
The new paper making process used hemp "hurds" - 77%of the hemp stalk's weight - which was then a wasted by-product of the fiber stripping process.
In 1916, USDA Bulletin No. 404 reported that one acre of cannabis hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/7 to 1/4 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or even none at all using soda ash. All this lignin must be broken down to make pulp. Hemp pulp is only 4-10% lignin, while trees are 18-30% lignin. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp papermaking process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp papermaking process requires), but instead substitutes safer hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process.
Thus, hemp provides four times as much pulp with at lest four to seven times less pollution.
As we have seen, this hemp pulp paper potential depended on the invention and the engineering of new machines for stripping the hemp by modern technology. This would also lower demand for lumber and reduce the cost of housing while at the same time helping re-oxygenate the planet.1
As an example: If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were in use legally today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer, printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
Pulp paper made from 60-100% hemp hurds is stronger and more flexible than paper made from wood pulp. Making paper from wood pulp damages the environment. Hemp papermaking does not.
(Dewey & Merrill, Bulletin #404, USDA, 1916; New Scientist, 1980; Kimberly Clark production from its giant French hemp-fiber paper subsidiary De Mauduit, 1937 through 1984.)
Conservation & Source Reduction
Reduction of the source of pollution, usually from manufacturing with petrochemicals or their derivatives, is a cost-cutting waste control method often called for by environmentalists.
Whether the source of pollution is CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) from refrigeration, spray cans, computers, tritium and plutonium produced for military uses, or the sulfuric acids used by papermakers, the goal is reducing the source of pollution.
In the supermarket, when you are asked to choose paper or plastic for your bags, you are faced with an environmental dilemma; paper from trees that were cut, or plastic bags made from fossil fuel and chemicals. We should be able to choose a biodegradable, durable paper from an annually renewable source - the cannabis hemp plant.
The environmental advantages of harvesting hemp annually - leaving the trees in the ground! - for papermaking, and for replacing fossil fuels as an energy source, have become crucial for the source reduction of pollution.
A Conspiracy to Wipe Out the Natural Competition
In the mid-1930s, when the new mechanical hemp fiber stripping machines and machines to conserve hemp's high-cellulose pulp finally became state-of-the-art, available and affordable, the enormous timber acreage and businesses of the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division, Kimberly Clark (USA), St. Regis - and virtually all other timber, paper and large newspaper holding companies - stood to lose billions of dollars and perhaps go bankrupt.
Coincidentally, in 1937, DuPont had just patented processes for making plastics from oil and coal, as well as a new sulfate/sulfite process for making paper from wood pulp. According to DuPont's own corporate records and historians,* these processes accounted for over 80% of all the company's railroad carloadings over the next 60 years into the 1990s.
*Author's research and communications with DuPont, 1985-1996.
If hemp had not been made illegal, 80% of DuPont's business would never have materialized and the great majority of the pollution which has poisoned our Northwestern and Southeastern rivers would not have occurred.
In an open marketplace, hemp would have saved the majority of America's vital family farms and would probably have boosted their numbers, despite the Great Depression of the 1930s.
But competing against environmentally-sane hemp paper and natural plastic technology would have jeopardized the lucrative financial schemes of Hearst, DuPont and DuPont's chief financial backer, Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh.
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