The first roll of paper was turned from the huge steel cylinders of the Rockingham Paper Company’s model plant here last week, and this marks another epoch in the economic life of the community. This town now enjoys the distinction of being the manufacturing center of one of the only three cone factories in the entire South, and of one of the only three paper mills in North Carolina.
And it is a revelation, this fine new paper mill. It is an eye-opener, and few of our citizens have any idea that such a plant is in actual operation here. A visit to the plant (and all are welcome) will prove intensely interesting.
And besides being another manufacturing enterprise for the town, and an important feeder for the cone and tube mill, giving employment to a score of men, it provides a cash market for the disposal of old papers and magazines; and housewives scattered over the town and county can turn a good account many a penny from old papers and magazines that have accumulated around one’s home. The mill pays 75 cents per 100 pounds of old paper, etc., delivered at the mill.
A description of this new industry, with its kindred cone and tube mill, and the story of how it came to be located here, makes interesting reading.
History of Cone Mill
To begin with, the moving spirits in the Economy Cone and Tube Co. are W.H. and P.L. McCall, who is 14 years his brother’s junior, has been in the business only a few years. P.L. graduated from Clemson in 1926, and at once went to work in this Hartsville plant. Later he and his brother decided that they could build machinery, improved on the Hartsville outfit, and start up for themselves. So they went to Georgia and began the slow and tedious work of building a plant. For months they worked, their inventive minds collaborating and finally perfecting machinery that is generally conceded to be unexcelled for the service required. But they were handicapped in Geogia by the inability to get paper wherewith to make their cones and, too, Geogia was far removed from the center of their trade. So P.L. set out early in 1922 to find a town in North Carolina (which is the leading yarn manufacturing state) that would come up to their ideal for a site. McCall went to Spencer, Marion, Charlotte, Asheville, and a dozen other towns, but at none did he find his site. Passing through Rockingham on Saturday afternoon, he noticed the pond of water by the depot, and so on impulse he alighted, and on Sunday walked around the town, looking over the lay of the land. He came across a strip of ground just west of Great Falls mill, along side the Rockingham Railroad and at the head of Midway pond. Just here he quickly realized was the ideal site—rail transportation, plenty of water, close to town and in almost the center of the yarn district of the State. He left Rockingham Monday straight for Georgia, and from then on the plans of the two brothers centered around Rockingham. They came here, organized the Economy Cone & Tube Co., and P.L., at once set to work building a two-story structure 70x100 feet. The machinery was shipped from Georgia in May, 1922, and in early summer the plant was in operation, with W.H. McCall president; A.G. Corpening vice president; and P.L. McCall-secretary-treasurer.
The Paper Mill
From the very first the McCall brothers realized their own paper in order to economically run their cone mill. The could not hope to make money with paper shipped from Georgia, and so they set to work interesting local men in their enterprise. The Rockingham Paper Company was organized, capitalized at $75,000 (some stock in both companies is still for sale), and the stockholders elected H.C. Wall as president, W.H. McCall as vice president, and P.L. McCall as secretary-treasurer; and with J.P. Harbough in charge of the books for both companies.
This was in the fall of 1923. Work was at once started on erecting a building adjoining the cone and tube building, and $15,000 was expended in a structure 80x200, with basement and much of it concrete floor. Fifty thousand worth of paper mill machinery and other equipment was ordered; and the McCall brothers personally erected this complicated machinery. And in the erecting, they actually improved upon the machinery and the usual placement thereof.
In the meantime, their cone and tube plant has been steadily in operation—as steadily as was possible with raw paper having to be shipped from Georgia.
Two valued employees of the Cone mill are R.O. Bateman and L.A. King, who came with the McCall brothers from Georgia and who have been in this cone and tube line of work for many years. Bateman is in the cone and tube plant, while King keeps the machinery in order.
Finally last week the last screw was tightened, the last roll adjusted and the mill is ready to grind.
As it is grinding, this converting of old paper, magazines and books into a sheet hundreds of feet long and 16 ½ inches wide (it can be 80 inches wide) that the Post-Dispatch would particularly dwell upon.
First, in the front of the building are two huge round vats, in which is dumped the old paper, etc., all this is kept wet and churned about, thoroughly softening it and tearing it to bids. It is then dumped into huge bins in the basement beneath, and from there forced by pumping back upstairs to large basins where water is thrown upon it and it in turn pulverized still more. Screens then catch all refuse, and the refined pulp is carried to the paper machinery proper. Five mammoth machines constitute a “battery,” with a continuous blanket passing over and beneath the machines. Four large cylinders, with sieves, revolve in vats in which is the pulverized pulp, and the blanket, over 90 inches wide, passes over this revolving cylinder which in the revolving has picked up in the sieves the particle of wet pulp; this sticks to the blanket, and then, still sticking to the blanket, it passes from one machine to another, gaining thickness and strength until finally it gains sufficient strength to leave the blanket and proceed “on its own.” Then it goes to other steel cylinders in which is team and the drying process started, and in a few more feet emerges and automatically winds itself into large rolls, a completed product.
At present the mill is making a grade of paper 16 ½ inches wide, basis 140 pounds, since this is what is required in the adjoining cone and tube plant; but later the company intends manufacturing a wider paper and paper for commercial work, wrapping paper, etc.
Colored paper can be made simply by putting the desired dye in the big mashing vats.
One of the prime essentials for making this paper is water. The company has an abundance of that, and 600 gallons per minute is pumped into the vats and into the various machines. Part of the plant is run by electricity and part by steam, this latter being necessary in “drying out” the wet paper.
The mill will run night and day, stopping late Saturday afternoon and beginning at 6 AM Monday morning. About 10 men are employed on each of the two shifts, with a like number in the cone and tube mill.
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From the front page of the Rockingham Dispatch, June 26, 1924
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