Until about the outbreak of World War II, nearly all the cigarette paper consumed in the United States was made by factories in France from old linen rags collected in Central Europe. The owner of one of the largest French factories was an American citizen; his customers were America's tobacco companies. Perhaps he saw that the second World War was coming. At any rate, several years before the oulbreak of the war, he decided to bring his business to the United States.
But where would he find a suitable raw material for his paper? He knew he could not count on linen rags, for linen is not so generally used in the United States as in Europe. After trying a number of materials and spending large sums in experiments, the manufacturer hit upon the idea of using straw from the American flax crop. Large acreages are planted to flax in the northern and western states. The crop is harvested, however, not for the fiber to make into linen (except for a few thousand acres in western Oregon), but for the seed, from which is pressed linseed oil, an ingredient in paints. The flax straw was considered worthless and in some areas worse than worthless, for the straw often had to be raked up and burned because it did not decompose readily in the ground.
Our manufacturer found that an ideal raw material for cigarette paper could be produced by blending fibers from flax straw collected in two widely separated regions, southern Minnesota and southern California. The straw was harvested and processed into tow near the fields; then was sent to North Carolina. There a factory made it into paper, enough to wrap nearly every cigarette manufactured in the United States. The enterprise has now been greatly extended. Fine stationery, Bible paper and even paper for United States currency are now produced from the flax straw.
