PRINTING INK SHORTAGE

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 111, 11 May 1921, Page 5

PRINTING INK SHORTAGE

CAN QUEENSLAND PROVIDE A ■SUBSTITUTE?

(FROM OUR OWN GOHRESrONDENT.) SYDNEY, 3rd May

The news from America that there is to be a drastic curtailment of. the, manufacture of carbon black, the basic ingredient of printers' irik.Jias been, received in Sydney with the liveliest dismay. Tho printers, and more' particularly the newspaper companies, have been hard hit in recent years. The increase in tho price of news printing paper from £11 to £70 and £80.p-er ton was bad enough, but now it is announced that the pries of printing ink is shortly to be eight times what it is to-day.

Carbon, black is produced in America, by burning the gas from the oil wells. The produot is impalpably fines'and no substitute has been- found to be sufficiently fine in texture to replacei it. The State of Wyoming now has passed a. law that no natural gas shall be burned within ten milefe of a village or industrial plant. The decision has been upheld' by the United. States Supreme Court, and it means that Wyoming, hitherto the third largest producer of carbon black, will practically cefrse the industry. Tho other two great carbon-producing States are Louisiana and West Virginia. Louisiana has started similar adverse '.legislation,

The development is regarded niost seriously, as theSe countries are entirely dependent upon America carbon . black. No substitute has been discovered, although the search has gone on for years both in America and in Europe. Tire only gleJanl of hope here is the discovery in Quonsland, during boring operations for petroleum, of large quantities of gas issuing] from the groundl. The Commonwealth' Bureau of Science- and Industry is now inquiring into the mattier. It will be a tremendous gain for the printing industry here if ' carbon black can be produced from these great gas emissions in Queensland.