[1] The shortage was so extreme during the American Revolution, that the Committees of Safety in Massachusetts were required to appoint a rag collector in each jurisdiction.

In the subsequent decades the growth of the paper industry across Massachusetts was described as thus-[8]For a time it seemed that paper mills sprung up like mushrooms, all up and down the streams in Lee, Tyringham, Stockbridge, Housatonic, Great Barrington, and there were times when men, seemingly bemused by the lure of this industry, erected little "one family" mills on their farms and went headlong into the business, knowing little or nothing about it and prospering little or none.In 1857, the firm of Platner and Smith made paper from wood pulp, but their endeavor failed to be commercially viable because of the lengthy process used to reduce the wood to pulp and the high cost.

[9] In 1866, Albrecht Pagenstecher, a German immigrant living in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, together with his brother Rudolf, bought two German-made Keller-Voelter grinders.

[9] However, Pagenstecher initially made his pulp out of aspen or "popple"; however, he soon exhausted his supply of this tree and was forced to substitute with less friable softwoods, with the result that the New York World cancelled its contract for newsprint.

[12] Because of its prominence in industrial papermaking, Holyoke's machinery and labor practices would be the subject of extensive study by officials and industrialists of Japan and China alike, who sought to modernize their production methods.

[13][14][15][16] As local labor costs rose and wood became scarcer in Massachusetts, papermaking declined due in no small part to competition first from mills in well-forested Wisconsin and then from Canada.