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JUNE 2020, Volume 33 No. 10 Florida’s Best News Source for Vintage-ANTIQUE-Collectibles
Antique Shoppe
Antique Shoppe
THE

Left: Nile Queen Crepe toilet tissue, circa 1924.
Center: Moon-light Toilet Tissue; circa 1921.
Right: Doeskin, 2-ply bathroom tissue from 1956.

COLLECTING TOILET PAPER ROLLS

Isn’t Satisfying in Time or Shortage
By Larry LeMasters

LeMasters’ Antique News Service
Okay, let’s start with the question on clean themselves. For them, Water is the even as the Chinese manufactured toilet
everyone’s lips this week, “How can there universal solvent, not paper. paper, other people around the world still
be a shortage of toilet paper?” A “Toilet Still, I was recently surprised to find out used wool, lace, hemp, leaves, grass, sand,
Paper Fun Facts” site on the Internet adds that there is a growing number of toilet moss, snow, cornhusks, corncobs, fruit
to the mystery: “The daily production of paper collectors in America. skins, and hands. Archeologists have even
toilet paper is about 83,048,116 rolls per Historically, the first use of toilet paper uncovered wooden toilet paper (like pieces
day,” yet Kroger, Wal-Mart, and Amazon dates back to China in the 6th century of small lathe) in ancient Japan (Nara
all claim to be out of toilet paper. Where do AD. In 589, Yan Zhitui wrote about period, circa 750 AD).
we all live — The Twilight Zone? toilet paper, “Paper on which there are Joseph Gayetty is credited with
Everyone knows toilet paper is a soft quotations from Five Classics, I dare not inventing modern, commercially available
paper product used to maintain personal use for toilet purposes,” so by this early toilet paper. Gayetty’s Medicated Paper,
hygiene. Right? date, toilet paper was known, but read, first introduced in the United States in
Wrong! According to the same website, not used. 1857, was still sold as late as the 1920s.
“Nearly 4 billion people, world wide, do During the Yuan Dynasty (early 14th The “Medicated” term in the name referred
not use toilet paper. That is nearly 70% of century), it was recorded there was an to the fact that all of the sheets were
the world’s population that, for lack of trees annual manufacturing of toilet paper treated with crushed aloe vera leaves.
or lack of money, do not use toilet paper to amounting to ten million packages. But Continued on Page 3_

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