Army & Navy: The Flat Roll

The necessities of war mother many an ingenious idea. At the height of the U-boat campaign, the office of the Quartermaster General had a timely brain wave. It was described last week in a release from the Army Service Forces depot in Atlanta:

“One day Lieut. Colonel Frederick Borth, former professor of the Louisiana State University. . . made the mild observation that in connection with the handling of toilet-paper rolls, the Army was shipping thousands of cubic feet of air space overseas daily. So why not bale toilet paper?*

“Colonel J. W. G. Stephens [then chief of Depot Operations] was stunned. Why hadn’t he thought of it? … Turning to his secretary he barked: ‘Get the president of the Scott Tissue company.’

“He was located in Camden, N.J. In response to Colonel Stephen’s request, he and some of his engineers were at the Colonel’s desk … the next morning.

“It has been estimated. . . that enough shipping space has been conserved by putting this new method into practice to account for the movement of one Liberty class cargo ship sailing continuously for nine months without ever putting into port.”

*Scholarly Lieut. Colonel Borth delivered groceries as a boy, remembered how he used to crush “large firm rolls of toilet paper” flat so he could cram them into pasteboard cartons.