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The article focuses on the limitation in the development of research in social science, that is set by the quality of the paper that has been used for printing over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Between the 60's and the 80's of the 19th century wood pulp paper replaced rag paper in the publishing trade. The use of wood pulp and of cheaper manufacturing processes effect a revolution in publishing comparable to the revolution brought about when paper replaced parchment in the 14th and 15th centuries. Wood pulp paper made possible an increased publishing of newspapers and magazines in the same decades in which the spread of popular education was creating new multitudes of readers for the increased mass of printed matter. The paper situation threatens to limit in an arbitrary way the development of research in the social sciences. Librarians already hesitate to permit teachers to set loose their research students to devour newspaper files. The purchase policies of the libraries are trimmed to avoid the acquisition of many types of documents which should be saved, but which the librarians will not gather because the paper is too poor.