Word: newsprint
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...remembered the empty paint-mattress-mothballs smell of his Freshman room on the first day, the peculiarly strong wet-earth odor of the Yard after a heavy rain, the mustiness of Sever, and the faint atmosphere of crumbling newsprint that he'd stumbled on when he'd made his only pilgrimage to floor D in the Widener stacks...
Paperboard Started It. All this sounded sillier to the paper-saving citizens than it actually was. Fact is, paper leads a double life. First it appears as newsprint or book and magazine paper, writing paper or strong kraft wrapping paper, all of which are made primarily out of virgin wood pulp. Later on, some of it is used a second time to make paperboard, and (except in the South, where some board is made of kraft pulp) 85% of the raw material for that comes from old papers. When the demand for cardboard to package war materials shot up skyhigh...
Then the vicious circle began to close: 1) people began to stop using paper, out of misguided patriotism; 2) the curtailment of civilian-goods manufacturing cut demand for book paper (for direct mail,* instruction booklets, etc.), for wrapping paper, even for newsprint (because advertising fell off). The ever-tightening shortage of ships cut down paper exports to Britain and South America (where the paper shortage is real). So the U.S. shortage-that-never-was became a burdensome surplus...
...Newsprint had its own special scarcity scares. Its chief raw material, Canadian groundwood, requires huge amounts of power, which might be required for power-hungry aluminum mills instead. But Canadian newsprint mills today are running at only 75% of capacity: the power freed by the remaining 25% (not to mention excess capacity in other areas) should be more than enough for the new aluminum capacity scheduled to come in next fall...
...Though newsprint (pegged at $50 a ton) is still plentiful, newspapers, take nothing for granted. Warnings have got round that the pinch will likely come in the fall, when new Canadian aluminum and chemical plants may need the electric power formerly used in newsprint manufacture...