Today in Tedium: Here’s a topic you probably haven’t thought about much, despite the fact that they’re super common: the Manila folder, or its clamp-down cousin, the Manila envelope. They’re everywhere, and they have traditionally been where we keep our secrets. They stand out because they don’t stand out. Usually a hue of tan or pale orange, these somewhat thick paper objects are the wrapper around which our TPS reports and invoices go. But I think most people have not given these objects much thought, even if they’re hard to avoid in your average office. I’m here to do the deep thinking for the rest of us. Today’s Tedium stops worrying about what’s inside the folders and discusses the folders themselves. — Ernie @ Tedium
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“Before you embarrass yourself in front of your boss, please remember that the correct word is ‘manila.’”
— Kris Spisak, the author of the book Get a Grip On Your Grammar, highlighting a common but silly mistake: Manila folders are not “vanilla folders,” despite the folders often carrying a French vanilla hue. Get the nomenclature right on this one.
This one’s for fans of file folders. (pro365ject/Flickr)
The dossier on Manila envelopes & folders is a story about a material used creatively amid constraints
Trying to figure out whether “Manila” is a color? The answer to that question is, “it wasn’t, until paint companies realized people might want to use it to paint dining rooms.”
See, despite the tan/orange vibes of the color, it’s actually based on a specific plant. The abacá, a plant similar to the banana, is known less for its flowering fruit, which is inedible, and more for its plant fiber, known as Manila hemp. (No, abacá is not like marijuana, other than that its plant fiber is also called hemp.) This hemp, native to the Philippines, is actually named for the country’s capital.
Attempts to move it from the Philippines have historically proved difficult. As an academic article in the journal Economic Botany noted in 1953, “Repeated efforts have been made to move the plant to other parts of the earth for fiber-producing purposes, but until quite recent years none of these efforts was really successful.”
And before it became the material for thick paper, it actually started its life as rope, often used in nautical settings. In many ways, this makes sense. Abacá is grown in a part of the world that has to deal with high winds and heavy rainfalls, in a country surrounded by saltwater. It had to deal with the elements on the regular, and as a result, it shaped the plant to make it relatively resistant to the elements that turn most kinds of paper into a slurry again.
If you saw a piece of rope, would your first thought be, “Hey, this might make a great piece of paper?” (Picdrome Pictures/Flickr)
Rope being turned into paper is not a particularly obvious idea, but in the 1830s, the material unwittingly saw its moment when a sudden shortage of cotton left a Maine paper mill without many options. The shortage, caused by both rampant speculation and an economic shortage—and facilitated, it should be noted, by slavery—meant that John M. and Lyman Hollingsworth were scrounging for alternatives.
The alternative was right in front of them. The Hollingsworths were willing to get creative in their hunt for new paper sources, even grabbing the fabric from old sails to use as a source of paper pulp. But, as a corporate history of Hollingsworth & Whitney from the 1950s notes, they had discarded the best part of the sails:
It had been their custom for some time to cut the Manila bolt ropes from old sails that were used to make paper pulp. These ropes were piled up outside the mill, because they were considered useless. Then one day, with the inspiration born of desperation, it occurred to the brothers that the old rope might be used to make paper. They cut up and worked some of it, and the result of the experiment was a fine Manila paper of great strength and quality.
The patent they filed, so early in the history of the U.S. Patent Office that it has a four-digit number, lays out the process the inventors used to turn rope into paper:
We make use, mostly, of the old junk of what is termed in navigation “grass rope,” cutting and picking it, as is usual with other kinds of paper-stock. We then buck or boil it with water in a large kettle, adding lime in the proportion of one barrel to thirty-five hundredweight of stock. We continue the boiling for about twenty-four hours, or until the cohesion of the fibers is destroyed. We then put the stock thus prepared into the engine, and after washing it from one to four hours, according to circumstances, beat it about four hours. The pulp, thus prepared, we manufacture into paper in any of the usual modes. Instead of lime, we sometimes use potash, soda-ash, or other alkaline substances of like properties.
The Hollingsworths weren’t the only paper entrepreneurs leveraging the shortages to foster a sense of discovery. Around the same time, Canadian Charles Fenerty discovered that wood pulp was also an excellent choice for paper. But unlike Fenerty, they patented their invention.
From there, Manila paper gained a reputation of strength—perhaps carrying down its roots in rope to the resulting yellowish sheets of paper. It was tougher to tear than other kinds of paper, and its differences from other paper sources like cotton and wood pulp made it distinctive.
It wasn’t perhaps your primary source of paper, but when you needed it, it stood out.
“Physicians owe it to the rising generation to caution all against touching or tasting such deleterious and death-dealing material. Printed paper, everybody knows, is rank poison to tender portions of the body.”
— An ad for Gayetty’s Medicated Paper, an early form of toilet paper, which its creator, Joseph Gayetty, was credited with inventing. In the ad, preserved at the Library of Congress, Gayetty spoke out against using newsprint or other forms of printed paper for the deed, and the original product he produced, dating to the 1850s, promoted itself as using a process to create “pure Manila paper,” which was then laced with aloe. Although the Manila envelope is a better-known example of Manila paper in use, we’d be in deep … y’know … if we didn’t mention this.
Five interesting facts about Manila paper, Manila envelopes, and file folders
- The “brad,” or paper fastener, dates to the 1880s. Developed by George W. Mogill, the paper fastener became a key element of Manila envelopes—though often the fastener was built-in to those envelopes, rather than requiring a separate fastener. As the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center notes, Mogill made numerous types of fasteners in his day.
- The MacBook Air was introduced in a Manila envelope. The idea for this 2008 ad, leaning on the inter-office mailer, highlighted how rare thin laptops were at the time. (These days, I bet numerous laptops would fit into Manila envelopes.) It’s probably Apple’s best ad.
- One mail-industry startup combined the Manila envelope with a letter. The firm Du-Plex Onvelope, active in the 1920s, released a 2-in-1 envelope. The reason for doing it this way? Per PRINT, it allowed companies to avoid having to pay for postage twice when sending out catalogs. Smart.
- Many modern “Manila folders” are not Manila. The problem with Manila folders as we know them is that the name has stuck around, but the materials have not—after all, there’s only so much old rope to go around, and it’s likely the limited production area hurts its widespread use. (The period in which the U.S. colonized the Philippines didn’t help matters.) Eventually, thicker cardstock, dyed with the correct hue, won out.
- Yes, file folders inspired browser tabs. But the interface paradigm didn’t take hold at first. A 1994 piece in PC Magazine noted that there were attempts as early as 1982, while early web browsers like InternetWorks were very early to the game. We take them for granted now, but the metaphor still sticks and can’t be missed.
This feels like a job for a file cabinet. (bourgeoisbee/Flickr)
Which came first, the Manila folder or the Manila envelope?
Trying to sort out the history of the Manila envelope and the Manila folder can be confusing, in part because the two concepts are closely associated in the minds of the average person. One comes with the other, the idea goes. But it turns out that, when broken down, the two objects filled distinct lanes before landing in similar places.
Diving into the research, things get hazy, and sources get a little weak. The 1950s-era academic article we referred to earlier claims that the name “Manila” became associated with the paper around the time of the Civil War, which led to the rise of the term’s association with folders and envelopes. As pointed out earlier, the evidence suggests it actually goes back a couple decades earlier. However, I think it’s fair to speculate that the war likely increased the paper variant’s overall use. After all, the postal system was an increasingly vital part of American life.
Is it possible to firm this fact up any further? Well, a quick search through Newspapers.com shows that a specialty paper store in New York City sold Manila envelopes as early as 1848, according to an Evening Post advertisement.
I’m finding limited examples of Manila envelopes being mentioned between then and the Civil War, but after the completion of the war, newspapers start mentioning Manila envelopes more. Usually, it’s related to administrative tasks within the federal government, which implies that the Civil War likely helped accelerate its uptake. An 1872 proposal from the U.S. Postmaster General for the next term of stamps, published in the New York Daily Herald, describes this method for packing stamps to be distributed:
Stamps to be transmitted by sea routes must be securely packed in hermetically sealed tin cases, wrapped in strong Manila paper; all others must be either be packed in strong binders’ board boxes, bound on the edges and corners with muslin, and enveloped in two thicknesses of strong Manila paper or enclosed in strong Manila envelopes, as the quantity to be transmitted may require; all packages to be so enclosed as to enable the agent of the Department to officially seal them.
But what about the file folder? In that case, I think the rise of the format is a bit more clear-cut. It isn’t related to the Civil War at all. Rather, it is a product of the rise of “industrial engineering,” the concept of optimization and efficiency in workplaces. The concept of a “folder” that you put important information into doesn’t emerge until the first decade of the 1900s, under the name “vertical filing booklet” or “vertical folder.”
The person who saved this ad might find my Downloads folder to be a nightmarish sight.
A 1906 ad in the Toronto Star, for a company named The Office Supply Mfg. Co. Limited, appears to introduce consumers to the concept:
This is the Vertical Folder, containing the complete correspondence with one concern. Letters and loose sheet copies of receipts are filed in order of date.
Imagine if you had to explain the concept of a file cabinet to a mass audience. Is this how you’d do it? (Winona Daily News/Newspapers.com)
Meanwhile, a 1904 ad promoting the filing cabinet company Yawman and Erbe, published in Minnesota’s Winona Daily News, actually described the entire concept of Manila folders, and how they work with filing cabinets, in full:
Here’s The Idea: Instead of littering up your desk with letter-files and letter-books—you keep the entire correspondence in a heavy Manila folder—placing copies of your replies with the letters which they answer—all in order. You file the folder vertically (no edge) in a cabinet drawer where it’s kept upright by a compressor.
You obtain this result: Your whole correspondence with one concern, or upon one subject, is always together; you can lay your hand on it instantly.
May we take up this subject with you in detail?
The ad, notably, does not include a tab on the file folder, but later ads for file folders, such as this Chicago Tribune ad dating to 1924, show them there. Where did that come from?
Some early patents, including one from 1900 and another from 1905, suggested that variants on the Manila folder were already being developed in response to the object’s invention.
Looking around, the best source I can find is that James Newton Gunn came up with the idea of tabbing in the 1890s, which he developed for index cards to make them easier to access by letter. Gunn was an early consultant in the industrial engineering field, and with that in mind, it makes sense that he developed one of the earliest workplace efficiency tools.
I think the other connecting thread here is the file cabinet—an object that came to prominence as an organization tool in the first decade of the 20th century. Trying to nail down who invented the device, more innovative than it seems, is somewhat complicated. The 2021 book The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information notes that there are two competing inventor stories:
- It was developed by The Library Bureau, a library-supply company best known for the Dewey Decimal System developed by its founder, Melvil Dewey. (The aforementioned Gunn once worked there.) In the 1890s, an employee figured out that the idea that gave us vertically stacked index cards could likely also translate to regular files.
- The invention was also credited to Edwin G. Seibels, who was denied a patent for the concept, as he had only conceived the idea. However, he soon worked with Globe-Wernicke, a furniture company that built out Seibels’ ideas, patenting them piece by piece to ensure that the general concepts were under patent, not just the final device.
Whoever was first, it’s obvious what happened next: Businesses leapt on file folders, which were so obviously better than prior organization methods, like stacking files horizontally in envelopes, that of course it was going to win out.
It is likely a bit lost now, as we often see file folders in our operating system more often than in real life. But file cabinets gave Manila folders a reason to exist.
So the answer to what came first, the Manila envelope or the Manila folder, is pretty simple: The Manila folder likely didn’t exist until the filing cabinet gave it a reason for being.
Going back to the roots of abacá, it turns out that the plant’s long legacy as a tough cookie may be going full circle back to textiles. In recent years, the material has started to evolve. Once seen as primarily a paper source, its paper applications have been on the decline in recent years, in part because of the relatively limited number of places where the plant can actually grow.
An example of the abacá harvesting process in action. Even today, it’s a relatively manual process. (ILO Asia-Pacific/Flickr)
In a world where wood is everywhere and abacá plants are largely limited to one continent, it is probably obvious what was going to happen: Big stationary innovated around the abacá plant. Manila folders exist all over Amazon. Good luck telling which ones are real, and which ones are fake.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ve figured out a new lane for the abacá plant that doesn’t involve folders: As a new kind of fabric source.
The Council of Fashion Designers of America’s materials database says this about the plant:
While it is currently used mostly in paper products, abacá has a long history in textiles. Abacá fabric has a stiff quality and holds its structure (it is considered a hard fiber and is comparable in texture to sisal and coir). It has a very long fiber length and is one of the strongest fibers—flexible, durable, and highly resistant to saltwater damage. For these reasons, it has been used over time for rope and cording.
Maybe we should all be wearing shirts made out of the same material as Manila paper.
At least one company has seized the opportunity to switch up the Manila envelope’s reason for being: Bananatex, a fabric type developed by the Swiss bag company QWSTION.
The fabric, which is seen as a highly sustainable alternative to things like nylon or polyester, has a lot of potential, but its growth is somewhat kneecapped by its hands-on labor process. As Bananatex co-founder and CEO Hannes Schoenegger told Vogue Business last year:
The extraction of banana fibres was an existing industry in the Philippines, so everything was already set up for manufacturing at scale. The only bit that wasn’t market-ready was the price point. There is a lot of manual labour involved in the extraction of banana fibres and there is no way to automate or circumvent it. One worker can produce one kilogram in an hour or 10 kilograms in 10 hours—the economies of scale don’t apply.
Unless you have a luxury budget set aside for premium sustainable clothing, it may be a while before you see Manila shirts match your Manila envelopes and Manila folders. But the conversation couldn’t have happened in the first place, had a couple dudes at a paper mill in Maine not realized they could make paper out of old rope.
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Find this one an interesting read? Share it with a pal! Back at it in a couple of days, in a piece that probably won’t mention rope. Or folders. Or (hopefully) dossiers.
