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It is true that paper, and a very large proportion of fabric, were made from hemp until William Randolph Hearst orchestrated a fear campaign about "devil weed" to create a larger market for his timber holdings.

There was quite a lot of resistance to paper made of wood. It was acidic, so turned brown and crumbled in a short time, and was generally of lower quality than hemp paper. The quality problems have been addressed, since, but wood still takes quite a lot more processing to make into useful fiber.