Color print advertisement for Hercules Bleached Cotton Linters. The advertisement shows an illustration of a cotton plant against a blue background; two of the cotton bolls have been replaced with sheets of paper. The accompanying text promotes the use of cotton linters as a replacement for cotton rags in papermaking. Cotton linters are short fiber residues left on the cottonseed after the longer staple, aka the "lint" fibers, are removed by ginning.

Formed in 1912 as part of an anti-trust settlement with DuPont, the Hercules Powder Company (later Hercules Inc.) initially specialized in the manufacture of explosives and smokeless powders and subsequently diversified its business to encompass a variety of industrial products, including pine and paper chemicals, synthetics, pigments, polymers, and cellulose.