A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1383 



A vigorous and growing pulp industry exists on the west coast. 

 The bulk of the raw material used is western hemlock, which enters 

 into a large production of newsprint, wrapping, and other papers. 

 In this region the utilization of sawmill waste is an outstanding feature, 

 but certain major problems of integration between woods operation, 

 sawmill, and pulpmill remain to be solved. Douglas fir, for example, 

 stands at the top of western lumber production. Its immense cut is 

 attended by immense waste, estimates indicating that, in an average 

 year's logging, 6 million cords of material of pulpwood size or larger 

 is left in the woods unused. This amount, if it could be converted 

 into pulp, would nearly duplicate the present annual pulp output 

 of the country from native sources. If even a third of it could be 

 profitably pulped, American industry would have an immense resource 

 of cheap raw material with which to combat foreign competition, and 

 a commensurate value would be added to our national income. An 

 approach has been made toward solving this problem. One mill in 

 the Northwest is successfully producing bleached soda pulp from 

 Douglas fir for use in book and tablet papers, and several of the 

 sulphate mills in the same region are consuming small amounts of mill 

 waste in the production of kraft papers and kraft boards. The 

 quantity of material thus utilized, however, is insignificant in relation 

 to the available supply and reflects certain difficulties in the pulping of 

 Douglas fir which are the subject of investigation at a number of 

 sources. Some success has recently resulted from modifications of 

 the standard sulphate process by which stronger and better-bleaching 

 pulps have been made, but much remains to be accomplished in this 

 direction. 



Additional research on the production of sulphate, sulphite, and 

 mechanical pulps from western hemlock and from a large number of 

 other western woods which hold special promise for papermaking 

 purposes is needed to place western pulps on a full competitive footing 

 with the imported products in the Nation's markets. Among the 

 western species important in this respect are California white fir, 



Eonderosa pine, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, redwood, and western 

 irch. 



In the South the various species of yellow pine hold the premier 

 position in both lumber and pulp production. Nearly four fifths 

 of the total capacity of southern pulp mills (1 million tons annually) 

 is devoted to producing, from pine, pulps of one main type un- 

 bleached sulphate or kraft. The successful conversion of these 

 difficult resinous species is itself a triumph of research and experiment, 

 but research may have here a more far-reaching result. This is 

 nothing less than to establish in the South the final and perpetual 

 margin of independence for the United States from foreign paper 

 imports. 



The South has more than 100 million acres of cut-over pine land 

 which, given proper forest management, is conservatively estimated 

 as capable of producing from one half to \% cords of wood per acre 

 per year a sufficient volume in the aggregate to match our present 

 pulpwood consumption 5 or 6 times over. The problem is, from this 

 potential pulpwood supply, to develop papers of the types required in 

 our national commerce. 



Starting with the established fact of a large southern pulp produc- 

 tion, the Forest Products Laboratory has evolved a modified kraft 



168342 33 vol. 2 22 



