SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



trine and was laughed at for his pains. Dr. Charles H. 

 Herty deserved a hearing in the South. He had been 

 professor at the University of North Carolina. His im- 

 proved cup for collecting turpentine made many extra 

 dollars for thousands of Southerners. From his research 

 at Savannah in pulping pinewood came the great South- 

 ern paper industry. Yet no one in the South believed 

 him when he warned that with purified cellulose from 

 spruce wood selling at five and one-half cents a pound, 

 the price of cotton cannot be much higher. Cotton and 

 wood, this chemist pointed out, are both essentially 

 cellulose, and cotton planters must meet the competi- 

 tion of wood. His was then a voice crying in the wilder- 

 ness. 



Since Herty made that prophecy, American produc- 

 tion of cotton has been cut in half, and still the surplus 

 bales pile up. Domestic output of wood rayon has mul- 

 tiplied by five, but the demand is still insatiable. Then 

 cotton sold for thirteen cents a pound; today the price 

 is pegged at twenty-two cents. Rayon staple fiber then 

 was priced at sixty cents; now it sells for twenty-four 

 cents. 



Southern politicians and Washington bureaucrats 

 have still not the faintest, glimmering idea of what such 

 chemical values mean. But cotton growers know now, 

 and there are thousands of Southerners who compre- 

 hend exactly what Dr. Eugene Schoch, veteran chem- 

 istry professor at the University of Texas, means, when 



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