SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



paper mill. They are bulky and very dirty, increasing 

 the costs of handling and cleaning. Despite their ap- 

 parent abundance, they cannot be concentrated at one 

 point in sufficient quantity to keep even a little mill 

 running a couple of months, and as it is a seasonal crop, 

 there is no chance whatever of developing an adequate 

 annual supply. 



In one way or another, these handicaps almost always 

 appear in every chemurgic program. If they cannot be 

 overcome, disappointment is inevitable. In the case of 

 tannins, coming scarcities will raise prices. This will 

 hasten a practical solution, for it is profits rather than 

 fears that meet shortages of industrial raw materials. 



It is no coincidence that our great chemurgic prod- 

 ucts, such as wallboard from the spent canes of the 

 sugar mills or the chemical furfural extracted from oat 

 hulls, are made where their raw materials accumulate 

 in quantity as the waste products of another industry. 

 Thus the costs of collection are prepaid. At New Orleans 

 a big new plant is one of the neatest examples of this 

 up-to-date chemical art of turning neighboring by- 

 products into main products. Flintcote makes its roofing 

 shingles entirely out of materials that otherwise would 

 be wasted. In this plant over half a million tons of 

 residues from the near-by petroleum refineries and 

 more than two hundred thousand tons of oyster shells 

 are converted to valuable use. That is not pennies in 

 any industrial balance sheet. 



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