OTHER CHEMURGIC PROJECTS 



The only element in the business not upset by the 

 war was the coating granules. These, too, are a waste, 

 the slag from the Birmingham steel mills, ground up 

 coarsely and colored light or dark gray, green, red, blue, 

 or whatever hue architectural fashion dictates. The two 

 hundred thousand tons of oyster shells are finely pul- 

 verized and used as a filler in the base stock. 



Though founded on wastes that nobody wanted, this 

 business has had to face a series of readjustments in 

 costs and materials. It costs money to modify cracked 

 asphalt and with the radical change from being paid 

 for to paying for this material, the Flintcote executives 

 have had to do some figuring to fill big Government con- 

 tracts, sell under ceiling prices to the public, pay higher 

 wages and taxes, and earn dividends for their stock- 

 holders. They attacked these formidable problems in 

 the modern spirit and with scientific weapons. 



The Flintcote manager in New Orleans, William N. 

 Lehmkuhl, is a friendly chap, as alert in business as a 

 cat at a mousehole, but he is a bit of a fanatic, a mild 

 monomaniac on the subject of wastes. It really distresses 

 Bill that the American people get only about fifteen per 

 cent out of all the values in a felled tree. 



"We are using second and third growth timber," he 

 told me, "the stuff that is cut out in clearing pine lands, 

 the trimmings that are thrown away in pulp or lumber 

 operations. Constantly we are trying to use more limb 

 stock. By chemical means we are extracting the rosin 



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