Forestry on Large Ownerships in the South 



281 



Hundreds of big mills had to quit. 

 Smaller mills that cut smaller trees and 

 required less volume a day took over. 

 They cut the remnants and the second 

 growth that had reached merchantable 

 size since the first operation. In 1944, 

 we still had 18,000 sawmills, which cut 

 12.6 billion board feet, or 38 percent of 

 the country's lumber for that year. 



Most of them are quite small. Eighty- 

 two percent of the mills produce less 

 than 1 million board feet a year, 16 

 percent produce 1 to 5 million, 2 per- 

 cent produce 5 million or more. The 

 sawmill industry brings in l*/2 billion 

 dollars of the South's total income. 



The gum naval stores is one of the 

 oldest industries. At its peak in 19089, 

 it produced nearly 2 million drums of 

 gum rosin; in 194647, about a third 

 that much was produced because other 

 sources of turpentine and rosin had 

 been developed through destructive 

 distillation of longleaf pine stumps and 

 the recovery from pulp-mill wastes. 



The pulp industry is our newest large 

 forest industry. The first permanent 

 pulp mill in the South was built by 

 the Carolina Fibre Co. at Hartsville, 

 S. C., in 1891. Growth of the industry 

 was slow until the early 1930's but has 

 been rapid for the past 15 years. Today, 

 one-half the pulp and one-third of the 

 paper of the United States is produced 

 in the South. Some 50 mills utilize 8 

 million cords of wood annually. The 

 industry is still expanding. 



Thus far, the industry has concen- 

 trated on production of kraft paper. 

 The difficulty of obtaining pulp and 

 the pulpwood for the manufacture of 

 paper for newsprint and other light- 

 colored papers, however, is causing the 

 industry to consider the South's possi- 

 bilities in those fields also. The first 

 newsprint mill in the South, built by 

 the Southland Paper Co. at Lufkin, 

 Tex., started production in 1940. A 

 second mill was started in 1948. 



The pulp and paper industry has 

 stimulated business in the South. Com- 

 munities where pulp mills have been 

 built have prospered. The industry has 

 invested more than a billion dollars and 



manufactures products that add 500 

 million dollars to the income of the 

 region. An estimated 100,000 persons 

 are employed directly in the produc- 

 tion, transportation, and manufacture 

 of wood pulp. 



Many other products are obtained 

 from the forests and form an important 

 part of the raw material for the forest 

 industry poles, piling, cross ties, fence 

 posts, fuel wood, pipe bowls, handles, 

 and furniture among them. Each is im- 

 portant : Fuel wood is the only heating 

 material available to millions of south- 

 erners, and is especially important to 

 many tobacco farmers, who use it to 

 cure tobacco. More oil is being used 

 for heating, but the trend may be 

 halted by limitations in the oil supply 

 and through improvements in wood- 

 burning equipment. Mines must have 

 wood props. Electric companies must 

 have wooden poles. Railroads must 

 have wooden cross ties. Chemistry is 

 transforming wood into clothing, cattle 

 feed, plastics, and many other new 

 products. All point up the fact that the 

 welfare of the cities of the South is 

 closely keyed to the proper manage- 

 ment of the timber resource; more 

 wood products mean more industry, 

 more industry means more pay rolls, 

 more pay rolls mean more business for 

 the cities. 



FOREST LANDS in the South require 

 protection from uncontrolled fire. They 

 should be so managed that succeeding 

 cuts of forest products will maintain 

 and build up the growing stock of trees 

 for the production of continuous crops 

 of forest products. A survey in 1945, 

 made by State and Federal foresters, 

 shows how the forest lands are being 

 protected and managed. On large own- 

 erships (holdings of more than 5,000 

 acres ) , fire protection was rated as ade- 

 quate on 38 percent and inadequate or 

 nonexistent on the rest; cutting prac- 

 tices were considered good on 32 per- 

 cent, fair on 26 percent, and poor on 

 42 percent. On holdings of fewer than 

 5,000 acres, fire protection was rated 

 as adequate on 42 percent and inade- 



