While most of the news in this issue of TIME was gathered, selected, written and edited in the span of a single week, production of the magazine required planning, preparation and procurement of materials for many months beforehand. Each of TIME's seven printing plants around the world must be assured an adequate supply of the paper, ink, metals, chemicals and various other materials which are used and reused in the process of printing TIME 52 times a year. Each plant must keep enough supplies on hand to carry it through a number of issues, and much of the paper now en route will not be used for three months.

Critic Lewis Mumford's observation that we are living in a "paper civilization" is no news to TIME's production people. An average issue of TIME uses 485 tons of paper, made from Canadian spruce, western hemlock and Lake States poplar. But TIME's paper suppliers are all engaged in replenishing as well as using their valuable natural resources. All the companies from which TIME buys paper--Mead Corp., Consolidated Water Power and Paper Co., Crown Zellerbach Corp. and St. Regis Paper Co.--are actively engaged in conservation and reforestation programs, planting millions of seedlings each year by modern methods which range from the use of mechanical seeders to spreading seeds from planes and helicopters.*

In addition to the ship, air, rail and truck routes the map shows for the materials needed for each issue, some paper is hauled by barge. TIME paper is transported down the Willamette River to Portland, transferred to an ocean-going steamer that moves through the Panama Canal, and finally hauled by barge up the Mississippi River to Chicago. TIME Inc. also owns a barge which carries paper from Bucksport. Me. for use in its other publications. This barge travels across inland waterways and up the Great Lakes to Chicago during the summer months, and coastwise to Philadelphia when the lakes are ice-locked during the winter.

TIME is now trying to develop overseas sources of paper for the international editions in the countries where the magazine is printed, but few mills outside the U.S. are equipped to manufacture large quantities of paper with a coated surface. Most printing plants. however, purchase their ink locally, and only a relatively small amount is shipped from the U.S.

In the U.S., TIME's four-color printing (including covers) is done in Chicago, and the printed sheets are then shipped to the other plants in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The editorial matter is transmitted directly from TIME's editorial offices in New York City to the U.S. printing plants by teletypesetting machines. Overseas plants get acetate page proofs or photographic negatives of each page, sped by air.

Before TIME started printing in Philadelphia (in 1940) and in Los Angeles (in 1944), the magazine operated on a four-day spread, completing all editorial operations on Monday night and coming out on the newsstands the following Friday morning. Now TIME goes on sale on the third morning after its editorial closing.

As TIME's original prospectus said: "TIME is interested, not in how much it includes between its covers, but in how much it gets off its pages into the minds of its readers." And TIME is still interested, not in how much ink it puts on paper, but in rendering the same service to a paper civilization.

* Planting and natural growth must replace not only the timber cut down for use, but that destroyed by fire, insects and disease as well. In the South, for instance, fires destroyed 13,695,417 acres of forestland in 1950, an amount approximately equal to that cut for pulp and paper during the year.

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