The Magic Forest

Cosmopolis, Wash., which became a ghost town in the mid-'20's when loggers cut the last stand of nearby virgin fir, was coming back to life last week. Roaring through the long-silent streets, construction gangs completed the main building of a $20 million plant in which Weyerhaeuser Timber Co. will next year turn second-growth timber into pulp products.

Cosmopolis is only one of many logged-out forest towns throughout the U.S. where lumber companies are stirring into new life, inspired by the technological changes that have put the long-depressed forest industry up among the nation's fastest-growing industries, along with oil and chemicals. Woodsmen have learned that lumber is among the least of the tree's end products. The industry now squeezes marketable products from as much as 75% of the tree v. 30% in 1935. It has developed more than 4,000 wood derivatives, which are being used in an ever-widening range of products from asphalt shingles to vanilla ice cream.

Fast Grower. Plywood, for example, is the fastest-growing building material in the U.S. Because of the demand from contractors and do-it-yourself buffs who are nailing up 4.8 billion sq. ft. of plywood a year, plywood sales have increased 20% faster than even those of the booming aluminum industry in the past 15 years. Manufacturers have also pioneered a host of new products, from low-priced particle board, made of chips and shavings, to weatherproof, plastic-coated plywood and porcelain-faced colored panels (choice of nine) for bathrooms or exterior remodeling. The biggest push for wood products, in an era of self-service selling, comes from U.S. industry's heightened awareness of eye-catching packaging, and a wide range of new products, e.g., wet-proof, rodentproof, flameproof paper bags are now widely used instead of drums, fiberboard cartons in place of wooden crates. So great is the demand for paper and fiberboard containers that many big manufacturers, e.g., Crown Zellerbach, have had to ration some products.

In 1956, lumbermen will pry valuable industrial products from more than 2 billion bd. ft. of left-over wood (enough for 200,000 homes) that would have been abandoned ten years ago.

$10 Million in Chips. The forest industries have been forced to branch into new products as per-capita lumber consumption has dropped (down to 256 bd. ft. in 1955 from 504 in 1904) and timberland prices soared (up as much as 1,700% in 18 years). Many companies have also diversified to make full use of their tim ber reserves, e.g., western alder, long bypassed when redwood and Douglas fir forests were logged solely for lumber, is now widely cut for wood pulp.

At the same time, the small, one-product companies that once ruled the woods are yielding to corporate Paul Bunyans. To make the most of every shaving and splinter, lumber companies are branching into paper and pulp production; paper companies are pushing into lumber manufacture. Georgia-Pacific Corp., No. 2 plywood producer (after U.S. Plywood), recently broke ground for a $20 million pulp and paper mill at Toledo, Ore. Georgia-Pacific President Owen Cheatham, who has increased the company's timber reserves and cutting rights 1,000% since 1953, explained: "We aim to parlay the $900,000 worth of wood chips we sell to paper companies each year into a $10 million paper business."

Many companies are merging to assure long-term lumber supplies. Georgia-Pacific last week took an option on a "substantial majority" of stock (at $310 a share) in California's Hammond Lumber Co., thus gained control of 3.5 billion bd. ft. of timber. Biggest merger yet is now being negotiated by International Paper Co., biggest U.S. papermaker, and Kansas City's Long-Bell Lumber Co., No. 2 lumber producer (after Weyerhaeuser).

Custom-Made Trees. The industry's brightest hope for the future, as one lumberman said recently, is in "man's resourcefulness grafted on nature's resources." Sawdust and shavings today are swept thriftily into plastics, glues and hardboards. From the bark come "cork" tile, insecticides and floor wax. Odd-sized chunks of lumber are laminated into beams with the strength (and half the weight) of steel. Stumps and scraps, burned-over and diseased timber are transmuted into hardboard and rayon, edible sugars and drinkable alcohol. Even the waste chemicals that poison the air around paper mills from Maine to Minnesota are now being transformed into marketable products. On the horizon: hybrid trees that will reach marketable age faster--and yield much more lumber.

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