Corn from Cornstalks

Every year U. S. husbandmen produce 150,000,000 tons of cornstalks. A small part they chop up and put in silos for winter feed, a small part they leave standing for forage, the rest they plow under for fertilizer. Fifteen years ago Dr. Orland Russell Sweeney of Iowa State College began to look for cornstalk byproducts. Five years ago Iowa built him a $150.000 testing plant, the U. S. Bureau of Standards began to help with men and money. Dr. Sweeney produced and the state of Iowa patented a cornstalk wallboard, light, strong, cheap. Last week a million-dollar company was formed in Chicago to lease and exercise Iowa's patents.

Prime mover in National Cornstalks Processes, Inc.. was onetime Governor Frank Orren Lowden of Illinois. Last week, he became a stockholder, helped subscribe $500.000. Among other stock-holders : New York's Bernard Mannes Baruch, Chicago's Joseph Edward Otis, In-national Harvester's Herbert F. Perkins.

The new company plans a chain of mills in corn states where farmers can sell their stalks for $3 or more per ton. Already Iowa and Illinois farmers are getting $10 per ton for stalks delivered to Maizewood Products Corp. in Dubuque, which has sold its plant to the new company.

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