Slashpine Newsprint

Chemist Charles Holmes Herty has been talking for several years about making fine white newsprint paper from young slashpine, of which Southern States have 10,000,000 acres. The Chemical Foundation, which he helped establish, gave him $50,000 to carry out his idea. Georgia, where he was born, has given him $40,000, promised $60,000 more. Last week Chemist Herty produced the first significant run of pine paper at his experimental plant in Savannah. The quantity was sufficient for one edition of an average country weekly newspaper.

Dr. Herty had a speaking appointment at Niagara Falls before a section of the American Chemical Society. There he sped to exclaim: "Perhaps the most sensational fact about this new product is its strength and light weight. It has a burst strength of 10 to 12 lb. per sq. in., compared with only 6 to 10 lb. for the standard newsprint. It is a 30-lb. paper, while the standard is 32. This means that newspapers, if able to buy it, would receive 6.66% more sheets per ton and their mailing costs by weight would be 6.66% less.

"A world of reforestation and economic possibilities are suggested by this new paper. In the economic background is the fact that two-thirds of American newsprint now is imported. Spruce pulpwood costs $9 to $10 a ton. Pine in the South sells for $3.50. . . . Most of the sulphur used in papermaking is hauled from Louisiana to Canada, right through the South. Much of the clay for filler for book paper in America is produced by the three Georgia counties, Washington, Bibb and Wilkinson. It is now shipped Ions distances. In Georgia it almost literally clings to the roots of pine that can be made into good white paper."

Other paper makers, notably those of the Institute of Paper Chemistry at Appleton, Wis., waited skeptically for Dr. Herty to show that his paper can be used effectively in a full-size newspaper press running at high speed. That he may be able to do so for competitive production may well set the South dreaming of another pine-scented boom.*

Daily into Weekly

Things have a way of breaking right for David Lawrence. When he was the undergraduate correspondent for Associated Press at Princeton, he scooped the nation with his report of the death of Grover Cleveland. Three weeks ago he was compelled to cease publishing his dry but valuable U. S. Daily (Government news without comment) when his deficit caught up with and passed his subsidy from influential friends (TIME, March 13). Throughout the land, editorials bemoaned his paper's demise. But last week the broad, serious face of the U. S. Daily again looked out from newsstands and up from the desks of business and professional men by whom it is prized. Friends with money had again come to the rescue.

Henceforth, announced Publisher Lawrence, the Daily will issue a "composite issue" once a week. Many a subscriber, he said, tackled copies weekly anyway. By reducing his subscription renewals from $10 a year to $5, by concentrating his advertising into one issue instead of six, Publisher Lawrence believed "we have a better idea than we had before."

*The Herty Turpentine Cup which revolutionized the South's turpentine industry 30 years ago was Chemist Herty's invention. Theretofore, turpentine gatherers had ''boxed" and ruined the pines with a great gouge. Dr. Herty invented the present system of guttering the trees. (''A left-handed nigger with a right-handed axe'' accidentally taught him the best method of guttering.) From the gutters the turpentin runs into Herty cups, "flowerpots without holes."

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