Mills's Mills

To make silk, the silk worm reduces the cellulose in mulberry leaves to a protein liquid which it spins into a cocoon. Result of man's learning to imitate this technique is the 45-year-old rayon industry. A major source for the cellulose is "dissolving pulp," wood pulp processed further than for making newsprint. Last week, the largest "dissolving pulp" company in the world, Rayonier Inc., announced "the highest earnings in the history of the company and its predecessors"--$3,124,703 for the twelve months ended April 30; this was almost a million more than for the previous twelve months.

Rayonier is an outgrowth of Rainier Pulp & Paper Co., founded in 1926 by Edward Morgan Mills. Newsprint-maker Mills made money ($487,000 in 1929, $760,000 in 1930), and launched two more pulp companies in Washington's "Northwest Corner" before he felt Depression in 1931. That year in the general tumble of newsprint pulp he lost $170,000, thereupon borrowed a top-flight Du Pont chemist named Russell M. Pickens and began experimenting. In 1933, Rainier produced 45,000 tons of "dissolving pulp." By 1935, all three Mills mills were in the business; last year they merged as Rayonier Inc. During the fiscal year reported last week, it produced 204,000 tons of dissolving pulp, an increase of 50%, about a fifth of the world output. Rayonier's record earnings do not mean that it has not felt Depression II--opening, of its new $8,000,000 mill at Fernandina, Fla., originally scheduled for August, is being postponed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.