Domestic Cigaret Paper

German-born Harry Hans Straus wears the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor on his lapel, like most successful French businessmen. He got it in 1937 for building the French cigaret-paper industry big enough to take over the business Austria had had before World War I. By the time Harry Straus was dubbed Chevalier, some 26 French paper plants were furnishing 75% of the paper used in U. S.-made cigarets. Seeing another world war ahead. Paperman Straus was then already deep in plans to move a big piece of France's new industry west again--to the U. S.

Last week before the National Farm Chemurgic Conference in Chicago, big, balding Harry Straus rose to report on cigaret paper's newest move, to the broad Davidson River plain in the timber-clad Toxaway mountains 30 miles southwest of Asheville. N. C. There, on the day Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany, his Ecusta Paper Corp. turned out its first bobbin of cigaret paper. There the 17-building plant of Ecusta today runs 24 hours a day, employs 900 workmen, turns out some 50% of U. S.-made cigaret paper.

Like Ecusta, other U. S. tissue manufacturers, such as Peter J. Schweitzer Inc. and Smith Paper, Inc., hope to break France's cigaret-paper monopoly. Ecusta jumped from scratch to No. 1 position in the U. S. because Mr. Straus was able to pour around $4,000,000 into it. Part of the capital came from his own well-lined purse, part from his two French companies (Societe Nouvelle des Papeteries de Champagne and Papeteries R. Bollore).

The rest was from substantial credits from the Irving Trust Co. and whacking advances by the U. S. cigaret manufacturers, who put up $1,000,000 each. To them the advances were worthwhile as a hedge against possible wartime disruption of the French supply. But what interested the Chicago conference most last week was that Ecusta had made a short cut in technique, and (as Schweitzer and other tissuemen had done) made a new cash crop for farmers.

Until a few years ago linen rags were the only base for cigaret tissues. Then chemists made what seemed to many a layman an obvious discovery--that the rag stage could be bypassed and tissue could be made direct from flax. To U. S. flax farmers, principally in Minnesota, California and North Dakota, this means that Ecusta alone will take the crop from 75,000 to 100,000 acres. If other U. S. cigaret paper makers complete the switch from rag base to flax, farmers of another 75,000 to 100,000 acres will have found a market for their crop.

Last week in the close-mouthed tobacco business, best estimate was that since World War II began, domestic production of tissue had increased from 25% to 40% of the total bought by U. S. cigaret makers. With both Ecusta and Schweitzer about to double their plant capacity, by war's end the U. S. may have another complete new industry, reaching from farm to factory, with a manufacturers' gross of some $10,000,000 a year.

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