 The earlier ones, those who came first into these hills, could not have known of the fortune that was spilled about them, spilled lavishly over each hill and across the level floors of the valley. For the first ones, a growing tree was in a sense another enemy lurking in the darkness of his primeval world. It was a thing that had to be wrestled to the ground before the land was cleared. It stood defiantly in the way of his roads. It matched its ancient strength against his arms, its numbers mocked his solitude. There was exultation on the sound of a tree crashing to the earth. Each log was a weapon newly forged. Each flickering fire that pushed back the night was a symbol of victory. All that has changed now. The forests that brooded over these hills have given up their secrets. Fields planted in precise geometry drink in the sun where once the sun could never come. Giant highways slashed through valleys that earlier knew only the gentle communication of the wind. What was once an enemy has become a friend. What once withheld now lavishly bestows. But like the magician's gift in an ancient tale, there is a condition to this heritage over the land. Use this gift wisely, we are told, or it will vanish. Surrender to ignorance or greed and all the magic in the world will be powerless to bring back a single twig or summon up the shadow of a shack. The National Broadcasting Company, in collaboration with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, presents Heritage Over the Land, the story of the growth of the timber industry in the south. It is the third in a series of programs designed to interpret the renaissance lately born in the south. To that end, we made a pilgrimage across a dozen states. Talked to the men and women who are actors in this latter-day revolution, watched and listened, made our notes for reference and found that we had been witnesses to a revolution. It is, we believe, one of the most significant developments of our generation, for surely no area in the world has made such rapid changes gone so far or so fast as the American South in the years since World War II. The National Broadcasting Company assigned Henry Cassidy to guide us on this odyssey and to report on what he saw and heard and felt. Mr. Cassidy. In a sense, the development of the timber industry was symbolic of the changes we were later to witness throughout the south. For me, the story began one warm afternoon on the banks of a busy little stream in South Carolina. Mr. B. U. Ratchford, professor of economics at Duke University, was talking about the south and the strange changes that have evolved here in the past few years. He was seeking, I think, an origin, a starting out place that might give us a basis for understanding the changes we would see. A hint perhaps came from the hills above us. We were surrounded by a heavy wood and the stream at our feet was black with logs floating down to the mill. With the magic of our own compounding, I caught his words. The south's resources has been of tremendous importance. If I may cite two particular cases. First, our water supply. Water is becoming more and more important in modern industry. In petroleum refining, in paper and pulp, in synthetic fiber, in almost any industry you can mention, the use of water has been increasing by leaps and bounds. And in many parts of the United States, the water supply is definitely limited. The south still has an abundant supply of water. And this has been a drawing card for many industries. Another, of course, is our large and abundant supplies of timber. In the paper and pulp industry, in the synthetic fiber industries, this is their basic raw material. And they need to be near their sources of supply. The south as a region can provide more timber per year than all the rest of the United States put together. It was natural that sooner or later we would come to the doors of the huge wood and paper plant at Georgetown, South Carolina, the Southern Craft Division of the International Paper Company. This place, so alive with the sounds and smells of industry, had but lately sprung into being as if by some fresh act of creation. Here were hundreds of men, giant machinery whose wheels were never stopped and whose voice was never stilled. As though goaded by some gargantuan appetite, giant cranes spooked up huge servings of logs and dropped them into a yawning mouth that stood ever open. Pine logs, still fragrant from the forests above the mill, began the process that would end in boxes and crates and long rolls of paper. What was curious is that only a few years ago no one bothered to reap this harvest. The pines are not suitable for saw wood, as they call it, and the scrubby little trees were burned for firewood or left to time. Now their processing is one of the most important and profitable industries in the South. Chemistry, like the alchemist's dream, has touched them with gold. Mix the potion well and the result can be measured in terms of yearly income, a raised standard of living, a better chance for a new generation. Listen to Mr. C. E. Lachlan, chemist of the Georgetown Mill, as he gives us the secret. The word Kraft is another word for the sulfate process. The words in themselves are synonymous. Kraft is the Swedish or German word meaning strength or strong. This process consists of utilizing sodium sulfate to make a cooking liquor to what we call delignify the wood into pulp. This sodium sulfate in itself is an inactive chemical, but it is fed to furnaces under reducing flame which reduces this sodium sulfate to active sodium sulfide and at the same time produces a certain amount of caustic soda. The cooking liquor that we feed into the digestive to cook the pulp is composed of approximately 75% caustic soda and 25% sodium sulfide. During the cook, this sodium sulfide is combined back to sodium sulfate again. The caustic soda goes to sodium carbonate and that liquor is then recycled back through the furnaces again and used over and over to continue the cycle. Before the mill came to town, this was a sleepy time-haunted place, but now this story. Mr. Howard Hinman, manager of the Georgetown Mill Southern Craft Division of the International Paper Company. The Georgetown Mill employs 1,800 hourly employees and 200 on salary. Our production is 1,700 tons a day. We operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Howard, maybe you could translate that production for us. What does that paper amount to? That tonnage, if it was laid on a highway in 24 hours, it would run from Boston to Atlanta, Georgia. Then Howard, tell me this, you as manager of this mill, how do you see the future? Henry, as I understand it, before the International Paper Company came to Georgetown, people had their front door knobs polished, but the back door steps were rotting down. Now everybody has repaired their back door steps, houses are painted, and the mill runs continuous 24 hours a day, and it's here to stay in Georgetown. There's a saying in lumber areas that they can use every part of a tree but the shadow. I'm willing to believe that. Even the stumps, traditionally a symbol of the stubbornness of the woodlands have yielded up their reward. After the lumbermen have passed through, others come to remove the stumps. It was one hot afternoon down in Pensacola, Florida, when Mr. J. H. McCormick, president of Newport Industries, told me about this new industry. Years ago, this whole area was thickly covered with pine forests. Lumbering operations took off the pine trees, leaving the area covered with big pine stumps. We come along behind the lumbering operations and take out these stumps and process them in our plants into turpentine, rosin, pine oil, and many other chemicals. After we have taken the stumps out of the lands, the portion of the land is replanted in pine trees to produce new raw material for the tremendously important paper industry. Mr. McCormick, I noticed that you call your product here naval stores. Does that mean the United States Navy or what does that mean? In the early colonial days, pine trees were processed for the production of pitch and rosin. This pitch and rosin was used for the caulking of wooden ships, and for that reason the resinous material from the pine trees was called naval stores. The products which we produce which are classified as naval stores are rosin, turpentine, and pine oil. All of the derivatives and other products we produce are classified as resin and terpene chemicals. And the mark of these things is clear. What effect we asked, does this have on business? It means that the timberland owners, labor, and the railroads are paid approximately 18 million dollars annually. Then Mr. McCaffrey, what would you say that means to the average farmer in this three state area? Out of every five dollars, approximately one dollar comes from forest products. We're at the beginning of the pulp paper industry. The sound you hear is that of a power saw. We're in a forest outside Georgetown, South Carolina, and here the power saw is cutting down the pine tree that moves on to pulp and eventually to paper. This power saw looks something like an outboard motor without a boat. It's portable, one man operating it and instead of the boat in front of it is the chain saw that cuts through the wood like a knife through butter. After cutting down the tree, the same saw is used with the same one man operator to cut the logs up into proper lengths to be shipped out of this forest to the plant. But I remembered the words from an ancient tale. Use this gift wisely or it will vanish. Surrender to ignorance, agreed, and all the magic in the world will be powerless to bring back a single twig or summon up the shadow of a shadow. What is being done to ensure that this gift will not vanish? What is the guarantee that this wealth will not wither in the space of a man's life? Mr. F. C. Gregg, Division Forester of the International Paper Company, gave me this answer. The South is just now really beginning to practice intensive forestry. The trend has been much more marked in the last few years about 15 to 18 years ago. The business of growing timber on a scientific basis in the South really got underway and the progress in the last 15 years has been phenomenal. How would you account for the fact that it's just in the last 15 years that this has come about? Well, of course, there has to be an economic basis for any operation. And the growing of timber in the South really got its impetus from the development of a market for timber that could be grown with the development of the pop and paper industry. In other words, now it's possible to use wood profitably that could not be used before? That's right. Because the pop and paper industry can use a much smaller tree and a much poorer quality tree than is merchantable for any other product in quantity. And that means that the southern pine is now usable. But what is it in the pulp industry that makes that possible in the last 15 years where it was not possible before? Well, the pulp industry had a very few units in the South prior to 15 years ago. The rapid development of the pop and paper industry has taken place here in the last 15 year period. Mr. Gregg, I was interested to note that you put first among the responsibilities of a forest, a prevention of fire. Is that your greatest danger? Fire is our greatest handicap in growing crops of timber in the South today. Could you give us some indication of the prevalence of fire? That is the seriousness of it. Well, to be specific, in the state of South Carolina, we have about 8,000 fires a year, woods fires, which burn about a quarter of a million acres of land. This is a fire, a forest fire. Who started it or why doesn't matter now? Already it's three days old. Already it has swept down from a hill across the valley and is creeping up the other side. Standing nearby, the smoke stabs at our eyes. The smell is bitter, like the smell of death. The flame moves slowly, it seems, but with a terrible, inevitable pace, as though it knows its strength and has no need for speed. Three days and two nights it is burned, choking the valley with smoke and at night sending up a weird challenge to the star-filled skies. While things driven from their homes flee before it like frightened refugees from something they do not comprehend. Even the men who fight it are driven back. In the end, of course, man will win if victory can be measured by the hour, the precise minute when the last ember is stamped out. A rain will come or a stream will throw up a barrier to the licking flame, but by that time, of course, the battle is actually lost. The real victory can never be measured. This comes in tiny things. A hunter who crushes out his cigarette, a picnic group who pile dirt over their campfire. This is the real victory. Already the never-ending unspectacular fight for fire prevention has begun. Each person who goes into the woods must be told that, like a sentinel on guard, he must never relax. Now we have mentioned fire protection. How some of the means that we can get better fire protection. Now we're in a school room in Georgetown, South Carolina. Here the training begins. Would someone like to try that question? Larry? We've got to educate the public and make them know that the beauty of forest are theirs to be enjoyed by everyone. But what's more important that a large portion of the people in South Carolina get their income partially or all of their income from the forest. And especially to be warned of the occasional hunters and campers who go in the woods and aren't careful with their cigarettes and matches and forest fires. They must be made to understand that while they're in the woods, these things should be handled with precaution. Bill? Fire protection can also be bettered by having stricter laws and enforcement. Penalties for deliberately burning other people's lands should be heavier and the enforcement of these penalties should be stricter. Men clever in propaganda were imported to teach the need for care in handling fire in the woods. But perhaps because they were imported their words had only mild success. The best results come from one who was born to these hills and lived with them. He told his stories simply and the very simplicity gave it strength. He hated fires because he loved the woods and half the nation listened. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jelly Elliot. We're going to feature our fiddle player here on this next tune. It's the one that he won the contest with and it's really a popular tune among all hold down fiddle players. I want all you old timers just to gather yourself up there and listen the way Jack does it. The old hen cackled and the rooster lady. Well getting back to that pine cone, I can't help but think about that pine bird. Some people call it pine bird, pine cones, all the same thing. But the little seeds blow out there and they take roots there and I mean they're hard to see. If you don't know what you're looking for you never in the world find one, especially after it hits in the grass. Boy it's just like hunting a needle in a haystack. But it does its part, it falls down and gets down in amongst this grass and takes roots and comes on up and makes a little small pine tree. And until this little tree is, it's got to have a lot of age on it before you can hardly find it unless you really know what you're looking for. You have to get down in there and scratch around in the grass to find it. Now this guy come along a few days after I was at this old house place and for some reason I don't know he got careless. But this fire got into this old field and friends you know how an old field is. It's grown up in grass and usually grass is knee deep and sometimes deeper. And then in certain times of year this grass gets dead and dry. And the smallest of spark will set it on fire and you do have a bad fire there because these little pine trees, thousands of them down under there, they haven't got a chance. They can't run and get out of the way. You just can't realize how much stuff it destroys just from one guy getting careless with a match. And well, we just got to do something about it. I hope you friends out there realize these things and you can help me keep these little trees. I'll help you and you help me. It's the same old case as you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. He speaks in jest but his words are true. Many listened and pondered, others took up the fight. We set up a rotation or a growth cycle of approximately 40 years in which to grow a crop of timber. We feel that like corn which is an annual crop, we can grow a crop of trees from the seedlings to maturity or size large enough to be cut for salt timber, poles, pulpwood and other products within 40 years and then start over with a new crop and we try to keep a new crop coming in by proper methods of cutting such as leaving seed trees when we make the rotation cut at the end of 40 years. Yes, this is a big industry. Measure it in money or tons of paper or a number of men employed and it always adds up to the same thing, a new source of riches for the south. Go back a generation, 20 years, even a decade and these pine covered hills would have been looked on as wasteland. Ignored by the early planters, these hills now yield up a wealth that cotton could never bring. There was a pleasant day I spent with Mr. G.T. Skinner, tree farmer on the banks of the Black River. Mr. Skinner owns some 2,000 acres of woodland. One speaks reluctantly of his holdings of course but with a brashness born of my newspaper days. I asked him an embarrassing question. I asked him about his land and the value thereof. I have about 20 acres cleared and past us and about 2 acres of that 20 and a fish pond and we have lots of bazelias and flowers and everything that you can think of in that 20 acres there. And all the rest of your land is in trees? All the rest of the land is tumbled down. I wonder, Mr. Skinner, and here I don't want to embarrass you in any way, but I wonder if you could give us in some terms of your own indication and idea of the value of tree farming. Well, it's a long story. I started out as a young man holding his property, kept it for years. And we have come to the conclusion that now we can live. From that time we'll take out six, seven, maybe $8,000 a year. But like most revolutions, the impact has been greatest on those who do not own the land but earn their livelihood by selling their labor. This town here, Georgetown, South Carolina, what was it like before the mill moved in a few miles down the stream? What are the changes that have come? I brought this question to one who had been here before the mill, one who remembered the past even as he planned for the future. Mr. Donald Freeman Banker, what changes has the mill brought to this town? I think it has. The impact has been tremendous. I see it by the people on the street, the numbers of people on the street, the clothing that they're wearing, the automobiles that they're driving, the houses in which they're living, and the life that they're living, the society of the community. Now Mr. Freeman, we've established that there has been an improvement in the standard of living in the South generally and specifically here in Georgetown, South Carolina. I wonder if you could give us some figure which would tell us what that improvement in the standard of living has been and perhaps in terms of bank deposits? Well, in terms of bank deposits, 15 years ago in Georgetown they had no bank. So we start from nothing? That's correct. They had a cash depository which was a state license to take deposits and honor checks drawn against these deposits and to make certain small loans on government securities. But there was no bank in the city of Georgetown. And what is the bank doing now? The bank today is enjoying a tremendous business. And I might say that I think in the last 12 years the deposits in that bank have more than doubled. And there are loans about three or four times what they were 12 years ago. 18 years ago it was almost resembled a ghost town. I spent one Sunday afternoon here and went in the drugstore. And I think that the party with me and I were the only ones in that drugstore. The parking spaces everywhere. Georgetown had had the largest lumber mill in the world, the old Atlantic coast lumber. And that was in the processes of liquidation. I wonder how you would compare today the life of Georgetown to that life 18 years ago? Well, the comparison would be terrific. We would hardly realize it were in the same community. The buildings on Front Street, many of the faces have been improved. And when you get off of Front Street you can see it in new houses, new construction. I would say that in the past 15 years some 600 or 800 new houses have been constructed within two miles of our town clock. Call the role of the states and the story is the same. Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Florida. Talk to the men who cut the timber in the lowlands of Mississippi and Arkansas. The accent is a little different but the words are the same. Timber has become big business. Naval stores, pulp, paper for boxes, giant rolls that would stretch across a continent and back. One final voice and echo from the past. It was in the winter of 1889. The war between the states had ended just 24 years before. The bitter days of the reconstruction were at their worst. Henry W. Grady, managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution, was speaking of a funeral he had attended a few days before in Pickens County, Georgia. They cut through the solid marble to make his grave. And yet a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the heart of a pine forest. And yet the pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati. They buried him within touch of an iron mine. And yet the nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were imported from Pittsburgh. They buried him by the side of the best sheep grazing country on the earth. And yet the wool in the coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves were brought from the north. They buried him in a New York coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of bridges from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati. The south didn't furnish a thing on earth for that funeral for the corpse and the hole in the ground. The corpse and the grave. It was a bitter symbol, a cry of anguish. Many years would have passed before that cry could be answered. It's too bad the gracious old editor can't return to this land that he loved so well and mark the change. Well, I can't see anything in the world, but bright future. Everybody owns their own property, practically. And we have so many people who have homes that never dreamed of having home before. And the outlook on business is good. I think that just a matter of time before we'll have another industry when we get one on the hook right now. In the old days we were pretty dependent on north manufactured products. But in the last ten years or so, the change has been tremendous. New plants, new factories. This lumber mill right here is just one of the many. We used to dream about the past down here and wonder if its glories would ever return. You don't hear so much of that now. The things of the past, well we always remember of course and cherish. But now for the first time we feel that the future too belongs to us. You have been listening to Heritage over the Land. The third in a series of programs on the new developments in the south. This series is written and directed by William Allen Bales, produced by Miss Lee F. Payton. Next week at this time the story of a migration. The movement of the textile industry from New England to the south. It is planned that a future series will deal with significant developments in other sections of the United States.