 No one knows for how many centuries this wealth has lain here. There are no voices to tell us how it was in those alternate millenniums of sun and rain. The things that strode the jungles and through their challenge to the stars survive now only as outlines dimly red from the rocks. Mountains where the storms gathered are gone. Waters flow where once no rivers ran. But time, though it be slow, is never still. And movement, be it imperceptible, is movement still. The trees fell and were buried, rotting things mingled with the soil that gave them birth. They mixed and blended one with the other, and time did the rest. Deep in the sunless taverns of the earth, it gathered a black sluggish mud-like liquid, waiting it would seem for us. And we are here now to claim our own. We have come of age for us, the legacy of the centuries. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation presents Legacy of the Centuries, the story of the petrochemical industry in the South. For nine successive weeks now, we have been following a long trail that has wound through the cities and the crossroads of the American South, reporting what we believe to be one of the most remarkable developments of our time. The renaissance of industry, culture, and the changes in the whole pattern of life has lived in the states below the line of Mason and Dixon. Our guide on this journey is NBC correspondent Henry Cassidy. Today he reports on a remarkable new industry whose very name was unknown a few short years ago, Mr. Cassidy. As a war correspondent, during the crowded years of the rise and unlemented demies of Adolf Hitler, I often pondered why it was that change in living, in thought, or in form of government must so often be accompanied by violence and pain, by sound and fury. And I found myself wondering if there was ever a revolution anywhere in which no one was hurt. Well, I found such a revolution, not in some heavy tome buried in the stacks of a library, but figuratively in my own backyard. For surely the changes that are now taking place in the American South can be called a revolution, a giving way of the old to the new, a creation of something better out of things previously obsolete and inadequate. I saw it in the resurgence of industry in a land that once was thrall to a few crops, crops that destroyed even as they seemed to give. I saw it in new breeds of cattle in the miracle of fruit juices frozen against time itself. I saw wealth that would beggar and alchemists dream and faces turned now from the past to a dawn brave with promise and with hope. And when I looked on these things, I thought my journey was done. My mission completed. But even as a snatch of song can be got you from your homewood way. So it was with me and a chance sentence that came my way. I don't remember the speaker, but his words were intriguing words and they led me down a long and twisting road. The fastest growing industry in the south today and probably in the country is a chemical industry. Here was an area I had not explored, the chemical industry in the south. Surely the man was mistaken. I decided to stay a day or so longer in this lovely and gracious land to prove to my own satisfaction at least that there was some mistake. But there was no mistake. I found a whole new industry, fresh and confident and hand in glove with the forces of tomorrow. I found to a new and somewhat forbidding word, petrochemicals, the many and varied substances that modern alchemy summons up from the bubbling brew of the cauldrons in more practical terms. The useful materials derived from the residue of petroleum. I picked up the beginning of my story down in Houston, Texas in the office of Mr. G. R. Walton, industrial sales manager of the United Gas Pipeline Company. Mr. Walton, I asked, where do we begin? Well, either place to begin on this story, I suppose, is essentially we're going to talk about Texas, although generally the petrochemical empire, as we like to call it, extends pretty well along the Gulf Coast from about in the audience or shall we say the French Quarter on the east down to the King Ranch of Texas on the southwest, a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles. This business, as we now know it, began about the beginning of World War two, caused largely by the pressures generated by World War shortages and demands. People had to do things that they hadn't taken the trouble to do before. We had to have rubber. Our natural rubber supplies were shut off by the Japs in the four east. There had been a few methods knocking around the research laboratories of making rubber from various and sundry raw materials. But all of a sudden it became evident that we had to have rubber and we had to have it quick. After looking over the many possibilities for making rubber artificially or synthetically, shall we say, the best bet seemed to be a process developed for making rubber from petroleum. And that, you might say, is the beginning of the now huge petrochemical business. When our chemists and our scientists found out they could make such things as rubber, they also began to look around to make other things out of petroleum and natural gas. They found that they had all the raw materials needed by this petrochemical business, namely oil, gas, sulfur and salt, all present in abundance and are well distributed throughout this area. This storehouse of all the necessary raw materials together with cheap bulk transportation, ample labor and plenty of room to build and expand is probably the major factor in this development. As a matter of fact, this oil, gas and sulfur have been known for years and have been in some degree of production for most of the 20th century. However, prior to World War Two, its usage or their usage was confined largely to such age-old processes and products as fuel, lubricants, heavy chemicals, acids, alkalizing light. He wouldn't recognize this area now had you been here some 10 or 15 or especially 20 years ago. Thought patterns formed in youth are hard to break and I'm enough of a New Englander to wonder why if this new industry has such promise, it has not developed in my section of the country. Why had it come to the south and not to the north? Where can you find more oil and more readily available? The answer was not long in coming. This is Mr. Ralph D. Patch. Dan, they call him inevitably, I suppose. Mr. Patch is head of the Chemical Products Division of the SO Standard Oil Company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He gave me the answer to my question. In fact, too many questions. The raw materials for making chemicals previously had been used entirely in the refineries to make gasoline and heating oil and fuel. In effect, the chemicals that we make had we not made them would have turned into gasoline for your automobile. These hydrocarbons come out of the ground and most of them seem to be centered in this particular section of the country, starting with natural gas, which is chemically known as methane, all the way down to the heaviest crude oil. A great many of the refineries are located in this section of the country so that the streams that are available or suitable for the manufacture of chemicals are readily available by pipeline from your neighbor. A great many of the chemical companies have moved down into this section of the country to build their own plants. And I expect as you travel westward from here along this great golden crescent from here to the tip of Texas, you'll see chemical companies and refining companies all the way along. And there was more to this story. Still other reasons why the south is the favored land for those who work this special brand of miracle. Listen to Mr. William M. Andrews of the engineering firm of Lockwood and Andrews in Houston, Texas. Approximately 20 years ago, the south was just beginning to industrialize. Whereas your east had already built up the heavy industry, as you know. And naturally, the southerners when they first started with their industry copied the easterners who had to put the big masonry buildings around all of their machinery and operations to protect it from the weather. We had to do something to cut down investments and save some dollars. And we found out that we could save the money for the housing due to our weather in Texas. The plant today, which does not have any masonry housing around it is considerably cheaper than is one is completely housed. You will get to see the engineers dream when you see the dial chemical plant, which is largely open air and only those processes which are a necessity have been housed. It had to be that sooner or later I would show my ignorance and ask a very simple and basic question. I again sought out Mr. Patch and framed my question as briefly and simply as I could. What precisely Mr. Patch is a petrochemical? Petrochemical is a synthetic word. We might just as well start off with that when the synthetic business. It's derived of course from petroleum and chemical. It refers to this long line of very new and interesting and almost glamorous chemicals that we're now getting from oil that comes from crude out of the ground. Now the chemists have found that a great many of these synthetic chemicals are combinations of molecules and atoms that contain carbon and hydrogen. Carbon and hydrogen constitute the principle ingredients of crude oil. So by taking the crude from the ground and sorting it out, getting certain raw materials from it that are passed on in turn to the chemical plants, these hydrocarbons as we call them combinations of carbon and hydrogen can be transformed into chemical building blocks, little special molecules that are particularly reactive. They in turn can be transformed into some of the things that we know in everyday life today like synthetic industrial alcohol, like synthetic rubber, a great many of these plastics, these fibers that you talked about nylon, orlone, acryland, some of those type of things. This then was the miracle I had come to find or part of it at least. Still learning they say is a long and sometimes painful process. I set out to find the changes that these things have brought about. I wondered what precisely are the products of this new industry? Are they esoteric things known to scientists or laboratory workers? Or do they affect us all? Would I wear a petrochemical or carry it in my pocket? I found myself in the office of Mr. Lynn Straughn, plant manager of the Jefferson Chemical Company at Port Natchez, Texas. Our main products are ethylene oxide, ethylene dichloride, ethylene glycol, and monodye and triethanolamine. They're common chemicals and they have a wide variety of uses. Most of them come from chemicals and from petroleum. They end up as such products as shirts, suits, in your gasoline and lubricants and products of that type. And what about the future, Mr. Straughn? I think the future of petrochemicals in the Gulf Coast area is very bright. We have the raw materials, water, supply, fuel, and those things are all essential to the promotion of the petrochemical industry. Mr. Straughn was not alone in his awareness of the significance that this will have in the years that lie ahead. It was a recurring theme. Mr. Patch again took a long look into the future and speculated on some wonders not yet born. These petrochemicals are very stable economically. They're they're here with us. They're not subject to crop failures, to locus plagues, to bad weather, that type of thing. These factories run, these plants run day and night. The crude oil is plenty of it ahead. It's here with us all the time. So that any supplier that can acquire his raw materials from a petrochemical manufacturer has got a pretty sure source of supply of his raw materials. Another thing, because it is so stable, because it's being made all the time and constantly, the price is fairly stable. I just don't think there's any limit to what we're going to end up doing with petrochemicals. Of course, the stable price encourages manufacturers to develop new uses new outlets. You can see in the past few years, such things as these synthetic fibers and plastics, the great many of them are coming from petrochemicals. We're constantly getting inquiries from from all kinds of people for new chemicals for samples of experimental chemicals that we have made so that they in turn can try to find out what they might be able to do with those new chemicals. It's an interesting thing. We've got a plant out here that produces a chemical that is pretty widely used. And there's a small stream in there that we have to purge out of that unit because it accumulates in there and acts as a sort of a poison. And we had our chemists take a look at this stream. It's not a very large one to find out what there might be in it. And they tell me that they located in there a chemical that could be used as the raw material for vitamin E. And there was a curious bypass to our story, one that took me to the land of floating mines, not the wartime variety, but an island of machinery in the back washes of the Mississippi, a new world Venice, where the wealth comes not from trade, but from a yellow evil smelling element that means more to those who seek it than all the spices of the East. Sulphur is the magic word in petrochemicals, the catalyst that makes all possible. Port Sulphur, Louisiana, and the office of Mr. George M. Leppert, assistant to the president of the Free Port Sulphur Company. This operation commence in 1933. This mine near here, 10 miles back in the marsh is known as the Grand Decay Mine Free Port Sulphur's Grand Decay Mine. Grand Decay is French slang for big scale, which is also slang for topping as a lake out there, Lake Grand Decay, where the mine is. And 10 miles back over here is the second largest Sulphur mine in the world, produces a million 431,000 tons a year. And this is the point of a huge Sulphur triangle, you might say. So this is sort of a Sulphur headquarters in Louisiana. They built this town. This town is on a hydraulic fill, which means that tremendous amounts of mud were pumped in behind levers and allowed to solidify and the houses were built and gradually it's been added to until you see this thriving little community that we have here now. Here then was my revolution. Here were changes as huge in their effect as they were bold in concept. And the results can be felt across this whole land far beyond the rim of the seeable world. Here was changed without violence. Here was a revolution conceived in quiet and born in peace. There was some reluctance to talk about the social changes that had been brought but the words when they came were strong ones. Listen to Mr. DB Campbell, plant manager of the DuPont Sabine Riverworks in Orange, Texas. Oh, I don't like to talk about what we've done for the community. I hope we've tried to be good neighbors and fit into the community. I think it is a fact, however, that we spent last year $2 million for materials of one sort or another, just within the Orange Beaumont Port Arthur area. From what we've seen in the last 10 years, I I I just happened to crystal ball it would tell me where it might go. If it continues at the rate it is and there is every reason to believe that it will, it certainly will grow to be tremendous. And then I ask Mr. Campbell, has all this changed the community since you've been a part of it? I personally have only been here three years, but when the DuPont camp company came in here about seven years ago, the community was not exactly flourishing. They had had some ups and downs. Unfortunately, they had had some war babies which had gone bad on them when the war was over. And I think I can truthfully say that they were very happy to have the DuPont company come in here. We have employed 2,000 people. We have paid last year, for instance, our payroll, which we turned loose in this community within a 20 mile radius, nine and a quarter million dollars. I think that helps any community. There is quite a building boom on in the city of Orange. I think last year they completed somewhere around four or five hundred new homes. It was morning raised in Orange. Orange was a pretty small town when I was a child. And the bringing on the World War II made a big change. We had quite a few people come here with the shipyard. I think the DuPont plant and other plants saved Orange from a collapse. My working conditions are so much better and my wages is better and the people I work with treat you like you are human being in other words. But that which comes of the earth must return to the earth. This new industry was scarcely a year old before those who till the land were asking if this earth born stuff would be of help to those who coax the growing things out of the seed. The answer was yes, emphatically so, and a new and remarkable job was born. A job that as is fitting was filled by a remarkable man. Mr. Ladd hasted agricultural counselor to the oil industry. And I asked Ladd, just what does the farmer have to do with petrochemicals? Henry, let's get rid of that word right now. I just frankly among farmers we don't use that word. That's something that was dreamed up in the laboratory and sure it's a good word as far as I'm concerned but as much we're talking to the public. Let's just get down and say what it is. Well, first, Ladd, you better tell me then if you don't call it petrochemicals or the farmers don't, what do they call it? Well, you might break it down into two points, Henry. You might say that one point was chemicals that come from petroleum that help to grow things. And the other thing is chemicals that are put in to a petroleum carrier that help to preserve things. In other words, in the first one you might say anhydrous ammonia is a fertilizer that helps to grow things. And in the second group you'd put in the insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, all of which are big words too. Let's call them by the name farmers, call them that is weed killers, insect killers and rabbit killers or mice killers and, well, fungi. I guess you still have to use that word. That's the one we got. There's no substitute for fungi, is there, Ladd? Ladd, you've tossed me a great big phrase there. I think it sounded like anhydrous ammonia. What's that? There's another way to say it and that's a common way to say it, Henry. NH3 actually is just simply getting nitrogen in a form that is rather new. In the past we always got nitrogen in a granular form, a powder in bags. Now we get it in the gas and it comes in cylinders of very much like the sort of cylinders you see behind suburban homes. You know there's metal things with all the loom and so forth. Well that's the way the stuff comes and it goes into the ground as a gas and immediately becomes a liquid and it provides N, that's nitrogen, directly to the plant in a way that the plant can get it very rapidly and very efficiently. And this thing was sort of born down in the Delaware region of the South, right where we are, rather than just immediately south of us from here to Vicksburg. And it's become almost universal in this region and from this region has spread to 38 states. The thing that pulls it back is the cost of transportation, not of the gas but of the containers which you must use because the stuff is under very high pressure. Well then how about cost? It seems to me that we have a new thing here. Does it cost less than the original forms that we used? No it doesn't but the reason why is because of the cost of the container to ship it back and forth. The gas itself is a pretty economical thing with these containers because it's under pressure and because it's dangerous by the way if they can blow up they've got to be very thick and something is safe in order to go through freight. So the package of the product cost more than the product itself? That's right. We could use it right up in New England for instance and they'd like to use it up there if they get it cheap enough but it costs the dog so much to ship it back and forth. What crop then lad do you apply this in H32? Well you can apply it to practically any crop in the south cotton, tobacco, peanuts, corn, etc. or pasture but the thing I think is most dramatic is that for many many years we've thought of the this region here in the south as being a 12 bushel corn region. Everybody raised corn down here and yet the yield was so low that agriculture's elsewhere couldn't understand why they even bothered to do it. You say 12 bushels an acre? That's above the average for the south. And what's it going to be with your NH3? Well that's the thing that's come up in the very last two or three years. Now we've got all over the south down here a hundred bushels to acre clubs that's a title. There's people that are listed in clubs that guarantee they're going to grow a hundred bushels of corn to the acre where 12 used to grow yesterday as it were and anhydrous ammonia NH3 is the answer. That's a title that's going to become a fact. Yes sir. Lad it sounds to me like your NH3 has already blown up the agricultural business in the south. Well it's been a wonderful thing and it's got a great way to go. We think it's got a tremendous future. Tell me this then Lad I take it that the farmers and people who are actually using these petrochemicals perhaps don't even realize that they are petrochemicals and don't distinguish them from other rabbit killers or weed killers. I think that's right Henry I don't think any farmer worries about where the stuff comes from or what's behind it you might say but what will it do that's what he wants to know and whatever the trade name is that's all right with him just providing it does the job. If he doesn't care where it comes from as long as it does a good job do we need petrochemicals. Oh very definitely very definitely that's the big thing that's come to agriculture in the last 10 years or perhaps I should say 15 just to go back a little bit. You know the potato scandal which exercised all of the public and certainly farmers really came about because of DDT which of course every housewife knows what that is. Well DDT killed the little bugs that cuts down the potato yield and all of a sudden we had an enormous potato yield because of DDT. Some people think it was a political thing actually it wasn't it was just a chemical thing and that's one angle and of course there's a thousand others. But as I understand it we already have an agricultural surplus we have too much found products why should we now develop something that either grows more or preserves more. Well that's the question that has really got all of us worried Henry and the answer to it is this that in as much as agriculture is a biological science rather than a physical science you have to look far ahead you've got to work far ahead. When the Korean War came on all of a sudden we were in shortage and we needed tremendous supplies of everything. Well we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow very truly now we've got too much of everything but we also have a great threat over this as everybody knows if another war would to happen which god forbid we would need immense supplies not only for ourselves but for our allies. So agriculture to be healthy and to do its job for America at large must always run on us at least a small surplus. We need that little bumper there in case nothing goes wrong. Well apart from anything going wrong led in other words if we don't have a war what else then why do we still need to develop these new things and produce more and preserve more. Well Henry that one is a very kindly sort of a thing we're just having the biggest crop in the world of babies here in America between two million and a half and three million a year and all those miles have got to be fed and we can't expand our acreage too much yes with some desert lands can be put under irrigation we can reclaim some worn out lands for odds and ends of things but they're very small and our best bet is to get more from the land we have so as these youngsters come along and we look into tomorrow to our daughters granddaughters sons grandsons we've got to prepare for them and prepare enough so that they can have the same abundance we have now and the petrochemicals is one way to do it because they cut down loss and raise yield these were the things that i saw and the voices that i heard i had found my quiet revolution for in this land of soft ways and gentle accents a change has come no less great i think than many a revolution born of anger and envy of hate and the gnawing pangs of greed no such corruption dulls the brightness of this new day and this new land the promises of tomorrow are written large across this place it enters by a thousand doors new breeds of cattle power plants pushing back the night chimneys that glow by day and night and throw their challenge across the clouds and now the newest miracles conjured up from the residue of time no one knows how long it has been waiting no one knows what centuries crawled by with no one to mark their passing but we have come of age for us the legacy of the centuries you have been listening to legacy of the centuries the ninth in the series of programs heritage over the land describing the changes that have come lately to the american south this series is written and directed by william alan bales and produced by miss lee f paint it is anticipated that future series will deal with changes in other sections of the country