Bogalusa

"The Timberman", 1921

5th Page

Index to story:

Bogalusa Start Page

Paper Plant to Rise

Civic Improvement a Source of Pride

The Great Sawmill at Bogalusa

The Logging Railroad System

Dipping Lumber to Prevent Stain

How Second Stream is Handled

The Power Plant

New Civic Enterprises Planned

Pulp Mill Supplants Waste Burner

Sulphate Process Used

Other Pulp Plants in South

Waste Paper Provides Tonnage

Links

Bogalusa, Washington Parish, Louisiana

Bogalusa Story by C. W. Goodyear

This mammoth plant was the basis that. rendered possible the building of the attractive city of Bogalusa. The extension of the business to paper making will now give to this city not only permanency, but the assurance of continued growth through diversified manufacturing that will be sure to come. The present mayor, Col. W. Sullivan, who is the vice- president and general manager both of the sawmill and the paper interests centered here, is filled with enthusiasm to develop all the latent possibilities of the region, and he looks forward to rapid development of the resources of the district. The latest proposal is to erect a canning factory, which will be built before next summer, as an encouragement for the farmers to raise tomatoes, beans and other vegetables for which the soil and climate are propitious. The culture of Satsuma oranges is also being stimulated, this fruit attaining a large size at Bogalusa, making an acceptable fancy winter orange for northern markets. The thing, however, that will make Bogalusa famous and will bring inquiring students from all over the country, is the mammoth reforestation program, which is showing the whole South how to redeem its cut-over lands and to convert the wilderness, where logging has swept away the timer, into centers of industry for the making of paper. This important work is more extensively covered in the latter part of this article.

When the Great Southern Lumber Co. began its development of Louisiana and Mississippi pine timber and proceeded to create a modern city around a mammoth sawmill in the virgin forest of Washington parish, Louisiana, the capitalist interested in the venture had no plans beyond the production of lumber. The stumpage available in the 550,000 acres of land was so great— running into 10 figures expressed in terms of board feet—that it was evident that no less than 40 years would be required to strip the timber. Consequently, there was time in which to develop a comfortable city. The vision of this was clear in the mind of Col. W. H. Sullivan when J. M. Clendon cut down the first tree on the sit of Bogalusa and made room for the tents of the little company of pioneer lumbermen in 1906.
At that time few men cast a thought about the rapid destruction of the southern forests, an fewer had conceived a remedy. With characteristic American recklessness everyone was the cutting timber and speeding up production, con tent to make the most of these rich natural re sources while they lasted. Very consciously the lumbermen, though dealing with a living and renewable basic material for their industry, treated it, nevertheless, as a wasting asset, as if it were an unrenewable mineral deposit. The copper miner cannot help himself, because a ton of or once extracted is gone forever. New veins may be growing somewhere else for future generations of men, but no more copper will refill the fissure of a depleted deposit. Nature seals the channels after the metalliferous solutions have done their work. But nature does not destroy the conditions that product a forest, and the lumbermen have come to realize that they are dealing with a renewable and continuing asset.

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Pulp Mill Supplants Waste Burner.

Before this was recognized as an economic possibility, before it was made certain that the lumbermen could become tree farmers and make money out of it, a first means of salvaging valuable material and thereby lessening the crime of waste of which all lumber producers had bee guilty was resorted to. This was to manufacture paper. The pulp mill was substituted for the waste burner; at least, that is what happened in Bogalusa. The benefit was even more far-reaching; it extended into the logging operations, and made it possible to salvage the tops and limb and thus to clean up the debris that ordinarily strews the ground and gives to a freshly cut over area an aspect of desolation and wanton destruction. The next lesson learned was that the pulp mill could profit by the spontaneous growth of young pine on favored cut-over land when the trees were no more than eight to 10 years old. Out of this grew concern for the protection of the new growth. Experience with the pulp mills brings swiftly into strong relief the entire problem of reforestation in its broad aspects.

The Bogalusa Paper Co., which is a subsidiary of the Great Southern Lumber Company, operates the largest pulp mill in the South, but it was not the pioneer in the production of paper from the resinous woods of the southern states. The yellow Pine Paper Co. experimented with the caustic soda process at Orange, Texas about 1910. The initial efforts were not commercially successful, but that company is now operating a plant that employs the sulphate method and yields satisfactory results.

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Sulphate Process Used

The first large scale plant to introduce the sulphate process for pulping the southern pine wood was erected by the Halifax Paper Co. at Roanoke Rapids, N. C., in 1908. With no precedents of successful operation to follow, it had to struggle against infinite difficulties of detail. The first unequivocal financial success with the process in this country was achieved by the Southern Paper Co. at Moss Point, Miss., with a plant which commenced operating in 1913. The pulp department was under the management of R. H. Laftman, who has since been placed in charge of the mill of the Bogalusa Paper Co. The latter plant, which now has a capacity of 65 tons of pulp per diem, with a total capacity of finished board of about 120 tons, began producing in 1918. With now equipment, now in process of installation, the capacity of finished board was increased to 195 tons daily in May, 1921.

With the complete success of the Bogalusa Paper Co. in producing high-grade Kraft pulp on a large scale from the resinous woods of the South, duplicating the financial success of the Southern Paper Co., the era of southern paper making from the longleaf, loblolly and other native species is fully inaugurated. These have dissipated completely and finally the doubts formerly expressed concerning the feasibility of pulping such material. Since the Bogalusa plant has finally established the successful routine of its sulphate pulp process it has made more money on the capital invested than the great million—foot sawmill and forests for its supply that largely furnish the paper mill with raw material.

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