"The Agricultural and Industrial Development of Western North Carolina:  The Development of The Pulp and Paper Industry in North Carolina as A Stimulus to Agriculture. ," by Walter J. Damtoft, Forester of The Champion Fibre Company for the Asheville-Citizen Times Series, 1929. [Two copies of 3 pages each]

The Agricultural and Industrial Development of Western North Carolina

The Development of The Pulp and Paper Industry in North Carolina as A Stimulus to Agriculture.

by W. J. Damtoft

Agriculture is probably not associated in the average mind with the manufacture of pulp and paper; and yet it is as closely related to that industry as it is to the manufacture of textiles.

Vegetable fiber forms the basis of pulp and paper as well as of cotton fabrics. In the one case the fiber is produced by trees, and in the other case by cotton plants, both of which are growing products of the soil.

Agriculture is concerned with the management of the soil for the production of crops. And trees are as truly a crop as are cotton, corn and potatoes. They merely take longer to mature as a merchantable product.

Before the advent of a market for pulpwood in Western North Carolina it was impossible to persuade a farmer to think of trees as a crop because his experience in handling them had not been at all analogous to the handling of his other farm products. He had been able to dispose of his trees only to lumbermen or others who were equipped with mills and other expensive machinery essen­tial for the manufacture of lumber; and generally he had been forced to dispose of his entire supply at one time with no pros­pects of a new supply during his lifetime.

Less than a generation ago the forests of Western North Car­olina were not viewed as an asset to the farm. They offered obstac­les to the cultivation of the soil and returned nothing in the form of continued financial remuneration.

It was only the lumberman who could convert trees into a profit; and he did so on so huge a scale that the comparatively small forests or farmers' woodlots offered little or no appeal to him. He was interested in extensive areas of tens of thousands of acres, and in large trees.

The practice of the lumberman was to install large mills and to push tack into the forests with railroads which afforded transport­ation for great quantities of logs. The result was rapid depletion of the larger specimens and the more valuable species of trees.

A condition gradually developed when large boundaries of tim­ber of attractive size which, warranted heavy investments in large mills and many miles of railroads became very scarce. The era of large mills then gave way to one of so-called portable or small mills.  It was then that a market developed for the farm forests, but the demand was only for the larger trees: and, although the farm­er was benefitted by their conversion into lumber he could see but one opportunity in a lifetime to realize any monetary return. The forested land, when once cutover, remained only as an apparent liabil­ity. No analogy whatsoever could be seen between such land and the cultivatable portions of the farm.  The forest was as a mine, i.e. as a resource when once utilized was exhausted. Trees did not appear to be a renewable crop.