Southern pine is a sticky, spindly tree that grows weedlike in every abandoned field, reproduces a stand of timber (unlike the North's mighty, slow-growing spruce and fir) in 15 or 20 years. It has long been used for kraft (boxes and wrapping) paper.
Savannah's late, great Chemist Charles Holmes Herty spent the last eight years of his life trying to make commercial newsprint out of Southern pines. In his laboratory he found a process that worked, but he died in 1938, before the South's lumbermen could build him a mill. What kept Dr. Herty...
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