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Different as they are in appearance, the only real difference between the two boards in manufacture is in the amount of heat and pressure applied. In neither case is there anything added to the pulp, the natural lignins in the original wood serving as the sole binder. In its early days Masonite used to sell more insulating board than hard board but a steady accumulation of new uses for Presdwood has changed the story. Last year 100 carloads of Presdwood were sold to Hollywood producers for scene sets, 200 carloads to the automobile industry, another 200 carloads to trailer makers. A relatively new outlet is for concrete forms. Twelve manufacturers fabricate it as artificial tile, and the toy industry takes it in hundreds of carloads. But the building industry is the big market, Presdwood being particularly adaptable to modernistic design. The Masonite house was one of the architectural high spots of Chicago's Century of Progress, was inspected by 3,000,000 people. Latest Masonite product is a laminated plastic, pressed innumerable sheets of thin Presdwood. An addition to the Laurel, Miss, plant to turn out this plastic will be ready early next year.
Far from Laurel, however, is the Masonite ownership. Majority of the stock is still in the hands of the original Wisconsin lumbermen who backed the inventor. These include such potent paper and lumber names as Clark Everest (Marathon Paper Mills Co.), Aytch P. Woodson (B. C. Spruce Mills), Cyrus Carpenter Yawkey, dean of Wisconsin lumbermen. Biggest stockholder at last report (33,000 shares) is President Ben Alexander.
Tall, bald, genial President Alexander was a lumberman's son, studied forestry in the U. S. and Germany, worked in the woods in Wisconsin and Oregon, where he once walked out on strike with IWWorkers. He married a lumberman's daughter, still has big lumber and paper interests. Until last year Ben Alexander ran Masonite from Wausau, Wis., his home town. There he gave the city an airport, was rated First Citizen, bore the distinction of having installed the first home bar in Wausau. Now Ben Alexander lives in Chicago's Drake Towers with his dark, slim wife and two adopted children.
One reason his fellow lumbermen-capitalists picked Ben Alexander to run Masonite was that he could make it a full-time job. Another was that in a young company they wanted a young man. Measured in plant capacity. Masonite has grown fast. It is now able to turn out more than 23,000,000 ft. of board per month as against about 2,000,000 in 1927. Measured in profits, Masonite has grown even faster. After a small loss the first year its earnings mounted to $411,000 by 1929, dropped into the red in only two Depression years, jumped to the record figure of $1,400,000 in the fiscal year just ended. All bonds have been paid off, more than one-half its total assets of $4,800,000 are current and its 7% preferred stock will be converted into a 5% issue under the refinancing plan announced last week.