Word: gypsum
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...Tennesseean turned Yankee industrialist, 66-year-old Melvin H. Baker has not forgotten his Southern hospitality. Last week the boss of Buffalo's National Gypsum Co. flew out to Medicine Lodge, Kans., to put on a party for the whole surrounding county. Schools were closed, and Baker set up free ice cream, pop and rides on a miniature railroad for 1,200 children, provided coffee, cupcakes and free ashtrays (made of gypsum) for their parents...
...this circus atmosphere, Ringmaster Baker showed off his newest act-one of the world's most completely mechanized plants. Rock gypsum, mechanically scooped out 20 miles away, is mechanically loaded, hauled to the plant, unloaded, ground, mixed in a paste and sandwiched between paper. Untouched by hand, it is rolled out of the plant as finished gypsum wallboard at the rate of 90 ft. a minute. Total men needed to watch the machinery: 19. In a year, three shifts can produce enough wallboard to build a wall eight feet high from coast to coast...
Beaver Boy. The new plant will help Baker to close the gap in his 26-year race to overtake Sewell Avery's giant U.S. Gypsum Co. In that race, Baker has already turned in a spring-legged performance. He quit Tennessee's small Carson-Newman Baptist college after two years, later started selling once-famed "Beaverboard" in the South for the old Beaver Co., rose to sales manager...
Beaver-busy, Baker moved on to Manhattan, was soon vice-president of a credit company. In 1925, when two former Beaver associates came to him with options on rich gypsum ores* near Buffalo, the three teamed up to form National Gypsum, and buck U.S. Gypsum, which then had a virtual monopoly on wallboard. They had $150,000 in capital, and figured that they needed $2,000,000. Baker raised it in four months by sending his salesmen out to sell stock instead of wallboard. In 1926, with a total of 57 employees, he began mining the gypsum and turning...
...Other proponents of the plan: Housing Suppliers Charles E. Wilson (General Electric), John D. Biggers (Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass), Ben Moreell (Jones & Laughlin Steel), Melvin Baker (National Gypsum), Clifford J. Backstrand (Armstrong Cork), Lewis H. Brown (Johns-Manville), J. Philip Weyerhaeuser Jr. (Weyerhaeuser Timber...