Corporations: Test-Tube Forests

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Initiation Over. The initiation and the losses it involved are about over. For the past three years the lumber industry has been plagued by overcapacity, Canadian competition and sales losses to such rival materials as plastics and metal. But Weyerhaeuser increased sales and earnings last year, for the first quarter of 1963 raised sales another 14% to $136,856,000 and profits 25% to $9,288,000. Its basic position is good: it has no debts, $117 million in working capital and a fourth-generation-seedling in Vice President Weyerhaeuser, 36,* who is ready to take over when his uncle, Chairman Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser, 68, and President Norton Clapp, 57, step down. Trained in Weyerhaeuser tradition since birth, George has the outlook of an executive prepared to wait, if not 80 years, at least 40 for his trees to grow. "We don't go out and shoot ourselves over one bad year," he says. "We're going to be in business for a long, long time.''