The sun. [volume] (Newberry, S.C.) 1937-1972, September 12, 1952, Image 3
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1952
THE NEWBERRY SUN
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Champion
A
ll publicly owned corporations in the United States, including The Champion
< ' ' ' * • • ,
Paper and Fibre Company, are required to make yearly reports to their stock
holders/ But Champion, like many other large industrial organizations, elects to
report as well to its employees,* and to its friends and neighbors in the communities
in which it operates. Champion believes in being a good corporate citizen, and in
assuming the full responsibilities of good citizenship in order to earn the rights and
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privileges with which citizens of this great nation are endowed.
FINANCIAL RESULTS
The Basis of this Champion report is the fiscal year of operation which ended March 31,1962.
During the preceding twelve months Champion’s combined production at its three divisional
mills — Hamilton, Ohio; Canton, North Carolina; Houston, Texas at Pasadena — was:
452,000 tons of pulp, 585,000 tons of paper and paper board
plus miscellaneous by-products
Champion received from all sources
Champion used this money as follows:
For goods and services
(Wood, other raw materials, fuel, supplies, etc.).
For payrolls
(Wages and salaries, pensions, other benefits)
For payment of taxes
(Federal, state and local)
For production tools .
(Machinery, plant, tirpberlands, working capital)
For interest, dividends, debt retirement ....
Total . .
$128,080,000
• • •
• ft
• •
ft ft
$62,280,000
$88,360,000
$18,190,000
$14,340,000
$ 4,910,000
i • . . .
$128,080,000
This chart shows how
Champion has increased
its production of pulp,
and paper and paper
board, since 1926. Tons
sold kept pace.
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The Champion Team
Champion operates as a team, each member fulfilling
a special assignment. During the year the men and
women who made up this team rose from 8061 to 8373.
They were located in the mills in Ohio, North Carolina
and Texas; in the sales offices at New York, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta,
Dallas and San Francisco; in the forestry operations in
Newberry, S. C., Washington, Ga., and Huntsville and
Jasper, Tex.; at the clay mine in Sandersville, Ga.; at
the lime plant in Knoxville, Tenn.
For the members of the organization, an automatic
cost of living bonus was adopted during the year and
the vacation policy was amended to increase yearly
vacations from two weeks to three weeks for all employ
ees with fifteen or more years of service.
Champion's disabling injury rate continued at the
very low level of 2 03 per million man hours of exposure.
This is far below the 10.9 average for the industry as a
whole, according to National Safety CounciLstatistics.
Champion’s insurance program includes life, hos
pital-surgical, and health and accident coverage. A pen
sion plan was inaugurated in 1946, and at the end of
this fiscal year 108 retired employees were receiving
annuities under the plan. In addition the company has
166 pensioners retired prior to the adoption of the plan.
Training programs have been in operation at
Champion for many years. This year 1400 employees
attended Champion-sponsored courses of various kinds
for the purpose of increasing individual knowledge,
skill and ability in order to qualify for more important
positions.
. During the year Champion inaugurated an eco
nomic education program aimed at broadening the gen
eral understanding ^of how the American business
system operates within the framework of our way of
life to produce the material benefits which have won us
our high standard of living. This program is being made
available to all employees and to appropriate groups in
the communities of which Champion is a part.
Champion's Payroll
■1PAY TO SMPLOYSIS
6879 5902 7180 7496 7685 8373
1942 *944 1946 194* 1950 1952
V
Vigvr* 6om$ not Indvdo off omphyo bonofiH.
This chart shows how the pay to Champion employees
in salary, wages and certain benefits increased from
$181/2 million in 1942 to more than $38 million in
1952. Number of employees increased from 5879 to 8873.
Champion Taxes
Champion, like all other citizens, paid unprece
dented high taxes during the year. Its income and prop
erty taxes came to more than $18,000,000. The total of
$18,000,000 is more than all of the dividends paid to
Champion stockholders in the first 53 years of the com
pany’s existence. During the-past 13 years, Champion
has increased its over-all mill efficiency enough to re
duce annual costs $20,000,000. This one year’s tax bill
of $18,000,000 practically wiped out the entire saving.
It amounted to almost half of all salaries and wages
paid to employees during the year.
In addition, the company paid $600,000 for social
security for employees and, as required by law, it with
held from employees and paid to the federal govern
ment $4,320,000 they had earned to pay their own social
security and personal income taxes.
Stockholders Play Their Part
Champion is owned by its stockholders. They elect
the company management. And they have been willing,
on the basis of that management’s record, to permit
most of the company’s earnings to be plowed back into
the business — approximately three times as much as
they have received for risking their savings. As a result,
the company has been able to increase its production
and improve its position at a steady rate.
Champion Forostry Practices
Adequate timberland reserves, properly managed
to insure a sufficient supply of wood, is vital to the oper
ation of the company. -Champion’s forestry program,
developed over fifty years of pioneering practice, pro
vides scientific and practical methods of selective cut
ting, reforestation of areas inadequate for agriculture,
better utilization of the timber crop, fire prevention and
suppression, disease control, and sustained yields from
timber tracts.
Everybody Profits
Over the years Champion employees have profited
from the continued growth of the company. More jobs
at higher pay have been provided. Greater benefits in
the form of insurance, pensions, vocational training,
recreation programs, better and safer working condi
tions, have resulted.
Champion customers have profited too. This year
they got more paper and paper board from us than ever
before. And the superior quality and variety are a far
cry from that of relatively few years ago.
Champion’s 5768 stockholders in assuming the risk
of a loss on their investment, as well as a gain, profited
from the growth that their investment made possible.
Their dividends have increased substantially during the
past quarter century, as has the market value of their
stock.
And the people of the communities, and of the states
and the nation in which Champion operates, have prof
ited from the contributions which this one industrial
citizen has made to the common welfare. -
The Champion Paper and Fibre Company
HAMILTON, OHIO • CANTON, N. C* • HOUSTON, TEXAS
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,
In Woodland Areas...
Champion is a conservationist as well as a consumer
’ of wood, the basic raw material used in the manufacture
of its products. To insure the permanency of our great
forest and timber stands, Champion protects and propa
gates trees on thousands of acres of land. Many thou
sands of dollars go each year into the management of
forest lands. To date, Champion has planted more than
20 million pine seedlings.
Champion makos a practice of planting seedlings, twen
ty million of them so far, to maintain forest tract pro
ductivity.
The company’s forestry program is directed by an
outstanding group of professionally trained Champion •
foresters. It.involves many activities.
One important phase of the program is the encour
agement of good forestry practices by private owners.
Another is the cooperative relationship with public
agencies for fire protection. A third is selective cutting
to conserve, rather than devastate, timber tracts. A
fourth is efficient woods operations to reduce waste in
stumpage and top growth.
Champion trains and equips its own employees for
the job of fire prevention and suppression. Large tracts
are made accessible to pulpwood operators and fire
fighters by construction of fire lanes aild truck trails
with Champion equipment.
Champion fire lane plows, always ready for instant
action, are effective weapons in preventing the spread
of forest fires.
Upon the intelligence, skill and cooperation of
Champion’s some 8,000 men and women in its mills in
Ohio, North Carolina and Tex as rests the success of its
pulp and papermaking operations. Hundreds of wood lot
farmers and their families rely wholly or in part on
sales of pulpwood to Champion.
Champion is dedicated to a continuation of its re
search and management practices in the forest areas in
which it operates so that its people will be assured of a
never-ending supply of the raw material without which
they could not have jobs and so that one of America’s
great natural economic resources will not be depleted
nd its unsurpassed beauty destroyed.
*Champioii issues formal reports to stockholders
and employees; uses these columns to make its
report to the readers of this newspaper. Any reader
who wishes to see either or both of the formal
reports is iltvited to write the Community Rela
tions Department, The Champion Paper and Fibre
Company, Canton, North Carolina.