RAW MATERIALS: Bog Rot

Peter Patterer once put his barnstorming plane down in a Michigan peat bog, was intrigued by its softness, became Peter Patterer the Peatman. Richard Whitney the Broker, intrigued by peat’s possibilities, once put his barnstorming cash into a Florida peat company. Most newsworthy of present peat mossers are Charles Silber, a Newark, N. J. attorney, and Giles Price Wetherill, a Philadelphia socialite.* Last week in Cherryneld. Maine, they declared their newly formed American Peat Co. ready to dig for the $16,000,000-per-year U. S. peat trade now monopolized by importers from Sweden and Germany.

Peat is compressed, decayed vegetation found in bogs. Processed peat is used as fuel, fertilizer, insulator, wallboard material, wrapping paper, cloth base. Exide Batteries of Canada, Ltd. uses a type of peat for a secret paint which binds rubber to metal. Domestic Scotch whiskey distillers get their vaunted “Highland peat” flavor by charring raw peat inside their kegs. But though the U.S. has 11,200 square miles of peat bogs (only Russia, Canada.

Finland, Sweden have more), U. S. scientists and entrepreneurs have been slow to explore and exploit them.

Last year, Charles Silber dug up some partners and some peat, contracted with 32-year-old Giles Wetherill to distribute his product. For several years the Wetherill family have marketed Hyper-Humus, a New Jersey peat older than Silber’s Maine variety by a mere 10,000,000 years. Day before Richard Whitney went to jail he offered Giles Wetherill his near-defunct Florida Humus Co. ”for the price of a good automobile”; but Wetherill said he wanted peat bogs, not lawsuits. Humus has sold a piddling 10,000 tons per year, has nevertheless made a small profit since 1934. American Peat’s production plans call for 125,000 bales the first year, ultimately 500,000 a year.

*Giles Wetherill’s money is in peat-producing but his heart is in knife-collecting, designing and throwing. Wealthy sportsmen and maharajas have their hunting knives custom-made by him. He can pin a squirrel to a tree at 20 feet.