The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1946-10-11
Mosonite Clouds The Issue


In full page ads in a number of daily papers
last week, and also carried in this issue OF
the Chronicle-Star and Advertiser, the
Masonite Corporation at Laurel is up to its
old tricks, and would have the people of this
section of Mississippi believe that the opera
ton of its plant employing $500 people is
balanced against IAN extra fishing ground on
lower Tallahala creek" the stream in which
the company dumps its fish-killing effluent.
Even If this statement were true, and it
certainly is not, the fact still stands that the
law is the law, and our state pollution laws
prohibit the dumping of fish killing industrial
wastes into our streams, despite Masonite's
protests that Tallhala creek should serve as
its industrial sewer and thus put the comp
any outside our laws. On the same principle,
if the writer's income was not enough to
support him as he believed fit, then he
would be perfectly justified in stealing from
his ~neighbors to supplement that income,
law or no law, police or no police, because
his family is dependent on his income.
But this il beside the point, and as we
have said the statement simply Is not true.
Masonite cannot pollute and destroy ITALIA
hala creek without also polluting and des-
troying the Leaf and Pascasoula rivers,
and therefore the question is not a few
fish in lower Tallshala creek, but a ques-
ton of whether we will nave any fish at all
in the Leaf and Pascagoula rivers.
Al to the $500 families dependant on
Masonite and its continued operation, we
maintain that there are several times that
number of families directly dependent on the
Leaf and Pascagoula rivers, and what is in
them, for their livelihood, and that the nat
ural resources of these two streams are
worth far more to the State of Mississippi,
In dollars and cents and income derived, than
the Masonite Corporation and its annual
payroll.
Masonite insists that only Tallahala creek
is involved. Yet in June, l945. we saw fish
slaughtered by the thousands as far down the
Pascagoula river as Cumbest Bluff, virtually
at tide water, by Masonite effluent that was
dumped into Tallahala creek, and was car
ried by current into the Leaf river, down the
Leaf and into the Pascagoula.
1t was after this spectacular and whole
sale slaughtering, and because of the weight
of public opinion it aroused, that Masonite
admitted its guilt, humbly apologized to the
people of this section, and promised once and
for all to mend its ways and realize its OBJ
legations to the people of a hospitable state.
! Matthew P. Mccullough, then president of
the Masonite Corporation, speaking before a
group of Southeast Mississippi newspaper
editors invited to Laurel by the company,
in July of last year said.
I won't apologize for what we haven't
done in the past. | don't think we have done
what we should have. We didn't have any
information on the subject. l had no knowl-
edge of stream pollution until it was forcibly
brought to my attention by the recent wave
OF protest. | had not been informed of the
dire need. Of course it is apparent now
I have been in Mississippi all this week,
checking up, talking to officials now | know
what South Mississippi thinks of us. l admit
that your criticism is justified"
Those above quoted words were spoken by
the then president of the Masonite Corpora
ton before a public gathering almost exact
ly one year and four months ago.