Profits from Waste

A New York Times, a Rupert Hughes novel, We Live but Once, an old hatbox-- these and other heterogeneous waste materials the Clifton (N. J.) Paper Board Co. converts into paperboard for corrugated shipping containers, folding cartons, shoe boxes. Last week, after a few trial runs, the company's newly modernized $2,000,000 factory was ready for full-blast operation. Clifton turned out 12,000 tons of paperboard in 1932; the plant is now good for 125,000 tons a year.

One of the biggest wastepaper converters in the East, Clifton is a family-owned business. The family is the Desiderios, father and seven sons. Frank Desiderio, a strapping, grey-haired Italian, arrived in the U. S. in 1904, penniless, unemployed, unable to speak English. On borrowed money he bought a pushcart, tramped Newark's streets collecting wastepaper. In two years he had a horse and wagon, traded them for a two-cylinder Autocar in 1918. By 1926 the Desiderios owned a 100-truck fleet. When the old Clifton firm went bankrupt six years ago, they turned up with a batch of uncollected bills and a checkbook. By 1935 they had two more plants -- in Whippany, N. J. and Durham, Pa. But their first is still their pride & joy.

Frank Desiderio, 64, is the boss, but his seven sons -- Thomas, 39, Anthony, 37, Dominic, 35, Arnold, 33, John, 31, Salvatore, 27, and Michael, 22 -- manage the $2,500,000-a-year business. Diminutive, flashy-eyed Tony, who started pushing the pushcart at 9, is President. All the Desiderios are hard workers, have no high-priced executives or stockholders to worry about. All three of their plants were in the red when they bought them; all three have thrived since.

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