The Cemesto Future

Vision of the future: in the abandoned cities, past the miles of empty apartment houses, private investors walk in desolation, clutching their worthless real-estate mortgages and municipal bonds. Overhead the sky is dark with airplanes--countless helicopters, aerial busses, cheap little air lizzies transporting workers to their country homes, their three-day work week over.

This is the vision of short, hardheaded, vigorous Bror Gustave Dahlberg (62), president of Celotex Corp. No idle dreamer, artist's son Dahlberg promoted the original company which developed an insulating board out of a waste product (sugar cane stalks after the juice is squeezed out) and sold these boards to a building industry which knew little about heat insulation. A sugar famine and 1929 put Celotex into receivership. Reorganized under Dahlberg, Celotex acquired control of Certainteed Products Corp. (roofing, gypsum, plaster), began to merchandise many of the products required to build a house. Celotex makes Cemesto--a waterproof, fire-resistant building material 1 1/2 inches thick, made of an inner core of Celotex faced with an asbestos cement--and with Cemesto hopes to mass-produce future U.S. housing.

Dahlberg's visions--which he outlined last week to the American Society of Planning Officials and hopes to repeat before a Senate Committee some weeks hence--have a utilitarian, ulterior purpose. He espouses a 24-hour work week because then people will spend more time at home. Then they will want a decent home. Result: millions of cheap new houses must be built.

Woe betide high-rate mortgage holders, owners of real estate who want to conserve equities, municipalities which retard progress with high taxes and antiquated building codes! Celotex's Dahlberg is prepared to crush them with the cry: "Your rights cannot override the rights of the people!" If cities won't tear down buildings, replan streets, extend their limits, or if whole municipalities won't merge: "We must move to other fields and abandon such cities to their fate."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.