The Hardwood Record 



VOL. XVI. 



CHICAGO, OCTOBER 10, 1903. 



No. 12 



The Hardwood Record. 



PUBLISHED BY 



C. V. KIMBALL, 



ON THE 10TH AND 2STH OF EACH MONTH. 



134 MONROE STREET, - CHICAGO, ILL. 



ENTERED AT CHICAGO POST OFFICE AS 

 SECOND-CLASS MATTER. 



TERMS OF subscription: 



U. 8., Canada and Mexico $1.00 per year. 



Foreign Countries 2.00 per year. 



ADVERTISING RATES ON APPLICATION. 



ADVERTISING INDEX ON PAGE 30. 



Contributions on subjects of interest 

 to lumbermen arc invited from any 

 person. Subscribers and others are re- 

 quested to notify us of changes in per- 

 sonnel or organizations of hardwood 

 lumber firms. We desire especially to 

 receive particulars of installation of 

 new plants, transfers of property and 

 timber holdings and experiments in 

 new methods of manufacturing or the 

 utilization of by-products. New publi- 

 cations of interest to the trade, including 

 catalogues, stock lists and circulars will 

 receive attention if sent to this office. 

 Our columns are also available for 

 criticism and comment on any article 

 published or for news of any sort con- 

 cerning the hardwood trade. 



Our readers will confer a favor when 

 writing to advertisers if they will state 

 that they saw the advertisement in the 

 Hardwood Record. This is little 

 trouble and costs nothing, but it helps 

 us and is information wanted by the 

 advertiser. 



THE BUSINESS SITUATION. 



Tilt' further the liquidation or securities 

 ill Wall street is carried the less uneasi- 

 ness the public has as to the final out- 

 come. It has come to be generally under- 

 stood at this time that the liquidation of 

 the past year has been forced by a com- 

 liiuation of strong financial Interests which 

 has at all times had the situation strongly 

 controlled. 



The craze for organizing and consoli- 

 ilatiug the various industries of the coun- 

 try into trusts, which has prevailed in this 

 country for the last four or five years, has 

 resulted in the piling up of a tremendous 

 amount of securities of new and tmtried 

 concerns whose dividend-paying powers 

 were entirely problematic. Of these se- 

 curities the public was very chary, being 

 fully aware of the fact that fully 25 per 

 ■ ent of their supposed value represented 

 nothing but atmosphere. The enormous 

 \ nlume to which these new securities grew 

 became a serious threat against the busi- 

 ness interests of the country. So serious 

 and so threatening did the situation be- 

 come that, in order to avert a panic, the 

 strongest financial interests in the country, 

 with Rockefeller nt their head, went sys- 

 tematically and carefully to work to bring 

 the business of the country down to a 

 solid basis by squeezing the water out of 

 the inflated market. 



Over four billions of suppositious value 

 has been squeezed out of the stocks and 

 securities listed in Wall street. Taken by 

 itself that assertion is calculated to make 

 ,1 deep impression, but the fact of the mat- 

 tor is that the four billions of value never 

 existed except in the minds of the trust 

 liromoters. There has been an apparent 

 loss of four billions of dollars, but in real- 

 ity no loss at all. 



.Vnd the business of the country is safely 

 down to solid earth again. There is some 

 wreckage and waste scattered about and 

 there will be more of it probably, but the 

 danger is past and we should all be thank- 

 ful it is. There is no danger of any panic 

 or serious financial disturbance that we 

 can see, and while we believe that next 

 year Will not be as good a business year 

 .IS we have had in the past, production 

 seeming to have caught up with the con- 

 sumption in many lines, and it being presi- 

 ilential year, and for various other reasons, 

 we exi>ect that next year will be a year of 

 (inly moderate prosperity, but we see no 

 reason why matters should be any worse 

 ilian that. 



.\s before stated, it is certain that busi- 



ness will finish out this year in good shape. 

 All danger of damage to crops by frost is 

 now passed, and good crops of all kinds 

 are practically assured. The impetus 

 which the harvesting and transporting of 

 these crops will give to business is bound 

 to carry us to the end of the year in good 

 shape and bring to a successful end one 

 of the most prosperous years in the coun- 

 try's history. As before stated, the pros- 

 pects for next year, while not as bright 

 as they might be, are by no means depress- 

 ing. In fact, we consider the condition at 

 the end of the year will be better than it 

 was at the beginning. The huge fabric of 

 "'undigested securities" has been brought 

 safely down to earth and nobody seriously 

 liurt. The prices at which securities are 

 offered now represent a legitimate value, 

 and at those prices they will gradually be 

 absorbed by the public. 



On the whole we consider the business 

 situation satisfactory. 



"A RICH MAN'S PANIC." 

 The distress of the past year in the stock 

 market has frequently, and with a degree 

 of aptness, been termed a "rich man's 

 panic." But we can't have a rich man's 

 panic and have it end there. Its effects 

 will, as in all panics, bear heaviest on the 

 poor. The rich man's panic is pretty well 

 over, so far as the rich man is concerned, 

 and pi'eparations are now being made to 

 pass it on to the balance of us. 



Instead of the :.' per cent (piarterly divi- 

 dend on the common stock of the Unite<l 

 States Steel Corporation, which had l)eeu 

 promised, a dividend of '^ per cent has 

 been paid, and on sound business princi- 

 ples the dividend should have been passed 

 entirely. The United States Steel Corpo- 

 ration has been gutted. Even at the en- 

 ormous business and high prices of the 

 past year this corporation has not actually 

 earned 2 tier cent on its common stock. 

 Under a reversal of business conditions, 

 such as seems inevitable for the ensuing 

 year, at least in iron and steel products, 

 the United States Steel Corporation will 

 become bankrupt. Its preferretl and com- 

 mon stock and its bonds are mortgages 

 against the corporate property, and when 

 it defaults in its guaranteed interest pay- 

 ments, it will pass into the hands of a re- 

 ceiver, and the biggest and most repre- 

 hensible pieces of ras<^ality of this genera- 

 tion will have been consummateil. 



At the Carnegie plant at Homestead. 

 Pa., a notice Is posted that on January \ 

 the wage scale of the company will bo 



