I.mnber Company lies along the banks of 

 I^ittlo river at Morehouse, Mo., thirty-five 

 niile.s west of Cairo. A great deal of timber 

 is floated down this river, but most of the 

 logs come in by rail from the base of the 

 company 's timber operations about twenty- 

 five miles distant. They are unloaded at 

 Morehouse into the river and are handled 

 mechanically by a series of unique devices. 

 About 400 men are employed at the More- 

 house plant the year round. 



The logging end of the business is in im- 

 mediate charge of a veteran timber expert. 

 The main logging camps are located on a 

 timber property of 83,000 acres in New Ma- 

 drid county about twenty miles south of 

 Morehouse. In addition to this, the company 

 owns 27,000 acres in Stoddart county, and 

 has also a southern property of 22,000 acres 

 in Richland parish, Louisiana. The average 

 stumpage on the company's holdings is 6,000 

 feet to the acre, eighty per cent of which is 

 red gum. To reach its timber the company 

 originally built a logging road from More- 

 house to the southern boundary of its hold- 

 ings. This was later incorporated into the 

 St. Louis & Gulf Branch of the Frisco Sys- 

 tem. The logging trains of the company 

 operate over this road and are given a place 

 on the Frisco 's regular train schedule. 



The concern owns five first-class locomo- 

 tives and 150 logging ears which it operates 

 over about thirty-five miles of the Gulf road. 

 Three branches of tramways, each four and 

 a half miles long, are now in use, and another, 

 three miles long, is under construction. In 

 the woods the company operates its own 

 steam loaders, three in number, and a Lidger- 

 wood skidding machine. Sixty-five loads of 

 logs are brought daily to the mills, each 

 car containing about 2,000. feet. The actual 

 logging in the woods is done by contract, 

 and about two hundred men are engaged in 

 cutting and handling the timber. The log- 

 ging is done chiefly with cattle, fifty-four 

 ox-teams being employed in this work. 



For twenty-five years this concern has beeti 

 the leading red gum producer of the coun- 

 try, and the following tabulation will show 

 to what extent its business in this wood has 



grown : 



Feet. 



Cut during 1900 30,506,041 



Shipped during 190D 30,671,801 



Stocli on hand Jan. 1, 1!)00 14,.j31,112 



During these twenty-five years the use of 

 red gum has developed untU today the wood 

 is used for a great variety of purposes — 

 agricultural implements, buggy body work, 

 boxes, brushes and chairs; also in factories 

 manufacturing dowels, cigar boxes, curtain 

 poles, cars, desks, all grades of furniture, 

 mop handles, mantels, office fixtures, pianos 

 and organs, porch columns, picture moulding, 

 refrigerators, screen-doors, ships, sash and 

 doors, showcases, woodenware, washing ma- 

 chines, wagons, wheelbarrows, wood novelties, 

 pulley facings, coffins and paving blocks. 



For the benefit of the lumber buyers and 

 other members of the traveling fraternity 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



whose business calls them to Morehouse, the 

 llimmelberger-llarrison Lumber Company has 

 erected and opened a fine three-story brick 

 liotel in that city. This building is finishe'd 

 throughout in the company's specialty — St. 

 Francis Basin red gum. Any one who is at 

 all skeptical as to the practicability and 

 beauty of this wood for interior finish can 

 do no better than to take a trip to Morehouse 

 and stop at the Forest Hotel. 



The story of the Himmelberger-Harrison 

 Lumber Company's march of progress is an 

 interesting one. It is a story of man's in- 

 genuity in overcoming the obstacles of 

 nature, of draining practically worthless 

 lands, and building upon them a great and 

 profitable business. 



For twenty-five j'ears this company has 

 l)een at work reclaiming its lands, which are 

 now drained by a network of dredged 

 ditches, the total length of which is nearly 



25 



.500 miles. As the timber is cleared off sec- 

 tion by section the land is sold to farmers, 

 and the day is not far distant when south- 

 oast Missouri will be one of the most fertile 

 and productive farming sections iu the world, 

 as a result of the far-sighted policy of the 

 Himmelberger-Harrison Lumber Company. 



Eeferring to the group of illustrations ac- 

 companying this article : The two upper pic 

 tures are views in Yard No. 1: the small 

 center one a birdseye view of Yard No. £, 

 and the remaining two are scenes in the 

 woods, loading with a Decker loader and 

 a great log train en route to the company's 

 mills respectively. This brief sketch with 

 the accompanying illustrations will give some 

 idea of the achievements and aims of the 

 Himmelberger-Harrison Lumber Company, 

 probably the greatest gum manufacturing 

 concern in the world. 



Suggestions to Small SaWmill J\Ien. 



FOURTH PAPER 



The discussion of when and when not to in- 

 stall a log turner naturally leads to the ap- 

 pliances used for turning logs on the car- 

 riage — of the different kinds, of how they 

 are installed, and what advantages they offer. 

 For use in small mills there are two types 

 of power log-turners, the overhead jack or 

 crab, and the nigger working from below. 

 There are various shapes of blocks and 

 adjustable knees that may be made use of iu 

 connection with skids of the log deck to fa- 

 cilitate the turning of logs to the sawyer 

 and boosting them back on the carriage 

 again. The overhead jack and the skid de- 

 vices are things that must be used now and 

 then, and they are very handy; but the 

 favorite log-turner with all classes of mill 

 men is the nigger, because it reduces the 

 manual labor required in this work to a mini- 

 mum and its lever it always within con- 

 venient reach of the sawyer. In fact, the 

 nigger is such a strong favorite that even 

 when mills are put flat on the ground the 

 operators not infrequently dig a pit for the 

 nigger. 



It is the friction nigger that the small and 

 medium-sized sawmill man turns to persist- 

 ently to help roll logs, and this simple bit 

 of mechanism is so widely known and gen- 

 erally used that one might think there is 

 nothing in connection with it that needs dis- 

 cussion. Still, there may be. There is a right, 

 and frequently several wrong ways, to con- 

 struct and operate even the simplest mechan- 

 ical devices, and the friction nigger is no 

 exception to this rule. The most common 

 error that mill men fall into in connection 

 with putting in the nigger is to set it too 

 far back in the log deck; Jhat is, too far 

 away from the sawyer. The nigger should 

 ordinarily set so as to strike a log midway 

 between the ends, but that does not mean 

 that it should be set in the middle of the 

 length of the log deck end of the carriage 



track. This idea would seem to be preva- 

 lent, however, as the majority of niggers ai'e 

 set too far back, and the sawyer wastes much 

 time running the carriage back and forth. 

 A\'ith six feet of space between the front 

 end of the husk frame and the first skid, and 

 the skids four feet apart, the place for the 

 nigger is between the second and third skid, 

 or, in other words, between four and eight 

 feet back from the sawyer's skid. And it is 

 better four than eight. Let us turn for a 

 moment to a consideration of how the aver 

 age friction nigger is set up and operated. 



Most of the older types were driven direct 

 from the engine shaft, usually the shaft hav- 

 ing a small, straight-faced iron pulley on the 

 outer end and the spool having a wood or 

 paper friction pulley and being mounted 

 directly under the engine shaft with a swing- 

 ing bridge tree on a heavy bar lever con- 

 nected to the sawyer's nigger lever with a 

 series of light iron rods. Some of these 

 older types have worked well and are giving 

 good service today; some have worked in- 

 differently, and some have been a nuisance. 

 They may all seem to have been erected prac- 

 tically alike, but there are small dift'erences 

 that count a great deal even in the operation 

 of ' the nigger. Sometimes the paper or 

 wooden friction wheel on the spool is made 

 too small, giving the itigger too much speed 

 and robbing it of so much of its power that 

 it becomes what, in the language of the mill 

 man, is called a pole-turner instead of a 

 log-turner. On the other hand, where the 

 friction wheel on the spool is made larger to 

 reduce the speed and give power, the effect 

 may be good so far as turning logs is con- 

 cerned, but not infrequently the nigger is 

 so slow starting and descending and freeing 

 itself from the log that it wastes time for the 

 mill. Again, at times effort is made to over- 

 come this slow return by putting additional 

 weight on the nigger, and the result is that 



