October 25, 1916 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



19 



Has the Steel Car Proven Its Worth? 



JT SEEMS JUST POSSIBLE that the extensive car shortage and 

 extreme difficulty of getting steel and steel products con- 

 stitute most propitious circumstances allowing those responsible 

 for the design and specifications of railroad cars to gracefully 

 admit wood back to the ranks of the favored. Of course, it would 

 never do to openly admit that steel had not proven more tlian 

 satisfactory under every test — the public has been too thoroughly 

 fed with fabulous facts on the life-saving attributes of the cars 

 that were ' ' built like a battleship. ' ' Yet, a disinterested, but au- 

 thentic authoritiy, cites case after ease of the failure of steel to 

 stand up in certain parts of ear construction. 



Anyone who knows anything of the conditions leading up to the 

 general adoption of the steel car knows that this was forced, not 

 by a recognition on the part of scientific men responsible for car 

 design and construction that the qualities of steel vastly surpassed 

 those of wood in car construction, 

 but rather by an unintelligeutly 

 created public demand. 



But regardless of ancient his- 

 tory, the fact remains that the com- 

 bination steel and wood car is com- 

 ing back and is goiug to be the 

 permanent type of construction. 

 No less an authority than the 

 assistant to the president of the 

 Great Northern Ealiway states 

 that ' ' lumber may soon regain its 

 former position as a material for 

 freight cars.'.' He gives specific 

 reasons why he believes this, and 

 his convictions are based not on 

 the scarcity of steel products but 

 on the good sense of using wood 

 in freight car construction wher- 

 ever wood can be used. 



We are all taught early tliat it 

 is not sportsmanlike to say, ' ' I 

 told you so, ' ' but there is an 

 immense amount of satisfaction 

 in being able to point to the re- 

 turn of wood to freight car con- 

 struction when that final outcome 

 had been prophesied and re-proph- 

 esied over a period of several 

 years. 



The all-steel car is a sop to a 

 fickle public — a public influenced 

 by superficial evidence and without time or desire to investigate. 

 It was instituted with the hope (not the conviction) by railroad 

 managers that it would succeed. It has proven its impracticability 

 from an operating standpoint and its inefficiency from a construc- 

 tion standpoint. 



In the future steel will have its place and wood will play its part 

 in car construction. The railroad field will hence be a much more 

 alluring prospect to the lumber merchant than it has been for sev- 

 eral years back. 



The Dimension Business As a Stabilizer 



THE MANUFACTURE AND USE OF HAEDWOOD DIMEN- 

 SION stock has been aired in its various phases off and on for 

 a good many years, and while it seemingly has been covered from 

 every conceivable angle, there is one feature which possibly has not 

 occurred to the average buyer. This has to do with the stabilizing of 

 values and the resultant benefit to the buyer that would come through 

 the general use of dimension stock. 



It is a deplorable but generally accepted fact, that the great burden 

 in lumbering is to carry the lower grades. This burden obviously must 



Babson Says Lumber Now 

 One of Few Bargains 



Babson's ' reports need neither explanation 

 nor apoloffy. The October report stronBTy 

 supports Hardwood Record's stand, on the 

 vrisdom of buying now. in the following; 



"The enforced curtailment in lumber, which was 

 instigated last spring, has had a beneficial effect 

 upon the market. While no general advance has 

 yet gone into effect, considerable quiet buying has 

 occurred. The chances are very favorable that 

 lumber values will be higher before the end of the 

 year. Domestic consumption is admittedly large. 

 Altho the export trade is popularly believed to be 

 in the doldrums, statistics show that it has made a 

 comfortable improvement over a year ago. There- 

 fore, the indications of continued good demand, to- 

 gether with the greatly curtailed production, cannot 

 possibly mean other than higher prices. We, of 

 course, do not know just when any material ad- 

 vance will occur, BUT WE STRONGLY FEEL 

 THAT LUMBER IS ONE OF THE FEW BAR- 

 GAINS IN THE COMMODITY MARKET TO- 

 DAY. The chances are that this advance will carry 

 prices to the high levels of last spring — perhaps 

 higher. We are bullish on lumber." 



be borne by the upper grades. That is, if a man pays so much for 

 his timber and for the operation of cutting it up, there must be an 

 added revenue somewhere to compensate for the fact that while he 

 paid a fair value for all of the lumber as it stood in the tree, he can- 

 not get in many cases even manufacturing cost out of his low grades. 

 Were the upper grades, then, not able to carry this added burden, 

 if is apparent that the lumber business could not continue to exist. 

 Consider that the millman figured his upper grade values on their 

 definite intrinsic worth based on their percentage of the logs, and a 

 reasonable profit added to operating and log cost. The man who fig- 

 ured this way would necessarily be considering his upper grades en- 

 tirely separately from the rest of his product rather than grouping 

 his output and working one against the other. If he did figure this 

 way, he would be making just a fair profit from his upper grades, but 

 as the low grade is an evil which is always with us, his actual loss 

 liere, basing it upon the same line of reasoning, would more than offset 

 the profit from the other. Hence, the artificially widened spread. 



That is where the use of dimen- 

 sion has its big opportunity. If 

 the buyer would not make himself 

 think that he should get perfectly 

 sound and clear dimension stock 

 on the basis of cull lumber prices, 

 there would be millions of feet of 

 dimension stock manufactured 

 where there are now tliousands. On 

 the other hand, the sawmUl man 

 would be able to make money from 

 his low grade rather losing it. 

 Hence, his uppers would not have 

 to carry such a heartbreaking 

 burden. 



The result would be that as 

 timber becomes poorer and the per- 

 centage of lower grades greater, 

 the comparative cost of the uppers 

 would not have to be automatically 

 increased as it has been in the past. 

 Who would benefit from this but 

 the consumer? 



If the stock man buys a wild 

 plains horse and by patient, care- 

 ful training makes him a fine 

 saddle animal, would the buyer 

 be justified in saying that he 

 should not pay as much for that 

 animal as for a horse of the same 

 quality that was reared in a more 



refined environment? There is 

 nothing to justify the average factory man's attitude toward dimen- 

 sion lumber, and so long as he maintains that attitude, he is spiting 

 himself, for just so long will the general manufacture of dimension 

 be retarded. 



Lumber the Only Real Bargain 



T N THE EDITORIAL PANEL in this issue is reproduced a report 

 ■1 from the Babson's Statistical Bureau which states, without qualify- 

 ing the opinion that lumber is today one of the few real commodity 

 bargains. The opinion is supported by a recitation of facts as to 

 conditions. Anybody in the least familiar with the Babson organiza- 

 tion and with its prestige among big business men, must take this 

 advice at its face value. 



And yet since that report was issued the conditions responsible for 

 it have become even more acute. Orders have been maintained in 

 excess of actual manufacture. In fact, so generally depleted are hard- 

 wood stocks, and so meager is the promise of any possible increase in 

 production, that Babson's bureau is most certainly justified in its 

 .statement that lumber is one of the few commodities on which con- 

 tracts for future delivery are eminently justified. 



