HARDWOOD RECORD 



. end of the trade, and it is a foregone conclusion that he will lend 

 his best efforts to that end. 



The Mountain River Tides. 



Buring the last fortnight the rivers of the poplar and oak produc- 

 ing sections of Kentucky and Tennessee have given up their wealth 

 of poplar and oak logs confined in their upper courses. It has been 

 the best ' ' tide ' ' that has been witnessed in these streams in the last 

 ten years, but like the history of all mountain log floating streams, it 

 has by no means brought the logs out clean. The best run came out 

 of the Guyandotte and nearly sixty per cent of the logs are safely 

 boomed in the Ohio, tributary to the Ashland, Cincinnati and Louis- 

 ville mills. The Kentucky river has only delivered about forty per 

 cent of its stock of logs. The Cumberland and Tennessee rivers 

 probably show a delivery of about fifty per cent, while the output 

 h-jom the Big Sandy has been comparatively light. On the whole, the 

 logs delivered safely at the booms are not more than fifty per cent 

 of the total that are banked on the upper streams, and while there 

 will be a great quantity of poplar manufactured during the next 

 ninety days, it is very doubtful if there is yet enough poplar in 

 sight to insure anything like a sufficient amount to supply a full 

 j-ear's consumptive demand. 



Very careful estimates made at the first of tlie year, indicated that 

 the poplar supply would be well toward 100,000,000 short for 190.5. 

 Even if the streams made a clean run, unless further tides obtain, it 

 is pretty safe to assume that while poplar will be comparatively 

 cheap for some months to come, purchases at current prices will have 

 a very handsome speculative value before the season is over. 



Uniform System of Hardwood Measurement. 



There are certain elements which sliiiuld ciitcr into liarihvnml lunilicr 

 measurement, which sometimes are not considered. Perhaps simplicity 

 is the first desideratum, and the next one is a tally by means of 

 which the width of every board, and therefore the average width of 

 the lot may be determined; and the third and one of equal impor- 

 tance, is accuracy. A good many men foremost in the hardwood 

 industry, contend that the simplest, best and reasonably accurate 

 system of measuring hardwood lumber lies in scaling every piece as 

 though it were twelve feet long. This system is very simple, as it is 

 necessary only to use a twelve-foot rule, and have a tally sheet bear- 

 ing the widths from the minimum to the maximum of the lumber, 

 and different sections in which to carry the comparatively few 

 lengths into which hardwood lumber is cut. The one inch, twelve 

 feet lumber is extended as it stands on the tally sheet. Prom the 

 ten feet is deducted one-sixth of the total extended as twelve feet. 

 To the fourteen feet section is added one-sixth. To the sixteen feet 

 section is added one-third. To the eighteen feet section one-half 

 is added. 



Of course if the lumber be one and one-quarter, one and one-half 

 or two inches or more in thickness, the result is multiplied by the 

 correct fractional amount to show the number of feet contained in 

 the total footing of the piece. This system of measurement is de- 

 manded by the export trade and is always followed. One of its chief 

 features of excellence lies in the fact that the width of every piece 

 of lumber is shown at a glance by the piece tally which ordinarily 

 accompanies and which should accompany every lumber invoice. Com- 

 petent tallymen, however, allege that for some occult reason this 

 system of tallying falls short; that the actual quantity of lumber in 

 the average car is from fifty to seventy-five feet in excess of the 

 measurement. This being as it may — and it is doubtful if it be true 

 — the system has so many merits that very likely it would be a wise 

 measure to adopt as a standard system by all hardwood associations 

 and exchanges. 



Shortage of White Oak Timber. 



As e\'idenced by the discussion and interest aroused at the recent 

 session of the National Coopers' Association held at St. Louis, it 

 is evident that the cooperage trade has awakened to the fact that 

 there is a great shortage of white oak timber. 



At the doors of the stave people may be laid this state of affairs 

 in n much greater degree than to the lumbermen. Ever since stave- 



making commenced in this country the stave makers have been the 

 slaughterers and wanton destroyers of the forest. All methods, up 

 to within a very recent time, have been wasteful in the extreme. 

 They have left more merchantable white oak to rot and burn in the 

 forest than was ever utilized for the making of staves. The very 

 choicest oak of the land has been felled and the straight-grained 

 portion of the butt only has been converted into bolts. The re- 

 mainder has been abandoned where it lay. While this awakening 

 to the true situation of oak forests has come very late in the day, 

 perhaps it may yet assist in the jiropcr conservation of the re- 

 mainder of the growth. 



The cooperage trade is now easting about for some other wood 

 from which to make staves, as the price of good oak has reached 

 a height that is becoming almost prohibitory for the making of 

 staves for tight barrel cooperage. It is up to the inventive genius 

 of this country to devise a netal package for the carrying of liquids, 

 which doubtless will liave to be surrounded with slack barrel staves, 

 properly hooped, for the protection of the metal casing, rendering 

 possible the handling of the packages, the tiering of them, and 

 enabling them to resist pointed pressure. Old and primitive as it 

 is the barrel is the ideal package for a myriad of uses; and w-hero 

 invention has improved most things as the ages have gone by there 

 is no better barrel today than was made during the Ptolemsean era. 

 The sooner the wickedly wasteful cooperage trade is driven out 

 if American forests, so much the better. Oak is the only Ameri- 

 can hardwood remaining in any considerable quantity on which the 

 countrj' has to depend for high-class material for the making of 

 furniture, interior finish, flooring and an infinity of other uses, 

 where character and quality of the wood is essential. It is a wood 

 that is needed for utilitarian uses far beyond that encompassed with- 

 in the limits of a beer keg or a whiskey barrel. 



Annual of National Hardwood Lumber Association. 



The annual inccling (it the Xatiniuil H.-inlwunil Assui-iatidii will be 

 held at Bufl'alo, N. Y., Thursday and Friday, May 18 and 19. The 

 meeting promises to be very largely attended, as even the social fea- 

 tures promised by the hosts will insure an attendance probably greater 

 than ever before in the history of the association. The headquarters 

 will be at the Iroquois hotel, which is one of the palatial hotels of 

 the Queen City of the Lakes, and on Thursda}' evening a very elabor- 

 ate banquet will be given there by the Buffalo hardwood contingent 

 to its guests. Those who have had the pleasure of participating in 

 an Iroquois hotel banquet will know that it will be an affair of gas- 

 tronomic delight. 



Orson E. Yeager is chairman of the committee having the enter- 

 tainment of the National Association in charge, and with his asso- 

 ciates on this committee, is well prepared to know how to handle 

 an affair of this sort. A great variety of entertainment will be 

 aft'orded the visitors, and every moment of this tinu- will lie fully 

 occupied by either business or i>lcasure. 



Wants Standard Inspection Rules. 



The Canada Lumberman suggests that it would be wi.sdom on the 

 part of Canadian hardwood lumbermen to adopt standard rules for 

 inspection, thus following the progress in this direction that is being 

 made in the United States. In this connection the paiier states that 

 white pine production has not yet reached its zenith in Canada, 

 but very soon it will gradually decline in volume from year to year, 

 as has been the experience of the white pine states of Michigan, 

 Wisconsin and Minnesota. However, this does not mean a reduction 

 in lumber operations, but rather that the deciduous trees will provide 

 a raw material for Canadian sawmills to a greater extent than in the 

 past. Canada possesses large quantities of birch, maple, elm, ash and 

 basswood, and the production of lumber from these woods is still in 

 its infancy. Kailroads are already penetrating the northern part of 

 Ontario and Quebec, which will open up a very large hardwood field 

 which up to this time has \)een untouched. At one time considerable 

 quantities of hardwoods were shipped from the Dominion to the 

 United States, but now the trend of trade is entirely in the other 

 direction. 



