24 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



manufacturers pure and simple they have never been eifieient. He 

 adds, as a matter of fact, that they have never needed to be efS- 

 cient. In the beginning they had a whole continent full of free 

 raw material. It was easy enough to get things made somehow. 

 The big job was to get them sold and distributed in the teeth of 

 a thousand fighting competitors. In distribution they got the ad- 

 vantage oviT their competitors by demanding larger rebates from 

 the railroads. They sent out 

 spies into the territories of their 

 competitors and led them into 

 ambuscades, and sacked their 

 cities. They used whatever 

 weai)ons were necessary to win 

 the battle, and piled up many 

 vast fortunes. 



The writer contends they were 

 fighting men pure and simple, 

 and tlieir executive selling and 

 office forces — the three wings of 

 their army — were wonderfully 

 efficient, but out back in their 

 mills and factories things went 

 along in the old way under the 

 direction of a superintendent. 



The writer further recites how 

 Germany woke up. How, in the 

 swiftly increasing population in 

 a country without great national 

 resources and not wonderfully 

 fertile, manufacturers were 

 forced to become efficient. He 

 recites an example of a German 

 scientist who aided German 

 manufacturers forty years ago 

 to create out of coal tar not 

 only a waste product but a 

 nuisance and menace, a vast in- 

 dustry worth hundreds of mil- 

 lions if dollars a year. 



He further recites that there 

 were two ways in which the 

 American manufacturers could 

 meet superior manufacturing 

 efficiency abroad. They might 

 in the first place have become 

 efficient themselves', but they 

 ■were usually self-made men with 

 a certain contempt for schools 

 and for applied science. Being 

 the most masterful and power- 

 ful figures in all American af- 

 fairs, it was not difficult for 

 them to bar out German effi- 

 ciency by raising higher the 

 tariff wall, so that at present 

 the iiali dozen top stories of the 

 tariff skyscraper really represent 

 the protection of American man- 

 ufacturing inefficiency. 



Mr. Hyde contends that pro- 

 tected by the tariff against for- 

 eign efficiency, the American 

 manufacturer has devoted much 

 of his recent attention to the eliminatioii of domestic competition; 

 and whenever a trust or combination in a given industry has been 

 formed it has postponed the adoption of methods of efficiency in 

 the manufacturing end of that industry. Whenever a corporation 

 controls or largely dominates an industry, it is plainly in a position 

 to force its production on the market at any price within limits 

 that it may choose to exact. 



THE USE OF WOOD 



The universal use of wood, the way in which it 

 enters inlo every part of our lives is scarcely appreciated. 

 The advance in cost of no one naiural product has so 

 contributed to advance the cost of living as the advance 

 in wood and timber, the direct result of the reckless 

 policy of the government and the reckless practice of 

 the people. 



Wood! The furniture which we use every day is 

 made of it; houses are constructed of it; the toals 

 which we use in our pleasure as well as those which we 

 use still in the coastwise traffic and in the fishing trade 

 are constructed of it. It enters into every single branch 

 of transportation. The cost of wood used in the cars 

 and the ships which carry the freight is added ultimately 

 to the retail price of tiie commodities transported. Wood 

 is used in every possible way. 1 he substitution ol indi- 

 vidual paper cups for tin dippers at the public fountains 

 means just so many more trees to be cut down. The 

 making of matches, the splinters with which we light the 

 fire, the making of lead pencils, is terrible in the destruc- 

 tion of even the smallest sprout that can be made to 

 grow. The paper industry has learned how to conserve 

 the forest tracts which are controlled by them, and to 

 thin them out in many cases scientifically. 



Did you ever stop to think how the price of the 

 package is added to the price of the commodity which 

 it contains? The doubling of the price of wood adds 

 to the price of every commodity by increasing the cost 

 of the package. Your ginghams, your dry goods, your 

 cottons and woolens are packed in wooden boxes, and 

 the cost of that package has been doubled by the increase 

 of the cost of wood. Your butter and eggs go to the 

 market in packages of wood; your fruits, your vege- 

 tables, are packed in a square market box, made of 

 wood; and in the case of almost every commodity of 

 use, wooden packages form a part of the completed pro- 

 duct, and by the destruction of the forest we thereby 

 raise, not one branch of the cost of living, but by increas- 

 ing the cost of the package we raise every part of the 



cost of living. i^QN Curtis Guild, Jr. 



He avers that today the American manufacturer faces a crisis. 

 Trusts and combinations in restraint of trade are illegal. Presum- 

 ably everybody is convinced that sooner or later the tariff will 

 be revised downward. Eaw materials are in the hands of a few 

 wealtliy holders or are retained by the government in the public 

 domain. The increased cost of living demands a re-establishment 

 of salary and labor rewards. Increased efficiency in manufacture 



seems to be the only way out 

 .ind the American manufacturer, 

 quick, alert, far-sighted and 

 broad-minded, may be trusted to 

 rise to the situation when it is 

 put fairly before him. 



The writer argues that the op- 

 portunities are before the Anier- 

 ican manufacturer today to se- 

 cure higher manufacturing effi- 

 ciency, and to secure from his 

 waste and by-products a large 

 increment in income and profit. 

 The lumber industrj' of this 

 country is not protected by a 

 lumber duty that amounts to 

 anything. It therefore has not 

 this protection to fall back on 

 that many of the other leading 

 industrial lines possess, and 

 hence it is in a more precarious 

 condition for money-making 

 possibilities than many of the 

 other lines. A few lumber man- 

 ufacturers have deemed it wise 

 to improve their manufacturing 

 methods and cheapen their cost 

 and indulge in the employment 

 of scientific ' ' highbrows ' ' which 

 assist them in solving problems 

 of wood utilization, etc., but the 

 majority of them are today 

 working along the lines of least 

 resistance. Many operators are 

 indulging in the process of seek- 

 ing quick profits by the quick 

 destruction of their forests 

 rather than lesser and perma- 

 nent profits by handling their 

 properties on a better basis. 

 Even the blindest of stumpage 

 owners and lumber manufactur- 

 ers cannot fail to recognize the 

 fact that there are vast possi- 

 bilities in the utilization of for- 

 est and sawmill waste in the 

 production of other things than 

 lumber. 



With the fast increasing value 

 of stumpage it is going to be 

 forced more and more on the 

 minds of lumber manufacturers 

 that there is an opportunity and 

 a crying need for more efficiency 



_^__^ in the manufacturing end of 



their business. 

 It is a subject worthy the attention of all of them. 



Cross-Ties Purchased for 1909 



The Department of Commerce and Labor reports in a bulletin 

 that cross-ties purchased by the steam and electric railroads of the 

 United States during 1909 amounted to 123,751,000. This repre- 



