20 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



Octobor in. 11121 



six or eight plants where the barrel materials are made up, said 

 that 40 of the 41 mills are closed and that the one mill is operating 

 on a contract which provides for the removal of the timber by a 

 given time. He said that all costs except transportation had been 

 reduced to about the pre-war level and he estimated the freight 

 rate to be approximately 20 to 25 per cent of the total. Stating that 

 his mills are not carrying on any operations in the woods now 

 Mr. Foley said that if he knew that in 30 or 40 days the old freight 

 rates would bo restored he would start operating many of the 

 closed plants now so as to get stock for next year. 



"I do not mean to say that we would get all the closed plants 

 into operation right away but we would get started. Unless we 

 begin logging within 30 or 40 days we will not be able to do any- 

 thing. Work in the woods cannot be done in the winter after the 

 rains have started. We depend upon native labor and when one 

 of our port.able mills is set up at a si)ur on the railroad, the receipts 

 of the railroad at that point are about double what is received 

 from us. If we pay the railroad $100,000 on our traffic the inci- 

 dental traffic including passenger revenues usually amounts to as 

 much more." 



In reply to a question of Mr. Humburg as to whether the Volstead 

 law had hurt the barrel business, Mr. Foley said that it has been 

 hurt a little but that the whiskey barrel part of his business was 

 small. 



Lower Grades Await Decay 



E. B. Norman of the Hollj- Bidge Lumber Co., said that the four 

 plants of that company were producing at 25 per cent of normal, 

 that the sale of high-grade lumber is going on but that the lower 

 grades are being stacked to rot. He said the four mills could be 

 run at nearly normal if the old freight rates were restored. 



C. H. Sherrill, of Merrj'vale, La., was a refractory witness. He 

 told the railroad lawyer that he could not see what bearing their 

 questions had on the issue especially when they asked the author- 

 ity for information on which he based his assertion that the freight 

 rates had shut his company out of competition in Chicago. 



At the continuation of the hearing on October 5, J. I. Nellcn, of 

 the Wilderness Lumber Company, with mills at Nellen, W. Va., 

 said that he could not sell his low grades on freight rates now 

 existing. He said that he had been unable to compete for fur- 

 nishing mine doors in the anthracite coal region. 



Walter W. Kelly, a wholesale lumber dealer in Detroit, supplying 

 hardwood for aytomobile bodies, said that under the rates which 

 became operative in August, 1920, he had been unable to buy any 

 low grade grade lumber in the South. He said that he had been 

 forced to get it from Canadian mills. 



T. E. Sledger of May Brothers, Memphis, operating two mills, 



said that he had been unable to ship any low grade lumber since 

 the increase in rates last year. His outbound shipments since the 

 increase had been less than 7 per cent of what they had been in 

 the corresponding period prior to that time, he said. 



' Bailroads Violate Moral Law 



S. M. Nickey, president of the Southern Hardwood Traffic Asso- 

 ciation, following an investigation of conditions in Indiana lumber 

 mills recently, said that the Indiana mills arc operating at full 

 time at present. The contention of Mr. Nickey was that neither the 

 railroads nor the Interstate Commerce Commission had the moral 

 right to disrupt long-standing relationships in rates. He said that 

 he and other lumbermen had gone into the South, bought land 

 from the Yazoo & Mississippi A^alley and other railroads on the 

 assumption that the then existing relationships would be preserved. 

 He said that he was not contending for an equalization of the 

 advantages of location but merely restoration of the adjustment 

 which had existed for many years and under which mills in the 

 north and south had been able to get into competitive markets 

 on transportation rate terms which, when added to other factors 

 in the cost of production, gave them an opportunity to contend for 

 business on equal terms. 



At the afternoon session, October 5, W. E. Hyde of Memphi.> and 

 Lake Providence, La., said the effect of the advance in rates under 

 Ex parte 74 on 15,000 acres of hardwood timber owned by him was 

 the same as increasing his cost of production $100,000. That is 

 too great a burden to be borne by anj-one who hopes to obtain 

 business in competition with lumber produced in the northern mills. 



V. W. Kraft, representing the Cooperage Industries of America, 

 said the average rate on cooperage stock is $4.50 per 1,000 feet and 

 that is just about the average of prices received by the sellers. He 

 submitted that all of the testimony put into the record by the hard- 

 wood lumbermen represented the condition of the southern cooper- 

 .age firms and companies. 



C. A. News, assistant secretary of the Southern Hardwood Traf- 

 fic Association put into the record more than 20 exhibits to show 

 that rates on lumber even prior to the increase of General Order 28 

 of the Director General of Railroads had reached the maximum of 

 reasonableness and that every addition since June 24, 1918, had 

 made them unreasonable. 



W. A. Eansom of the Gayoso Lumber Company, C. M. Kellogg 

 of the Kellogg Lumber Company, and Frank B. Eobertson of the 

 Ferguson-Palmer Company, Inc., all of Memphis, are among others 

 who will testify for the Southern hardwood lumber manufacturers. 



It is generally believed that a decision will lie forthcoming 

 around the first of November. 



Woodusers* Association Ends Fruitful Year 



t Continttifl from piill' IT) 



mately emerge which will visualize, both to the producer and to the 

 user of dimension stock, the advantages of a real study of condi- 

 tions in that phase of wood stock. 



The Nominating Committee submitted its report, which was 

 adopted by the meeting, and the following officers were elected for 

 the ensuing year: President, E. E. Parsonage; vice-president, 

 Hugh P. Baker; treasurer, F. A. Vogel, secretary, Wm. B. Baker. 

 Excutive committee, the officers and W. A. Babbitt, John Foley and 

 W. Harry Davis. 



The following significant comment is taken from the Annu.al 

 Report of W. A. Babbitt, the chairman of the Committee on 

 St.andardization: 



■When your Committee undertook this work of standardization of the 

 dimension requirements of the wood fabricating industries, our theory 

 of the problem was that it would be necessary to train our heavy guns 

 on the lumbermen. Everywhere, even by the secretaries of the lumber 

 nsscciations, we were assured that the entire success of the project 

 depended on convincing the lumbeimcn that it was worth while to 

 co-operate with the consumers and furnish them what they wanted. 

 These lumbermen were a bard-boiled, opinionated lot, and so forth. 



Our experience thus far has been entirely to the contrary. The out 

 standing feature of our problem is not the lumbermen, but the wood 

 fabricator. It is possible that we have been unfortunate as to some of 

 the industries we have approached with a view to standardizing their 

 requirements. Be that as it maj% your Committee is no longer open 

 (it it ever was) to the suggestion from a wood fabricator that lumbermen 

 are a hard-boiled, opinionated lot. It is not lawful for the pot to call the 

 kettle black. 



However, we must admit that considering the limited funds available, 

 the advances toward a complete solution of the problem of standardiza- 

 tion, with its attendant enormous conservation of forest resources, have 

 been far beyond anything that we could reasonably have expected. The 

 planting of this year will bring a larger harvest in the coming months. 



Andrews-Early Company Formed 



Howard F. Early, for the past two years sales manager of the Charles 

 Gill Lumber Co., at Wausau, Wis., has severed his connection with that 

 concern and is now associate<I with the John B. Andrews under the 

 firm name of Andrews-Early Company, manufacturers and wholesalers, 

 northern hardwoods. They will continue the wholesaling of northern 

 hardwoods as heretofore. 



