18 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



January 10, 1919 



tlie sliipping lioanl will he rcleaspil so far as military considera- 

 tions permit. Most of llio reipiisitioned ships were steel. 



Owing to criticism of the wooden ships, special precautions are 

 taken to prove their worth, among Ihem being a twenty-four luuir 

 test of sailing on the ojien sea. The former test wa.s four liours. 

 In case the ship is rejected by the .\nieric;in Bureau of Shipping 

 and the United States Steamboat Inspection Service, the defects 

 must be corrected at the expense of the contractor. 



Building Matters 



Secretary of War B;iker favors I li" purchase of the army canton- 

 ment sites, which may cost .•!;12,(HI0,000 (they being on leased 

 ground), which would mean the maintenance of the great wooden 

 cities and tlie continuance of a considerable demand for forest prod- 

 ucts for maintenance purpose, but it has also been decided by the 

 War Department to quit work on ten army hospitals at Eochester, 

 Cincinnati. Chicago, Cleveland, Camp Shelby, Miss.; Des Moines, 

 and Nashville, Tenn., and also to abandon building and construc- 

 tion projects at Cleveland, American University, Washington, D. 

 C; Fort Omalia, Neb.; Chapman Field, Fla., and Camp Pike, Ark. 

 The army will retain the new artillery proving ground at Aberdeen, 

 Md., and the big gun manufacturing plant at Neville Island, Pa. 



The promotion of building in the United States is planned by the 

 secretary of labor, who has organized a special division in his de- 

 partment for the purpose. The division will use every effort to 

 help building, will mobilize ex])erts for the purpose, and will co- 

 operate with building trades industrial organizations and seek to 

 obtain financial assistance for those embarking upon building op- 

 erations. The division will have the support of organized labor, 

 which is trying to promote a building boom in order to prevent 

 unemployment of labor. 



Forty portable school houses have been contracted for by the 

 District of Columbia authorities. They are expected to be ready 

 for use by next month. 



A hundred De Haviland airplanes have been returned by the 

 postoffice department to the army as unsuited for mail carrying. 

 They had previously been turned over by the army to the postal 

 service in accordance with the provisions of a recent act of con- 

 gress. The postoffice department wants to get its own airplanes 

 for mail carrying at the expenditure of millions of dollars. 



The railroad administration has established a bureau to give in- 

 formation to homeseekers as to opportunities for farming, etc., on 

 cutover and other lands in the west and south. J. L. Edwards will 

 have charge of the bureau. 



Miscellaneous Matters 



Price fixing in concert by the lumber industry or other industries 

 is forbidden and beginning this month the department of justice 

 will enforcs the anti-trust law against it, it is said. During the 

 period of hostilities the government virtually encouraged agree- . 

 ments within the industries establishing prices to the government 

 and to the public. 



The brief of Gen. L. C. Boyle, representing the lumber industry, 

 that was filed with the senate finance committee seeking amend- 

 ment of the revenue law so as to take better care of the industry 

 under the income tax law in the matter of invested capital, value 

 of stumpage, depletion, etc., bore some fruit, for although the bill 

 as it passed the senate did not contain all the provisions wanted 

 by the lumbermen, some of them think they got at least an even 

 break. Their attention is now devoted to efforts to retain in the 

 bill during its consideration in the conference committee the pro- 

 visions they were successful in having inserted in the senate. 



Director General of Eailroads McAdoo in testifying before the 

 senate interstate commerce committee in favor of his proposition 

 that the railroads be retained under government control and opera- 

 tion for five years, said that the short lines should b^ a part of the 

 national railroad system. It was brought out at the hearing that 

 last year the railroads got only 14,000 new cars, whereas their needs 

 were 100,000, but McAdoo said that increased efficiency in handling 

 cars really made many more available for use. 



By proclamation of the president, considerable changes have been 



made in the areas of national forests, some of tliose in the West 

 losing thousands of acres, and areas nearly as large were added 

 to the forests in the Appalachian region. 



Disposing of Government Surplus Lumber 



Ou .lauuary 8 plans and policies were formulated at a meeting 

 here (or disposing of surplus lumber in the liauds of the govern- 

 nieut. Tlie meeting was attended by representatives of the govern- 

 ment anil of the lumber trade. Among the lumbermen attending the 

 icinfereuee were George R. Hicks, Kansas City; Roland Parry, Wash- 

 ington, D. C. ; D. J. C'oit of the Georgia-Florida emergency bureau; 

 Lynde Palmer, representing the West Coast Lumbermen's Associa- 

 tion; C. I. Millard of the North Carolina Pine Association; Dr. Wil- 

 son Compton, National Lumlier Manufacturers' Association; Mr. 

 Nicholson, representing New England spruce interests; George 

 Ward; Capt. G. M. Chambers; Major A. Mason Cooke, acting 

 Director of Lumber, and A. L. Justus, member of' his staff; J. W. 

 M;illison, representing Pennsylvania hemlock; C. W. Cantwell, secre- 

 tary of the wholesale lumber bureau; J. M. Gibbs and J. E. Hume 

 of tlie North Carolina Pine Association; Roy H. Jones of the North- 

 ern Hemlock and Hardwood association, and Harry DeMuth of the 

 Soutlieru Pino Association. 



It was decided at the conference tliat government officers in local- 

 ities where the surplus is, should sell in lots up to 3,000,000 feet in 

 any one district for cash at market prices. This will take care of 

 the stocks at 420 government jobs, it is planned, quickly, which is 

 believed to be best for the government and the industry. 



The bulk of the 400,000,000 feet estimated aggregate government 

 surplus is at twenty other jobs, as to which it is proposed the 

 Southern Pine, Georgia-Florida and North Carolina associations 

 shall evolve a plan and report details of it by .lanuary 18 for some 

 agency of theirs to dispose of the big lots of more than 3,000,000 

 feet each. 



It is ]ilanned to sell the large lots after joint inspection by gov- 

 ernment and trade organization representatives, and it is under- 

 stood that customary commercial practices shall govern such sales. 

 There are big lots at West Point, Ky.; Fayetteville, N. C; Gilmer- 

 ton and other places. 



The sooner the government surplus lumber stocks are cleared 

 o\it of the way the better it will be for government and trade, was 

 tlie opinion expressed at the conference. Government officers made 

 it clear that they wanted to get busy and unload their surplus. It 

 was intimated that lumbermen need the government trade more 

 than Uncle Sam needs the help of the industry. 



If trade associations want to have a hand in distributing surplus 

 government lumber in lots of less than 3,000,000 feet it was said 

 they might have it. The government will endeavor to have lists of 

 stock at big jobs ready by February 1. 



It appears the government surplus is not what it was first esti- 

 mated at. The emergency fleet corporation, for instance, which had 

 70,000,000 feet surplus, according to reports some time ago, now has 

 none and will need more lumber. Some of its timbers, perhaps 

 4.5,000,000 feet in the South and East, are described as not up to 

 grade, owing to deterioration, and it is jilanned to use them after 

 resorting and resawing, for building dry-docks, marine railways 

 and barges. The fleet corporation has about 100,000,000 feet on 

 the Pacific coast of which sixty per cent is in the hands of lum- 

 bermen and loggers. The housing bureau has not more than 10,000,- 

 000 feet surplus. 



That the surplus walnut lumber stock of the government is a very 

 small percentage of the total surplus lumber supply in the hands 

 of Uncle Sam is the belief of men in Washington in touch with the 

 negotiations for the disposition of surplus lumber. Surplus walnut 

 will probably be handled separately from the general program and 

 polic3' for the disposition of government lumber, is also the belief 

 atlcr conferring with officials ou the subject. 



There is not much millwork in government surplus stocks, accord- 

 ing to information received by the war service committee of the 

 millwork industry, which plans to close its Washington office about 

 February 1. The surplus is represented by sash, doors and blinds 



