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Value of the V/ood Exposition 



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The appioacJiing Forest Products Kxposition in Chicago and New 

 York has not been called into existence for amusement and enter- 

 tainment. Its purposes are serious, and unless those purposes shall 

 be carried out, the object will be defeated. 



The fight for substitutes is on. Pretty much everything under 

 the sun is being tried as substitutes for wood, and the campaign is 

 vigorous. Ijumber is being placed on the defensive by dealers who 

 have other materials to sell and who are trying to secure markets 

 by conveying the impression that there is not enough wood to go 

 around or tliat other things nuich better have been found to take 

 its place. 



Kvery exhibitor should resist that campaign. There is enough 

 timber, and for most purposes for which it has been used it is su- 

 perior to substitutes. These facts should be shown by examples. 

 Wood ought to be given an opportunity to tell its own story at the 

 exposition. If it is given that chance it will make good. It is 

 plentiful and of abundant kinds. Its range of uses is almost as 

 wide as American industries. Notwithstanding this fact, efforts 

 more or less successful are being made to discredit this high-class 

 material and to displace it in order that inferior substitutes may 

 take precedent. 



That movement can best be defeated by a fair and honest show- 

 ing of what wood is good for. The exposition should do this. Who- 

 ever places an exhibit there should make it teU the story of wood's 

 usefulness and superiority. 



The Northern Hemlock and Hardwood Manufacturers' Association 

 and the Michigan Hardwood Manufacturers' Association have com- 

 bined their exhibit and will have a bungalow trimmed with basswood 

 siding, northern white cedar shingles, the living room finished in elm, 

 with red birch flooring; the dining room in birch, with red birch 

 floor; the bedroom white maple, with birdseye flooring; batliroom, 

 white birch, with white maple flooring; birch in kitchen, witli un- 

 selected maple floor, and the porch floor and ceiling of tamarack. 



The decorative scheme at each exposition will be appropriate and 

 extensive, including growing boxwood hedges as dividing rails and 

 aisles in the main portion of each exposition, natural and artificial 

 branches and leaves, bark and trees, to carry out the forest at- 

 mosphere. The Redwood MUl Owners' Association, with its display of 

 California redwood, will have a bungalow of two rooms, exterior of 

 boards from house and barn built at Fortuna, Cal., in 1853. The 

 interior will be trimmod in the finished product, and an incident 

 will be a redwood table 72 inches long, the length of the table being 

 the width of the plank. 



Some of these matters bear only indirectly on the practical, mod- 

 ern uses of lumber, but the decorative features, and even the strange 

 and unique, cannot be wholly ignored in an exposition which is 

 intended to appeal to the general public, and which, in order to be 

 successful, must attract many visitors. 



Details of exhibits are slow in forthcoming, due largely to the 

 process of preparation, and the prospective exhibitor is more or less 

 unwilling about claiming things that might not be shown, or out- 

 lining original plans and devices that are intended as surprises and 

 naturally withheld until the opening of the exposition. The initial 

 exposition opens at the Coliseum, Chicago, April 30, and continues 

 until May 9, and during this time it is expected a number of im- 

 portant regular or special meetings of various trades organizations 

 will be held. The Northern Hemlock and Hardwood Manufactuiers' 

 Association will have its convention on the opening day. The Na- 

 tional Lumber Manufacturers' Association will hold its annual con- 

 vention on May 5 and 6. In this connection the Lumbermen's Asso- 

 ciation of Chicago has appointed a special committee to arr^ge 

 details for their participation, in a sense acting as host to the great 

 ■ mmiber of lumbermen and representatives of the affiliated branches 

 of the industry, while the women visitors will probably be enter- 

 tained by the ladies of Chicago who are related by marriage to the 

 industry. The New York organizations have not perfected their 

 plans, but it is understood they will take the same action and have 



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official representation in the exposition. At Chicago, Tuesday, May 

 5, has been designated as Chicago Day, when the local trade interests 

 will dominate the program. 



It will be a sjilendid opportunity for manufacturers of wood- 

 working machinery, and the arrangements thus far announced show 

 that many valuable exhibits of that kind will be installed. 



More or less elaborate exhibits are being prepared by E. C. 

 Atkins & Co., Henry Disston & Sons, Clyde Iron Works, Rayner & 

 Parker, Philadelphia ; Seattle Cedar Lumber Manufacturing Com- 

 pany, American Hoist & Derrick Company, American Forestry As- 

 sociation, American Sawmill Machinery Company, Howard, Simmons 

 & Co.; Barrett Manufacturing Company, Franck-Philipson & Co., 

 Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company, Chicago Machinery Exchange, 

 Baxter D. Whitney & Son, Winchendon, Mass. ; Mossmau Wood 

 Turning Company, Fitchburg, Mass.; estate of William S. Doig, and 

 a number of others, while the Gum Lumber Manufacturers' Asso- 

 ciation, American Wood Preservers ' Association, National Box Man- 

 ufacturers ' Association, Oak Manufacturers' Association, and sev- 

 eral of the leading trade publications and trade associations have 

 secured space for more or less elaborate exhibits. The railroads are 

 preparing to provide special accommodations and run excursions 

 from a number of adjacent cities to each of the expositions, and 

 one of the most daring ' ' house-moving ' ' acts in modern history 

 will be the special transportation of the Forest Products Exposition 

 from Chicago to New Y'ork practically intact. 



Much stress is being laid on the showing which the Forest Service 

 will make with $10,000 specially appropriated by Congress. It will 

 be an exhibit of uses rather than of tree growing, though it is pre- 

 sumed that something of both will be shown. The Forest Products 

 laboratory at Madison, Wis., and the office of Industrial Investiga- 

 tions at Washington, D. C, are directly engaged in the utilization 

 of wood, and the exhibits which they will make will doubtless prove 

 of great interest and value. 



One of the important features of the exposition will be the moving 

 picture display, reproducing in vivid detail sensational and interest- 

 ing scenes of logging, milling and other attractive operations in the 

 industry. Some of these scenes will be principal mills of Europe and 

 a number of very effective American films. These things, however, 

 will not be the leading features of the exposition, though valuable 

 along the educational line. 



American Hardwoods in Liverpool 



The London Timber, speaking of the Liverpool market, says that 

 the spot demand for American hardwoods is fairly satisfactory, but 

 the week's additions to the already abnormally heavy stocks do not 

 help matters, and are having a somewhat depreciating effect on 

 values, making sales on profitable lines more and more difficult, and 

 in the majority of woods such things as contracts are unknown. 

 Meanwhile, the brokers are having a quiet, though not happy, time, 

 flajting, like Mr. Macawber, for something to turn up. Wagon oak 

 plank shij^pers have surely gone mad, and few of them will be able 

 to look back with any degree of pleasure to their trading experiences 

 of the past six months. In addition to the very heavy stocks held 

 by merchants, there are many thousands of planks stored for shippers ' 

 account ; on top of all these there arrived last week nearly 20,000 

 more, and the consumptive demand is down to somewhere near zero; 

 it will, therefore, require a cessation of shipments for about six or 

 eight months to put the Liverpool market into a satisfactory state. 



Forestry School in California 



The ITniver^itv of California, at Berkeley, is the latest to establish 

 a forestry school. Walter Mulford, who at present is head of the 

 forestry department at Cornell University, will take charge of the 

 California school. The Pacific Coast has of late years been active in 

 work of this kind, and this movement will greatly strengthen its 

 position. Professor Mulford is recognized as one of the most progres- 

 sive teachers of forestr'^- in this countrv. 



