May 10, 1917 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



15 



gum finish that adorns the big general office and the private offices is 

 attractive to behold, and au exemplification of the possibilities of gum 

 as a finish. The Sondheimer company built a dining room down stairs, 

 but as it was not open for business, I had to go down town for lunch- 

 'eon and brought General Manager Eudy Sondheimer with me. The 

 old man of the sea, Max Sondheimer of that company, was on a visit 

 up North ; fielieve he was consulting au oculist, which indicated, like 

 some more of us, he is not so young as he used to be. 



In speaking of their operations Eudy said : ' ' We are running our 

 plant at Baton Eouge and Sondheimer, La., and at our Arkansas points, 

 and expect to turn out 60,000,000 feet this year. We have built five 

 miles of railroad, standard gauge, and recently purchased a new loco- 

 motive built by the Glover Locomotive Company, Marietta, Ga. The 

 Grismore-Hyman Company, of Memphis, Tenn., is putting up a cooper- 

 age plant and proposes to utilize waste timber on our land. ' ' Eudy 

 says he is operating his farm raising aU the food he can down there 

 for man and beast. In speaking of the increases cost of doing business 

 he recites the fact that he could have bought this locomotive for about 

 two-thirds less than he paid had he been a little more aggressive in his 

 purchase. Delivery of the locomotive was also so vague he hesitated, 

 but finally he got the locomotive, paid the increased price and that is 

 one of the excuses for the present prices of gum and oak. He said 

 they have advanced their men also and it was necessary for all opera- 

 tors to do the same thing, therefore, it naturally appeared in the price, 

 because profits in the business had never been so great as to make 

 lumbermen feel like giving Carnegie libraries, or anything like that. 



It is not a question of orders nowadays, it is a question of being 

 able to fill them and deliver the goods, and the price of gum especially 

 is whatever you name. This applies to cottonwood, hickory, ash and 

 almost anything you can think of. 



An operator in talking about Mississippi conditions said one of the 

 things that is going to hamper production is the law indicating number 

 of hours labor must work and the attachment of $100 fine for working 

 them over time. It seems to me some of these obsolete laws in the 

 Southland should be amended in times like these when labor is so 

 scarce. 



Big Movement to Plant Crops 



Jack Blanks, better known as the president of the H. B. Blanks 

 Lumber Company, Vicksburg, Miss., spent several days in Memphis 

 recently. One of his particular jobs at that time was to buy a stump 

 puller from the Clyde Iron Works. I was surprised that they made 

 them, as evidently they do not advertise them. The big representa- 

 tive of the Clyde company, Harry with the Dutch name but American 

 heart, was busy in and around Memphis, selling all the various kinds 

 of machinery made by Clyde, and he and Blanks soon agreed as to the 

 necessity for a stump puller. This reminds me that all over the 

 South they are pulling stumps and utilizing cotton lands and other 

 cutover farms to raise corn, beans, sweet potatoes and aU kinds of 

 vegetables for the people themselves and more corn and feed for 

 cattle and horses than ever before. This may cut in enough on the 

 cotton crop to curtail production, but we doubt it. We believe the 

 additional lands planted this spring will add to the crops in the South 

 materially. 



In speaking with W. H. Sullivan of the Great Southern Lumber 

 Company, Bogalusa, La., and Sam Norton of the Homochitto Lumber 

 Company the other day, I was certainly edified to know they were 

 taking up with the parish folks in Louisiana, and encouraging them 

 to raise vegetables, feed, etc. Mr. Sullivan had agreed to put up 

 storage warehouses in a number of parishes in which they operate, 

 and to furnish these warehouses at a reasonable cost for taking care 

 of feed; they are building dry kUns to protect and help season sweet 

 potatoes and every effort is being made to encourage backing up the 

 government in this war. 



By the way, wherever you go in the South you find patriots. The 

 back yards, front lawns, cutover timberlands and the old time farms 

 are all being utilized for agricultural purposes. 



Boland Darnell, president of B. J. Darnell, Inc., was having a busy 

 day recently. He had just put in a new loader and Flory hoist for 

 handling logs at their mill at Blaine and added to their power plant 

 a 72xlS boiler. In speaking of their railroad operations (the Bates- 



ville Southwestern road), they are handling some 1,300 cars of logs 

 per month and while, of course, they have been troubled somewhat 

 with high water, they keep busy on this road to see that the country 

 is built up about there and will take probably as many ears back to 

 the towns on the road and wiU supply food and clothing and help 

 build up that community. 



In speaking of logging, I was reminded by J. W. Dickson the other 

 day, president of the Mississippi Valley Logging Company, that last 

 year, owing to causes now prevailing — high water and scarcity of 

 cars — they reduced the number of logs hauled into Memphis. This 

 is another factor in the price of hardwood lumber in the South. J. W. 

 visited their mill at Craig, Miss., the other day and was accompanied 

 by E. L. Edwards of Dayton, Ohio, who spent a week in and around 

 Memphis looking after shipments and following some special orders 

 for the construction of new buildings in Dayton, visiting the mills 

 where he purchases largely his supplies both in Mississippi and 

 Alabama. He visited the latter state following his attention to busi- 

 ness and golf playing at the largest hardwood market in the South. 



With Some of the Memphis Boys 



While in Memphis the other day I went down to see some friends 

 in the south end. W. E. Delaney of the Kentucky Lumber Company, 

 L,exington, Ky., was with me and we had a visit with Charlie Dudley 

 of the Dudley Lumber Company. Charlie has been on the sick list, 

 but is rapidly recovering from an operation and a month's illness. 

 We found the ash business very active at that yard and believe me 

 when you see that four-inch stock you feel like it is too good to be 

 made into butter tubs, shipped to Ireland, or for anything of that 

 kind. Dudley specializes on the ash market and he was hard at it 

 trying to catch up for lost time when we were there. 



Eight across the street we saw the yard of the Gayoso Lumber 

 Company where the Eansom boys hang out, and Charlie Eansom, the 

 Puck of the Southland, was on the job, although he heai-d we were 

 coming and went down to their mill at Blaine, Miss. They have a 

 splendid yard and sawmill and from the smoke coming out of the 

 chimney and the lumber on the yard, it indicated they were having 

 a right busy time themselves. Mr. Wick Eansom of this company 

 had been spending ten days, accompanied by Mrs. Eansom, at French 

 Lick Springs, where I understand he almost played ' ' bogey ' ' in several 

 games. We know he went up Tom Taggart's hoUow and made a 

 forty-four because we saw it in the weather reports, but he did not 

 have anything on his long brother, because Charlie, the day following, 

 made a forty at the Memphis golf course and, believe me, he was 

 somewhat perturbed because it was not thirty-nine, but with Ealph 

 Jurden, Lawson Falls and the Hardwood Eecord man he had to play 

 a little golf. He needed the experience and the strokes. 



Speaking of Jurden, he took a long trip the past ten days — went all 

 the way to New York, where he met Col. John Penrod of Kansas City. 

 In speaking of business conditions, Mr. Jurden said they never were 

 so busy in their business. The mills at Helena, Memphis and Kansas 

 City were all running full tUt. The walnut business for the past 

 twelve months has been greater than ever, both in the finish and 

 interior and furniture trade as well as the furnishing of gunstocks 

 and other materials used for carrying on the war. 



Col. S. B. Auderson was in the best of health and good spirits when 

 I saw him at Memphis. He is president of the Anderson-Tully Com- 

 pany, as we all know, and a pretty active man. In commenting on 

 timber investments he said the institutions that had backed up their 

 production and purchased timber even unto loading themselves up to 

 do so had been about as wise as the investors in the principal corners 

 in the great cities. He stated only a few months ago they had sold 

 one of their big tracts, but they had always been sanguine about the 

 future of southern timber and they believed even today it is a good 

 buy. Their operations are about as usual and very satisfactory. Their 

 plants at Vicksburg and Memphis were running full time, although 

 high water had interfered somewhat. He believed that present valu- 

 ations were built on good logic owing to material increase all along 

 the line. 



Miscellaneous Impressions 



W. E. DeLaney of the Kentucky Lumber Company, Lexington, 

 Ky., after a trip looking over some timber in Mississippi, spent a day 



