Nov.'iiilior 111, r.>l^ 





What They Are Doing Down Sou 



■.^y\ 



Till' Soiithlaiul is in bloom. Sunny Tonncssee is in its prettiest 

 color. Some of the cotton ha.s l)een stnnding in the fields a long time, 

 notwithstaniling the fact that long special cqtton is selling a,s high 

 as .50c a pouMil. When the cotton planter can get $1G5 for a bale of 

 cotton and the negro can make from $;i to .'fti a <lay picking cotton, 

 you can understand why the saw mills are all running from si.xty to 

 eighty per cent of capacit}-. 



The Southland was never so prosperous, and while the cotton crop 

 will probably proiluce not over twelve million bales, you can readily 

 understand what thirty-cent cotton means when you recollect how 

 jubilant the Southland was when the price came up to 15c after 

 dragging around eight to twelve cents for years. 



The cotton grows on the alluvial lands of the Mississippi Valley, 

 anil so do the trees which make the thick lumber which is in demand 

 at this time. And believe me, the Southern Alhivial Land Association 

 and Stonebraker are great factors in land valuations. Fifty-five dol- 

 lars and more has been paid for cut over lands, and even, when in 

 order to put the land in condition for a good crop it takes $25 to $30 

 an acre to dear- and fence the land and put u)i proper buildings, you 

 have $200 land — what's the difference.' 



Values Will Be Stronqek 



Lumber valuations are still strong, and a survey of this section will 

 convince anyone that they will be stronger. Thick lumber of all 

 kinds is iu unusual demand. The fact is that ash and thick gum 

 make their own price; hickory and elm are. showing the stress which 

 indicates further advances in that stock. Several of the reasons for 

 present valuations are summed up in the Government demand for 

 munitions and incidentals to effectively tight the Germans. 



Kngland slippeil iu the other day and bought four million foet of 

 two- to four-inch cypress, any variety, seasoned stock, at a good round 

 price, but after it was all cleaned up. Uncle Sam came along and had 

 to buy green stock at $20 to $30 a thousand more than England was 

 able to buy for because she got in first. 



The log conditions are bully. The sunshine jiart of it is the con- 

 dition of the order book. There is a feeling among the trade that the 

 abnormal war conditions are going to help lumber rather than hurt it. 

 But labor conditions are bad. Of course during the cotton picking 

 season the labor situation is naturally worse, but every institution has 

 been more or less affected by the enlistment of men, and the dratt 

 will take thousands more of them. 



The car supply is only about 30-6(1 per cent, and from the indica 

 tions at Wa.shington we will be lucky if it is not 10-20 per cent of 

 our needs. Illustrating what 1 mean : Before the government got 

 busy at all an operator with a humlrcd thousand capacity lias only 

 been able to get equipment enough in the last year to run fifty per 

 Cent. Of cour.se he is on a small road, but it taps with one of the 

 biggest railroads in the South. 



The buying traile is appreciating already that when the government 

 gets its grip on the car situation the men in the consuming market of 

 the North who cannot get the aid of the government car service bureau, 

 because they are not making products utilized for war purposes, will 

 be in the middle of a bad fix if they have not assembled in their yard 

 the necessaTV stock to take care of the operations of their plant. 



Govern- ME.vT REfiUL.vTiON Wokk.s IIakd.ship 

 There is no heavy stock anywhere, and if the emergency board at 

 Washington will insist on giving orders to the mills getting out shij) 

 timbers, that they cannot ship the siding, it means that I'nclc Sam is 

 not going to permit the movement of anything that is not to be utilized 

 in the constnn-tion of the boats that have been contracted for. Ami if 

 somebody cannot pry those boarils loose from the obsolete rulings based 

 on precedent and emergency of the occasion, believe me there will not 

 be any .saw mills running at all except by the government. 



There i(ino one down here that I have seen that is not patriotic, and 

 but wants to co-operate with the government to the last ditch, and it 

 seems a pity that the government finds it necessary to add a hardship 

 to the mills getting out the special material. Of course I'ncle Sam is 



a pretty good customer now in yellow piiio and hardwoods, and 

 we all want to help because of the three to five billion feet that 

 will be taken out of the market during the next year. 



Speaking of I'ncle Sam's re<|uircmeiits and co-operation of the 

 lumbermen, I would like personally to make a little diagram to show 

 to the President, showing how the Lord's own providential actions 

 have made it possible for the present lumber associations to so closely 

 assist the government in the preparations for war. The Southern 

 I'inc Association tiirough its emergency bureau, and the individual 

 lumbernmn have been particularly effective, and perhaps more »o 

 than the hardwooil operators. Of course there has Ijeen the difference 

 of ojunion among the hardwood operators which has prevented in the 

 past the greatest association efliciency in the hardwood trade, and it 

 seems it will never be squashed. The selfishness of some of our hard- 

 wood fellows has been a responsible factor for many of our troubles. 



The Canadian Air-]ilant> ronipany, owned by our northern neigh- 

 bors of the Johnny Bull family, through Messrs. McDonnough and 

 Lennox, has been buying all the thick ash they can finil in the Missis- 

 sippi valley. They are willing to pay a good price; in fact, neither 

 grade nor price cuts much figure providing they can get straight 

 grained stock that has the texture and strength to hold together the 

 war birds of the air, and that will withstjind the jolts of land and sky. 

 When you know that their inspection only permits them to take from 

 five to eight per cent of the common and better ash you can readily 

 .see that 100,000 feet of tough stringy boards necessitates the handling 

 of two million feet of lumber, and rci|uires iroin'.x tlircnisjh iijuiiirli 

 lumber piles to make a city. 



The motor truck pepole have been scouting arouu.l also Imyiiij; asii; 

 even the great Packard family has been looking for four-inch thick 

 stock, and there has been considerable demand for white oak paddles 

 of thick material, as well as iiaddle stock of walnut and mahogany. 



I am reliably informed that the government recently commissioned 

 a man to go to the coast to get out one hundred million feet of logs 

 in spruce for air-plane material, which suggests that even a greater 

 amount of ash and air-plane stock will be necessary in hardwoods. 



The interior finish people are not buying hardwoods as might be 

 expected, and the recent embargo on cars for delivery of furniture, 

 1 pleasure automobiles, etc., is not helping the trade any. And yet 

 practically every aggressive concern that makes hardwoods in the 

 .Mississippi valley is busy. They have no particular surplus stock with 

 the possible excejition of box material in gum, which'has been a little 

 quiet recently, probably due to the fact that the box factories bought 

 earlier than they generally ilo because October and Novemlier arc 

 generally the biggest months in the box consiunptiiui, and the factories 

 everywhere are mighty busy. 



Can 't Get Labok 



Logging cunditions are very good, with the e.xccptioii tliat :i mil 

 crew in the woods is u thing not to be thought of. " Tlwy ain't lui sicli 

 animul,'' and while there is a lot of logs on the right of way of the 

 lines that feed Memphis with timber — probably :!0,000,000 feet between 

 Vicksburg and Memphis, and every incoming train brings a bunch of 

 logs — LTnch- John Dixon's Mississippi Valley Log l>oading Company 

 lias been working overtime, and the mills have not been able to run 

 full time because of lack of regular supply. Of course a lot of the 

 mills have been running two shifts, making all the lumber they can 

 to get if in the piles, but when you get to uiixing up with the bo.ss of 

 the mill you find that the yard that has an abnormal stxick in it has 

 orders for two-thirds of that stock. The facts arc that prosperity in 

 .Memphis and the .Mississippi Valley never was so great, the subscriji 

 tion to the last Liberty loan of over $S3 per capita being the greatest 

 in the I'nitcd States, even ovcrtop|iing Chicago, which I iK'lievi' had 

 the next largest average subscription. 



The scarcity of men in the sawmill is just as apparent as iu the 

 logging camp. I was at Helena the other day and in visiting five 

 mills one day I found tlie crews were all short from ten to seventy- 

 live men, and with Saturday a half' holiday it is a sure thing tn !"• 



—37— 



