October 10, 1915. 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



19 



The first column of the foregoing table represents 94 per cent of the 

 reported output of lumber in the United States, and the second 

 column represents 97 per cent of the material further worked in 

 factories. The remainder consists of numerous species which are 

 lumbered in small amounts and are of little importance in wood- 

 consuming factories, and are consequently omitted from the table. 

 Concerning Percentages 



The figures in the third column of the table show what percentage 

 of the rough lumber sawed from each wood is further manufactured 

 before it is put to its final use. In seven of them the apparently 

 contradictory showing is made that factories use more lumber than 

 the sawmills cut. At first glance, that might seem impossible, but 

 the facts are simple when understood. Take red gum as an example. 

 The quantity of this wood passing into final manufacture is 103,- 

 434,000 feet more a year than the whole red gum lumber output. The 

 surplus represents the logs sent to veneer mills for rotary cutting. 

 The veneer is used in the manufacture of furniture, doors, boxes and 

 many other articles; but it is not lumber, and is properly omitted 

 from lumber statistics. Factories use 110,847,000 feet more hickory 

 than sawmills cut, but the surplus does not represent veneer, as in 

 the case of red gum, but consists of spokes and handles the material 

 for which reaches factories in the form of bolts and billets, and not 

 as lumber. In every case where factory consumption exceeds saw- 

 mill output, the explanation is easily discovered. Cliair factories, for 

 example, use much material that was never in a lumber mill. It is 

 cut in small dimension stuff by special machines located in or near 

 the forest, and ordinary lumber statistics take no account of it. 



While some of the percentages in the table occasion surprise by 

 running above 100, others cause surprise because they are so low. 

 Why, for instance, should only twenty-five per cent of redwood lum- 

 ber go to factories for further manufacture? This California tree's 

 wood is one of the finest in texture and richest in color of aU Amer- 

 ican woods. It might seem strange that three-fourths of the saw- 

 mill output should be used as rough lumber, while only one per cent 

 of white pine, a plainer wood, is used in the rough. 



There is nearly always a reason behind a fact, and there may be 

 two or three reasons to explain redwood's relatively small factory 

 utilization and its large place as rough lumber. If so, the lesson 

 might be worth something to owners of other kinds of timber which 

 is not bringing what it is worth. Eedwood does not grow in a fac- 

 tory region. The Pacific coast has so much timber that what the few 

 factories of that region need scarcely makes a notch in the supply. 

 To reach eastern factories, the redwood must be shipped 2,000 or 3,000 

 miles, and under present conditions, the market price will not pay the 

 freight and leave the shipper a reasonable profit. Consequently, in- 

 stead of selling to eastern factories at an unsatisfactory price, the 

 owner of the redwood throws it on the home market as rough lumber. 

 He can make more ready money out of it in that way than by selling 

 it to factories thousands of miles away, and he is human enough to 

 sell where he can do best, with the result that three-fourths of this 

 beautiful wood goes into common uses and only one-fourth into 

 highly manufactured products. This is cited merely as an example of 

 the wrong use of 3 wood and the reason for it. 



Distance is a hard obstacle to surmount. The wood and the market 

 axe often so far apart that the owner's best intentions avail nothing. 

 An investigation recently showed that barn floors are still made of 

 two-inch hickory in some of the southern states. Willingly would the 

 Californians trade some of their redwood barn sheathing for the 

 hickory barn flooring, but they are two thousand miles apart, and 

 as a consequence, two excellent woods continue to be put to wrong 

 uses. It is easy enough to work out a theory of wood-utilization that 

 will save everything and use it in an ideal way, but theory is one 

 thing and practice is another. It is all easy enough when facts and 

 theories jibe, but when they conflict, the theory must yield to the fact. 

 The country sawmill in North Carolina may have no better way of 

 turning its few hickory logs into money than by sawing them into 

 bam flooring; and if the California lumber yard can make more 

 money by selling redwood to a farmer building a barn two miles 

 away than to an Iowa incubator factory 2,000 miles away, the barn 

 builder will get the redwood. 



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Amazon Lumhering Possihilides 



The lumbering industry along the Amazon river is full of interest 

 and is likely to develop enormous proportions. No other part of the 

 world has such a vast expanse of forest lands as Brazil, and none 

 is capable of producing such a great variety of woods which will 

 sooner or later attain considerable commercial importance. The 

 material to work upon is all but limitless. There is a great market 

 at hand. Brazil itself, as well as other South American countries, 

 can absorb the product of a number of large mUls for many years 

 to come. At the present time large cargoes of yellow pine and red 

 fir from the United States are shipped annually to many points on 

 both the east and west coasts of South America. The United States 

 government is now doing all it can to encourage this export trade 

 of lumber to Central and South America. A statistician who pos- 

 sesses an intimate knowledge of the world's timber supply has 

 prophesied that the forest resources of the United States will be 

 exhausted in less than thirty years at the present increasing rate of 

 consumption. Enormous areas of forest lands in this country are 

 being cut over every year without any provision to protect or 

 reforest the denuded tracts, and even the layman can see that within 

 a few short decades the timber supply of the United States will be 

 reduced to a minimum. This mil bring about entirely new condi- 

 tions and there wdl be an appreciable movement long before that 

 time toward the almost inexhaustible forests of Brazil. Every 

 traveler in Brazil brings with him a glowing account of the vast 

 forest resources and these descriptions will attract investors. It 

 is the inevitable conclusion that before many years have passed a 

 great lumber industry will be established along the Amazon and 

 this region will largely contribute timber needed in the United States. 



A noted writer on forestry in this country claims that there is 

 nothing but ignorance in the comfortable ideas of those who look 

 forward to a supply of wood from the tropical countries when our 

 own supply gives out. He bases this chiefly on the fact that the 

 tropical hardwood trees occur as single individuals scattered among 

 hundreds of other species and tliat the supply of any considerable 

 quantity of any one kind would require cutting over many acres^ 

 which would render this material too expensive. While this might 

 seem to be the case in a good many regions in the tropics or sub- 

 tropics, where hardwoods occur, it must be borne in mind that the 

 conditions along the Amazon, and especially along the lower Amazon, 

 are quite different, in so far that a number of woods possessing 

 very admirable qualities grow in groves similar to our pines and can 

 be obtained in unlimited quantities. Nor does it depend entirely on 

 this fact alone, but also upon the improved methods of handling the 

 timber. By putting in portable railways, driveways, machinery for 

 handling heavy timbers, sawmills 'for preparing the lumber for mar- 

 ket, and even mOls for working up the lumber into useful forms be- 

 fore shipment, a great will be done toward making the exploitation 

 of tropical hardwoods a profitable undertaking. There is hardly 

 a tree twelve to fifteen inches in diameter or over that the wood of 

 which cannot be utilized for one thing or another. A number of 

 woods growing in a mixed forest in this country were regarded fifty 

 years ago as entirely useless, but today they are listed among the 

 favorite kinds and are used even for furniture and interior trim, 

 and they may be expected to grow in importance as the demand 

 for lumber increases in the future in various parts of the world, 

 as it surelv will do. 



