xo 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



Father J. J. Donlon of Brooklyn, is manifest in almost every line of 

 business, and the hardwood lumber trade is no exception. Men en- 

 gaged in this, one of the most important of America's industries, may 

 justly be divided into two classes: one is devoted to the making or 

 handling of honest lumber, of an honest grade, at an honest price; 

 the other bends its energies to irregular practices in connection with 

 the trade. This latter class sells one grade of lumber and delivers 

 another and a lower grade. It is a class that finds shortages in every 

 shipment; it is a class that salts its lumber; it is a class that is a 

 general demoralizer of the hardwood lumber industry. 



Anyone who will review the history of the individuals who have 

 made the lumber industry one of the foremost callings of the time 

 will find that the men who have succeeded, and who have gone down 

 in lumber history as makers of money, of character and as being of 

 general worth in their communities, are men who have had a reputa- 

 tion for honest dealing. ' The entire country is strewn with the com- 

 mercial graveyards of people who have sold firsts and seconds and 

 salted them with twenty-five percent of common, while it is the rare 

 circumstance that any man has conducted a hardwood lumber business 

 based on fair dealing and integrity who has not been successful. 

 Lumber associations and exchanges have done much to eliminate this 

 undesirable class from the business, but still it prevails to an extent 

 that is an actual menace to the trade at large. There is no use in 

 citing examples of these irregular practices of the hardwood lumber 

 trade, because every man in it, whether he approves or disapproves 

 of them, is cognizant of these facts. 



It is not a moral plea that the Hardwood Becokd would make 

 against the element of this trade that persists in not doing business 

 en honest principles; it is not an appeal for morality for morality's 

 sake, but rather an appeal to the common sense of the individuals 

 comprising this great industry, that they conduct their business on 

 lines of fair and square dealing that it may mean succesa to them 

 lather than failure. 



[rregular practices indulged in today are often countenanced by 

 men who otherwise are of the strictest integrity. They claim that 

 the necessity of doing these things has arisen from custom and 

 through . the stress of competition, which makes it imperative that 

 they either lose their trade or salt their grades. This argument is 

 specious, and the policy is short-sighted, for the foremost lumbermen 

 in this United States today are obliged to resort to nothing of the 

 sort. There are many men iu the hardwood industry of the United 

 Stati - who never shipped a salted car in their lives, and whom money 

 could not induce to so load a car from their mill or yard. 



The trend toward impartial inspection through association- and 

 exchanges is gradually tending to wipe out this manifest evil of the 

 trade. If leading shippers of lumber would refuse for all time to 

 countenance the loading of mixed grades, it would soon put a quietus 

 on the disastrous competition engendered by those dealers whose only 

 object in life apparently is to get money by means of false pre- 

 tenses, to which transactions of the sort are an equivalent. 



How the South Is Growing. 



The wonderful stride in development that has been made by the 

 South, notably during the past ten years, is most pertinently dis- 

 cussed by M. V. Kichards, land and industrial agent of the Southern 

 Kailway, in a recent article published in pamphlet form. 



Attention is called to the fact that the development of the South 

 has not been a popular movement; that it has not attracted people 

 in masses. Even down to the present moment it has been the theater 

 of action for the discerning few rather than the multitude. The 

 forces working for its development have been scattered over widely 

 separated sections of the country. However, they have worked out 

 its problems and are now realizing on its resources to an extent 

 phenomenal in the history of this country. 



The new development of the South, which started in 1895, began 

 with the sawmill and the factory rather than the farm; with the 

 man of affairs rather than with the agriculturist. In the West in the 

 boom days, settlers swarmed by thousands; towns with elaborate sys- 

 tems of water-works, brick blocks, great schoolhouses and general 

 public improvements to which the settlers had been accustomed in 



their old homes, were projected. In numerous instances these enter- 

 prises went to pieces, and today all that is left of hundreds of such 

 boom towns are the water hydrants sticking out of the prairie. 



The development of the South furnishes a material contrast to the 

 conditions that prevailed in the West. Contrary to popular belief, 

 the South still comes nearer being a "new country" than any other 

 section of the United States. Its original resources of timber, min- 

 erals, and soil are practically intact. Generally, the lumber and 

 manufacturing interests of the South have proven successful. "While 

 the labor of this sreat section has not been as forceful per capita as 

 the white labor of the North, still it has been cheap, plentiful, free 

 from strikes, and its cost, even considering the amount of labor per- 

 formed, has been very low. 



Mr. Kichards calls attention to the territory embraced by the lines 

 of the Southern Bailway system, which covers, to a large etxent, the 

 states of Virginia. North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mis- 

 sissippi, Kentucky and Tennessee. These states contain an area 

 of about 367,000 square miles, about twelve percent of the territory 

 of the United States proper. This territory iu 1900 contained 1,675,- 

 8S9 farms out of a total of 5,739,657 within the entire country. In 

 this section these figures represent an increase in ten years of 42S,078 

 farms, or thirty-four percent, as compared with twenty-five and seven- 

 tenths percent for the country at large. The improved land in this 

 territory increased during tin decade, three and thirty -seven-hun- 



Iths percent as compared with the decrease of eight ami one-tenth 



percent for the whole country. 



A School ol Lumbering. 



In this number of the Hardwood Record will be found an article 

 by C. A. Sehenck, l'h. 1).. director .'I the Biltmore Forest School at 

 Biltmore, X. C, which is svell worthy tin- perusal of every lumber-: 



Beside: being the head ol this scl 1, Dr. Sehenck is forest, i 



to George v'anderbilt 's Biltrn ire estate of 130,000 acres in the Pis- 



gah mountains of North ^ttr of the Highland 



Forest Company's 56, acn tract in the same region; is presi- 

 dent of C. A. Sehenck & Co., consulting forest engineers, and is 

 allied with both ii» Eardwood Manufacturers' Association of th 



United States and the Nation! l Sardv I Lumber Association. Dr. 



Sehenck 's title of doctor of philosophj u;i> obtained on the basis 

 of a forestry thesis at a leading German university. 



For tli' 1 past tea years he has been in charge of the great Van 



derbili forests, and for eight yi ted the Biltmon 



Foresl School. During this time he bas engaged in practical lum- 

 bering to a considi rable extent, ami therefore has added to his 

 theoretical knowledge of the forest a vast deal of practical ex- 

 I" i ience. 



This practical school of lumbering which has developed out of Dr. 

 Sehenck 's forest school, is well worth the consideration of even- 

 man whose sons are destined for practical business pursuits in con- 

 nection with the forest or lumbering. The semiscientific and semi- 

 practical education to be obtained under the tutelage of schools of 

 this sort are of essential value to every young man who proposes 

 to devote his energies to the lumber business. Iu the past, the only 

 school of lumbering was in log camp, sawmill or lumber yard; but 

 now there is offered, through the tutelage of such men as Dr. 

 Sehenck, an opportunity for a young man to learn the science of 

 forestry work, and incidentally of practical lumbering that as a 

 basis for lumber knowledge is well worth his time and the compara- 

 tively small cost. Dr. Sehenck is engaged in this work merely for 

 the love of it, as he has an income obtained from the Biltmore estate 

 that renders him entirely independent of his school. It is his desire 

 to make his school the most efficient in the country, and to that end 

 he is devoting his life's energies. 



Opening of Furniture Buying Season. 



The regular semiannual furniture exhibits are on at I hicago and 

 Grand Eapids. While the disp . been too recently opened to 



prophesy the exact volume of business that will tx done at this mi. I 



summer exhibit, still enough trai already been sh 



to demonstrate beyoi ill I. at least up to nor- 



mal. 



