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HARDWOOD RECORD 



hardwoods. The $2 tariff, if it is doing anything, is building up 

 monumental forest wealth for the Dominion of Canada, Mexico, 

 Central and South America and even the Philippines, while it is fast 

 exhausting its own resources. At this rate of dissemination of our 

 forests, the country will of necessity soon be a large buyer in place 

 of being a large seller of forest products. Today, in 110 wise does 

 the lumber trade of the United States require for its well being the 

 imposition of a duty of $2 a thousand feet on lumber imported from 

 other countries. 



The foregoing statement is particularly true in its application to 

 hardwoods. Canada is the best customer the United States has for 

 its oak and many other hardwoods, and just so sure as a reduction 

 or abolition of the lumber duty is not provided for, the Dominion 

 government will speedily enact a retaliatory duty against American 

 hardwoods which will practically shut this country out of that mar- 

 ket. Canada not only buys American hardwoods in immense quan- 

 tities, but is a very extensive buyer of yellow pine and cypress. 



This tariff proposition is withal an entirely selfish one. While 

 the late lamented General Winfield S. Hancock was laughed to scorn 

 for referring to it as a " local issue, ' ' he told ihe truth. The 

 Hardwood Record believes, so far as the hardwood industry is con- 

 cerned, that, like Artemus Ward who announced his willingness to 

 sacrifice all his first wife's relatives on the altar of his country, so it 

 alike would be willing to forego a $2 import puty on hardwoods for 

 the sake of avoiding the jeopardy to its export trade, and very like- 

 ly with the added result of reducing the cost of very many articles 

 used by it in carrying on its business. 



To cite an example: it is a notorious fact th.it American steel 

 rails are sold and delivered abroad at less thai; the price the Ameri- 

 can consumer is required to pay for them f. o. b. cars Pittsburg. A 

 particular example of this sort c&me to u: tice not long ago when 

 a Pittsburg lumberman purchased from a Pittsburg steel company a 

 quantity of rails delivered at a remote point in Nova Scotia at less 

 than the f. o. b. price demanded for the same mils at Pittsburg, 

 had he intended to use them for a logging railroad within this 

 country. 



Killing the Golden Egg Goose. 



The Liverpool correspondent of the Timber News of London, in 

 the issue of Aug. 5, says: 



American hardwood arrivals are the heaviest that we can 

 record for some considerable period, and unfortunately a 

 large proportion are consignments, and to a market over- 

 stocked with the lower grades, which predominate. What 

 folly of the shippers ! Will nothing teach our American 

 friends common-sense V They appear to think that we can 

 consume everything at full values, and simply dump their 

 goods on our market. Importers who have contracts In the 

 same steamer I refer to must feel very sore at seeing their 

 contract shipments cheek and Jowl with consignments which 

 will undoubtedly be sold considerably below what they paid. 

 They will probably have either to yard their unsold stock 

 or else compete with the consignments, which must mean a 

 heavy loss. How can American shippers expect to be well 

 treated when they treat their buyers In this unbusinesslike 

 way? A little more of this stupidity and buyers will de- 

 cline to contract. Up to now we believed In the boom In 

 the States, but we are afraid that such cannot be the case. 

 ,. The "plethora" of offers Is disgusting. 



Tbe arrivals comprise the Irak from Norfolk, with the 

 greater portion of her cargo hardwoods, something like 300 

 carloads, comprising all descriptions of hardwoods ; the 

 Saxonia, a few carloads of oak planks ; the Noordland, from 

 Philadelphia, numerous cars of oak, poplar, walnut lumber, 

 staves, doors, etc. ; the Tcmplemore, from Baltimore, and 

 the Nlcaraguan add a large number of cars to the list. Tbe 

 assortment is various, and comprises walnut, oak, ash, pop- 

 lar, walnut, pine gum In boards, planks, squares, etc., also 

 asb, hickory, and walnut logs. In addition there are sundry 

 carloads by other steamers too numerous to mention. We 

 should say this week's arrivals will total up to about 500 to 

 600 carloads, and all this on a demand which Is exceptionally 

 light. It Is sickening 1 



Commenting editorially, the TimtxT News advises its American 

 friends to peruse carefully the remarks made by its Liverpool corres- 



pondent on the flooding of the Kuglish market with hardwood con- 

 signments. The paper writes strongly, but the occasion is nor, one 

 for honeyed words. It alleges that a more foolish, idiotic policy than 

 that pursued by many American shippers, including several who cer- 

 tainly ought to know better, is impossible to conceive. It says it 

 would not much matter if the loss that certainly will be incurred fell 

 entirely on the "cute" business men stationed on the other side of 

 the Atlantic, but such is not the case. 



The Kecord's London correspondent makes substantially the same 

 record of affairs prevailing in England with regard to American 

 wood goods. This paper has repeatedly warned American shippers 

 against this idiotic policy of indiscriminate shipment on consignment 

 to the English market, and it shall put no crepe on its door if this 

 class of shippers is severely punished for its lack of business sense in 

 the face of repeated and competent warnings. 



It is a remarkable state of affairs that, when the home market 

 is actually crying for oak at existing high values, with no possible 

 chance that there is enough material obtainable to supply seventy-five 

 percent of the needs of the trade for the next six months, people 

 should go after the ' ' pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, ' ' and 

 not only incur large monetary losses themselves, but destroy all pos- 

 sibility of trained and legitimate exporters receiving any profit from 

 their business. 



American Mahogany. 



Red birch, from its almost universal use as an imitation of mahog- 

 any in furniture and house trim, ha? by general consent come to be 

 known as American mahogany. It is surprising that woodworkers 

 have but recently learned of the splendid physics of this great wood. 

 Wlien properly stained, filled and finished, in many respects it exceeds 

 in beauty as it does in character plain mahogany. When the grain is 

 convoluted or curly, and is reduced by the veneer machine into sheets 

 for veneering panels of either furniture or doors, it shows a surface 

 of such beauty as is not excelled by any other wood of either foreign 

 or domestic growth. 



With the growing popularity of both plain and figured birch, it is 

 the opinion of the Hardwood Record that very soon much higher 

 values will obtain for it. It is essentially a wood of character, and 

 made up into chairs, rails or what not in the furniture or interior 

 finish lines, it possesses qualities that are superb for the purpose. It 

 is a wood that not only holds its finish but has a substantial character 

 not equaled by mahogany, under whose color and name it usually 

 masquerades. 



Michigan and Wisconsin are the two states of the Union which 

 supply the greater quantity of high-class birch, although the wood of 

 the Adirondack region of New York and Pennsylvania is also very 

 good. 



Rail Freight Charges in Germany. 



Although the subject has figured for several years past in the 

 diplomatic exchanges between America and Germany, renewed interest 

 is being taken by the State Department in the representations made 

 to the German government in behnlf of the American lumber export- 

 ing trade relative to alleged discrimination by the government con- 

 trolled German railroads against American lumber. Ambassador 

 Tower has been instructed to inform the German government that, as 

 the United States makes no discrimination between countries in the 

 imposition of customs dues, American imports into Germany should 

 be treated in the same manner. The Germans are stated to have 

 drawn what the lumber exporters regard as a purely fanciful line of 

 difference between standard American and European hardwoods as a 

 basis for imposing much higher railroad rates on the former. 



An Acknowledgment. 



The Hardwood Record is indebted to the courtesy of Gustav Stick- 

 ley, of Syracuse, N. Y., publisher of that magnificent magazine The 

 Craftsman, for the privilege of reproducing the delightful won! 

 painting "The Building of the Bain," which appears in this issu*. 



