14 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



not growing under forest conditions, crowded together and cramped 

 for space; but they are arranged in the open where light and soil 

 are sufficient and every line of beauty will be developed. The visitor 

 to the nation 's capital city, if he is interested in trees, misses a rare 

 opportunity if he does not spend some time in the capitol grounds 

 making or renewing acquaintance with the trees. That is easily 

 done, becaui-e most of the species have their names on attached plates 

 for ready reference. 



The Tendency Unmistakable 



THE TENDENCY TOWARD BETTER BUSINESS conditions is 

 unmistakable. It is seen in the multiplication of recent orders 

 for railroad material. Some of these orders are for domestic use, 

 others are from foreign countries; but in both instances the work 

 is coming to American shops, American labor is being employed, and 

 home material is being used. That which foreign buyers are send- 

 ing to us for manufacture is not war appliances, but consists of 

 supplies needed by railroads in those countries. If foreign people 

 are so busy fighting that they cannot make their own cars and loco- 

 motives, they will find facilities in the United States for doing the 

 work ; and at the same time our factories will be able to supply the 

 needs of the home markets. 



The following list of orders for railroad supplies which have 

 reached American factories since the beginning of the year furnishes 

 an unanswerable argument that industrial improvement>is at hand : 



Russian government, freight cars $12,000,000 



Penosylv.inia railroad, freight cars 12,000.000 



Kiirlington road, cars and rails 4,000,000 



Illinois Central road .■{,7ri0,000 



Southern Paciflc road, rails 900,000 



Erie road, railsi 900,000 



Pennsylvanin Tank Company, cars 800,000 



Chicago & .Northwestern, rails 800,000 



lialtimore & Ohio road, rails 72i).000 



Swift & Co., cars 700,000 



Mather Stock Car, cars 500,000 



Boston & Maine road, mils 4.^0.000 



Chilean government, cars 250,000 



French government, locomotives 200,000 



Serbian government, locomotives 200,000 



There has been a superabundance of pro|>liecy that lousiness im- 

 provement is on the way, but the receipt of the orders themselves is 

 the best, evidence that the prophecies are nearing fulfillment. The 

 foregoing list of fifteen orders aggregates more than .$38,000,000, 

 and a large number of smaller orders makes .$25,000,000 more, or 

 $63,000,000 in all, in business coming to manufacturers of railroad 

 supplies in this country in a few days. 



When other lines of activities are considered, it can easily be 

 seen that the total amount of new business coming to the country's 

 industries is sufTicient to make its influence felt from one end of the 

 land to the other. The wait for the return of j)rosperity has been 

 long and the first auspicious signs of its coming will meet a genuine 

 welcome. 



Lumber Sold Without Grading 



IT MAY NOT BE GENERALLY KNOWN that fully one-tenth of 

 all the lumber traught and sold in the United States falls under 

 none of the many grading rules in use in this country. This is the 

 lumber that goes to box factories. Some of it is the culls, rejects, 

 and left-overs after the regular grades have been taken out, and some 

 of it consists of millrun where everything which the log makes goes 

 into one pile to be sold without sorting, and some consists of odds 

 and ends from many sources. 



The industry which makes boxes is second largest of all the wood- 

 using industries of the country. The yearly total exceeds four ami 

 a half billion feet. That is nearly four times as much wood as is 

 consumed by all factories in the United States engaged in the manu- 

 facture of steam «nd electric cars of all kinds. It is five fold as great 

 as the whole supply going to furniture factories in this country; 

 six times greater than the vehicle stock ; and greater than the com- 

 bined demand for lumber by the fifty other industries which use 

 wood as raw material. The only industry which uses more lumber 

 than is worked into boxes is that which makes planing mill ]jroducts, 

 . such as flooring, ceiling, siding, and general millwork. 



Many a time the box maker saves the sawmill from serious loss. 

 He buys what the mill can sell to no one else. It may be easily 

 imagined what the result would be if box makers were not in the 

 market for lumber. One-tenth of all the stuff sawed would be 

 unsalable. Few sawmills could stand that loss. 



It is fortunate that box factories are distributed in all timbered 

 parts of the country. They furnish a convenient market for the low 

 grade stuff which every mill has on hand and which it is anxious to 

 sell. If box factories were not near, this lumber could not be sold, 

 because it cannot pay freight on long hauls. The box factory may 

 ship its shooks hundreds or even thousands of miles to reach a mar- 

 ket, but box lumber cannot make that journey and pay the freight. 



Box makers as a whole are not exacting in their demands. They 

 take hardwoods and softwoods. There is not an important tree species 

 in the United States which does not go to box factories somewhere. 

 If a maker who produces a certain kind of box must reject a few 

 unsuitable woods, another maker will take them, and they are not left 

 to rot at the sawmill because no box man wants them. Knots, 

 shakes and wanes can be cut out with a minimum of waste, because 

 so many dimensions go into boxes that the waste is remarkably small, 

 considering the heterogeneous class of lumber that goes to the box 

 factory. It is a mixture of all grades, of all lengths, breadths 

 and thicknesses, all colors, weights, strengths and species; and the 

 remarkable thing is that between four and five billion feet of this 

 miscellaneous mass are bought, manufactured and distributed as 

 finished boxes from end to end of the land, with the transactions 

 moving as regularly as (dockwork. 



What Ocean Rate Increases Mean to America 



SPEAKING IN TERMS OF COST per hundred pounds shipped, 

 the remarkable increases in ocean freight rates which began im- 

 mediately u])on the outbreak of the present war cannot carry the sig- 

 nificance to the average miml they would if put into total figures. The 

 vast importance of this condition to the American public and its 

 really vital effect upon their pocketljooks is seen in the statistics com- 

 piled by Secretaries McAdoo and Redfield and recently presented to 

 the Senate. In some cases the increases have amounted to 900 and 

 even 1,150 per cent since the beginning of the war, and according 

 to the report in one year on the basis of exports maintained on a 

 1914 level the increased rates will make a charge of $216,224,000 on 

 American shippers, and if imports be included on the same basis 

 the increased rates would reach $314,864,000, or 141.6 per cent over 

 the usual cost. If normal rates were taken in conjunction with 

 abnormal rates on the same basis, the freight charge on both exports 

 and imports in one year would make a grand total of $532,110,000. 



This means that just that much money is taken out of the pockets 

 of the American people to pay steamship owners abroad. 



In the lumber field the situation has a well-recognized effect in 

 that steamship lines will not even consider figuring on shipments of 

 lumber on account of the higher level of rates prevailing on cotton 

 shipments, which, of course, has absolutely closed up any export 

 trade that might legitimately be carried on d\iring present depressed 

 conditions in the home market. 



These significant figures are contained in a letter issued by George 

 X>. Burgess, president of the National Lumber Exporters' Association, 

 in which he refers to resolutions adopted at that association's recent 

 meeting at Memphis urging immediate legislation to remedy that 

 situation. 



The two remedial courses which have so far been presented have 

 been either to purchase outright ships of belligerent countries now 

 tied up in our ports, or to subsidize home building with the idea of 

 building up our own merchant marine in our own ship yards. Dis- 

 cussion of the merits of these two plans smacks too much of the 

 political to warrant space in Hardwood Record. As to the latter 

 plan, it hardly seems that it would offer relief at an early enough date 

 to do much good, while the former suggestion of ship purchase has 

 opened up an agitation which might seriouslj' involve this country; It 

 is not likely this bill will be passed. 



There does, however, seem to be one other course that offers a 

 logical method of at least temporary relief that might cover the jieriod 

 up to the time when this country co\ild own sufficient ships of its own 



