HARDWOOD RECORD 



29 



Yet uo fortunes have been made in lumberiug. Tf wealth has resulted 

 it has come from dealing in timberlands, not in cutting timber. 



The claim has been reix-atod many times that waste is too great, that 

 mills are taking timber taster than it is growing. It may be taken for 

 granted that there would be little waste if it were possible to avoid It. 

 No lumberman has ever wilfully wasted his capital. If he has sent only 

 the best grades to market it has been because there was market for those 

 grades only. 



Much is heard of the campaign in favor of wood substitutes. The 

 campaign is vigorous, and is backed by enormous advertising funds, while 

 the promoters of wood are spending comparatively little tor advertising. 

 Because lumber is only lumber they seem to think there is little use of 

 advertising, and it is left to sell itself. Last year there were $600,- 

 000,000 spent in the United States for advertising purposes. 



The National Lumber Manufacturers' Association has been trying to 

 maintain the position of the lumber industry on less than $20,000 a year. 

 Limestone men in a single state have raised an advertising fund Ave 

 times as great ; the California raisin growers are spending $100,000 a 

 year to advertise raisins ; one wall board firm pays $125,000 a year for 

 publicity. An examination of the advertising pages of magazines, trade 

 papers and journals and newspapers generally brings out the fact that 

 wood falls far below other building materials in the advertising received. 

 In one list of papers, wood's pro rata of advertising was 6.5 per cent ; 

 other building materials aggregate 9.3.5 per cent. In another list wood's 

 advertising was seven per cent to ninety-three for other building mate- 

 rials. Again the ratio was thirteen for lumber and eighty-seven for sub- 

 stitutes. In another list wood received six per cent of the advertising, 

 substitutes ninety-four per cent. In only one instance under investigation 

 did lumber receive one-third as much advertising as was given to sub- 

 stitutes. Cement interests pay hundreds of thousands yearly for adver- 

 tising. The same is done by pressed brick, prepared roofing and metal 

 building material. 



Is it not time to look the problem squarely in the face? Eighty per cent 

 of all buildings put up in the United States have wooden frames. There 

 is much more to lose, and the promoters of substitutes are doing all they 

 can to take the business away from lumber. 



Mr. Kellogg suggested ten remedies to try in hope of bettering the 

 lumber business, which, reduced to bare outline, are as f olloivs : 

 1. The lumberman should work in the dark no longer. He should 



establish clearly and scientifically what It costs to manufacture and sell 

 lumber. 



2. The utilization of timber tracts must become much more efficient and 

 complete before the lumber Industry can be put upon a stable basis. 

 Ways must be found to market more than one-tbird of the volume of wood 

 per acre. 



.■!. There should be a greater insistence upon honest grades of lumber. 

 Too many times the lumber business has been discredited by Juggling 

 with grades and by the substitution of grades because the consumer was 

 ignoraut of the rules. 



4. In many kinds of timber there should be a greater diversity of 

 grades carefully framed to meet the needs of various classes of cus- 

 tomers. The buyer does not generally object to paying a fair price If he 

 gets what he wants. 



5. Forest products should be sold more Intelligently ; that is, upon much 

 wider and more complete information concerning the requirements of all 

 classes of consumers. 



6. The lumber manufacturer should tell the consumer how his product 

 can be used. In the words of a prominent sales manager — "Lumber 

 used to be bought, now it must be sold" — and it must be sold In the face 

 of strong competition. 



7. The public must be educated to the real merits and uses of wood, 

 and llie education must be a continuous process, not spasmodic. 



8. The Ivmiberman must have more faith in his own product. No 

 man ever sold goods long and successfully who didn't believe In them 

 heart and soul. The lumberman who hasn't the courage of his convic- 

 tions when he undertakes to sell lumber, better be selling something else. 



9. The only way to reduce the waste of forest resources equally deplored 

 by lumbermen and conservationists Is to restrict the production of lumber 

 to market demands. 



10. The lumlier industry in the future must cooperate much more effec- 

 tively than in the past through associations of producers. Lumbermen 

 must learn what other successful manufacturers knew long ago — that In 

 order to make money, money must be freely spent for promotion. 



At the conclusion of his talk, Mr. Kellogg told of the necessity 

 of raising funds immediately to defray expenses of the massmeeting 

 of lumbermen to be held in Chicago on February 24 and 25. His 

 request for $100 was immediately granted by a special motion, after 

 which the meeting adjourned. 



•^ CgTO^aw ^Jima^w a^Ba^-Hrtstia^jtijTOit:!')^^ 



The New Orleans Lumber Trade Journal of January 15 published 

 an account of the discovery of the ruins of an old sawmill sunken in 

 the mud and hidden by vines near Baton Rouge, La., and surmises 

 that it • ' may have been the first sawmill in the South. ' ' Dates on 

 the castings show that the mill was built in 1796 or later. 



The mill built in 1796 is entitled to due respect, but it lacks a lot 

 of being the first sawmill in the South. Perhaps every southern state 

 had sawmills earlier than that. Louisiana had them long before that 

 time. A semi-otfieial report by a British officer named Philip Pitt- 

 man, proves that fact. He visited the various settlements in the Mis- 

 sissip])! valley during the period intervening between the French 

 and Indian war and the American Revolution, and his report was 

 published in London in 1770, under the title ' ' Pittman 's Mississippi 

 Settlements." Bearing in mind the date of that publication — 

 twenty-six years earlier than the date on the old sawmill castings 

 recently discovered near Baton Rouge, the following paragraph, from 

 page 60 of his report, and referring to Louisiana, is significant: 



"Many of the planters have sawmills which are worked by the 

 waters of the Mississippi in the time of Hoods, and then they are 

 kept going night and day till the waters fall. The quantity of lum- 

 ber sent from the Mississippi to the West India Islands is prodigious, 

 and it generally goes to a good market. ' ' 



The traveler made his way slowly northward through the Missis- 

 sippi valley, visiting all the settlements and making particular note of 

 such development as came under his observation. Nearly a thousand 

 miles inland from the Gulf, and within the present state of Illinois, 

 nearly opposite what is now St. Louis, he had this to say of mills 

 (page 8.5) : 



"Mens. Paget was the first who introduced water mills into this 

 country and he constructed a very fine one on the river Cascasquias 

 [Kaskaskia] which was both for grinding corn and sawing boards. 

 It lies about one mile from the village. The miU proved fatal to 



him, he being killed as he was working in it, with two negroes, by a. 

 party of Cherokees, in the year 1764." 



There is reason to believe, but positive proof may not be obtain- 

 able, that there was a sawmill near San Antonio, Texas, two hun- 

 dred years ago. If some one should carefully dig out the early saw- 

 mill history of the South some very interesting facts ivould be dis- 

 covered. 



Modern Rip Saws Pay 



It pays the sawmill man making dimension stock and doing other 

 ripping to use the modern self feed rip saws of large capacity rather 

 than undertake to do quantities of work with the old hand feed 

 machines. Considerable attention has been centered recently on rip- 

 ping up planks and flitches and doing dimension work at the saw- 

 mills because of a pretty general cleaning up of thick stock. There 

 is indication that much more of this class of work will bo done 

 during the year. Some of the hardwood mills while not operating 

 the main saw have put in part of the time during the winter and 

 spring trimming and ripping up lumber to fill orders and to fit it for 

 market. It is in this work that both economy and greater capacity 

 can be obtained by the use of modern types of power feed rip saws. 

 The old hand feed rip saw is a mighty useful machine and is not 

 surpassed in general utility. Moreover, every mill should have one 

 or move, but when it comes to quantity of ripping there is economy 

 in having the modern machines which save elbow grease and reduce 

 cost. 



It is estimated that the government's Grand Canyon game refuge, 

 in Arizona, now contains about 10,000 deer. 



More than 9,000,000 young trees and 10,000 pounds of seed were 

 planted on the national forests in 1914. 



