26 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



A. JOHNSON, PENNINGTON GAP, VIRGINIA 

 VICE PRESIDENT. 



railroad that is important in its development, 

 as well as co-operating with the towns along 

 the system, it is the industrial department. We 

 must have a knowledge of the resources of the 

 road and be ready at all times to present the 

 opportunities and advantages for the location of 

 industries along the line. My work, to a large 

 extent, is to go about from Dakota to Louisi- 

 ana, as our road covers t welve states, and co- 

 operate with the citizens in forming industrial 

 clubs, hoards of trade, commercial organizations 

 and such, calling their # attention to the imporl 

 ance of being wide awake, taking advantage 

 of their natural surroundings and being willing 

 to co-operate with the railroad system for the 

 upbuilding or greater development of their re- 

 spective towns or cities. You are today holding 

 your (.invention in one of the fastest growing, 

 most progressive and in every way up-to-date 

 cities in the United States. There has been a 

 great deal accomplished here in the past five 

 years. How much you have had to do with it 

 I don't know. 



but going back to my allusion of a moment 

 ago — you have in your audience a gentleman 

 who has had much To do with the building up 

 of this city. I. P. Peters, secretary of the In- 

 dustrial League of ibis city. I have co-operated 

 with" him, and the traffic officials in Memphis 

 have done the same, and all in all we have 

 brought about the great natural development 

 here, thanks particularly to Mr. Peters. When 

 he assumed the office he* now holds in 1901 their 

 was very little known of the general commercial 

 advantages of thus city, but with an excellent 

 organization and the support of the people of 

 this city progress has gone on. He has been 

 instrumental in locating eighty-five industrial or 

 manufacturing plants, with 10,000 -employes, 

 which, according to the customary way of num- 

 bering individuals of a family, would mean 50j- 



000 additional population to Memphis since 

 1901. . 



I realize that you are great producers, great 

 manufacturers of one of the greatest commodi- 

 ties in the United States. Beyond the sawing 

 of lumber and its sales, how much have you 

 gentlemen co-operated by way of bringing to 

 the point of production woodworking and manu- 

 facturing plants? Possibly you have done a 

 great deal ; at least, you are the people who can 

 accomplish a great deal, and in behalf of the 

 Illinois Central railroad and its Industrial De- 

 partment I today solicit your co-operation for 

 future work. 



I stepped into a store on Main street today, 

 being- attracted by some nice model pieces, and 



1 thought I would ask the merchant where they 

 were manufactured. I did so, and to my as- 

 tonishment he said he didn't know. He said 

 they came from the North, possibly Grand Rap- 

 ids. I said, "Have you any furniture manufac- 

 turing plant in Memphis'.'" He said, "No, sir.'* 

 I t hink you grasp the poin t . 



lu my opinion, from a railroad or traffic 

 standpoint, it would seem to me that there 

 should be an unusual and an extraordinary effort 

 upon the part of the people engaged In your 

 line to call the attention of your northern and 

 eastern friends to the importance of loeat'ng 

 at the point of production. There must be more 

 or less waste, throwing out of the culls or small 

 timber that would not be merchantable in the 

 northeast or west that could be made so, prac- 

 tically at the mill door, by bringing the furni- 

 ture man, the veneer manufacturer, the stave 



man and all others in the woodworking indus- 

 try to the point of production, which would 

 mean not only profit to yourselves, not then 

 having to call upon the railroad people to make 

 quite so many cars, but you would also 

 get a good price for your lumber and sell 

 that part of it that is not merchantable 

 now. It would give us the opportunity of cut- 

 ting out the heavier traffic and handling that 

 which is most profitable, a point your worthy 

 president alluded to this morning in speaking of 

 the merchandise and transportation of Germany. 

 I assure you that this matter of getting together 

 is wise — there is nothing -like good fellowship, 

 and certainly men can accomplish more where 

 there is .ioint action than can the individual. 

 We know that to be the case with railroads. 

 I want to emphasize this point, if you have not 

 already given it the attention it deserves. Upon 

 returning to your respective homes, wherever 

 they may be, whether on the Illinois Central or 

 any other railroad, that if you have not already 

 a commercial club in your town or city that you 

 use your influence in bringing about such an 

 organization. Through such organizations much 

 may he accomplished. If you have a proposition 

 in go before a railroad you can transact the 

 business more quickly and satisfactorily through 

 a committee from a commercial organization 

 representing the town or city as a whole than 

 you can by taking it up individually. "In union 

 there is strength." The business man and the 

 railroad corporation can do much by working 

 together. We have at the head of our company 

 an officer that every other official and every 

 man is proud of — a man who has studied the 

 technical and practical points of railroading 

 probably as no other man has done in this 



C. L. RITTER, HUNTINGTON, WEST VIR- 

 GINIA VICE PRESIDENT. 



country. He is interested in the progress of 

 our southern territory, the great Mississippi val- 

 ley, and I am sure that he knows full well and 

 appreciates the importance and magnitude of the 

 Hardwood Manufacturers' Association of the 

 United States. 1 refer to J. T. Harrahan. 



In conclusion, in behalf of the railroad I 

 represent, as well as personally, I thank you for 

 your kind attention, and I sincerely hope that 

 I may hear from some of you gentlemen, particu- 

 larly those of you who desire the upbuilding of 

 your cities, especially if they are located on our 

 line. I will always give you a ready response 

 and I will, to the best of my ability, work in 

 the interest of all. [Applause.] 



The next speaker introduced was Dr. Her- 

 man von Schrenk of the Missouri Botanical 

 Garden at St. Louis, who is also associated 

 with the Department of Agriculture. Dr. 

 von Schrenk took up several topics of 

 spec i lie interest to the lumber trade and 

 made quite a number of valuable sugges- 

 tions. His scholarly address follows: 



Dr. von Schrenk* s Address. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Associa- 

 tion — I feel like expressing my appreciation of 

 the very cordial invitation I received to meet 

 with the Hardwood Manufacturers' Association 

 of the United States, but I felt some hesitation 



about coming here because of a fear of my ina- 

 luiiiy To say something of interest to you. "How- 

 ever. 1 fee] tnal we are all working with one 

 end in view : the best realization tuat we can 

 get out of the development of the hardwood 

 industry. I have no formal paper to present to 

 you. but I jotted iiown some notes about some 

 of the factors in connection with the hardwood 

 industry and the lumber industry as a whole 

 which nave struck me and which may be of 

 some interest to you. 



All of the operators in the lumber industry 

 nowadays are stuuenis, not only of the present 

 situation but of the future. One of the tnmgs 

 1 want to talk about is the present method of 

 operating the logging situation in a sawmill, 

 u.e relation which tnat bears to market condi- 

 tions and what H will be as the years go on. 

 i think we have all felt sometimes that while 

 we have a lot of things to count on at present, 

 some of us feel rather shaky as to what will 

 be the situation of a tew years hence. Hut what 

 are we going to do? If you will look over toe 

 present circumstances you will see that the 

 source of supply of hardwood is limited. You 

 realize that the trees now coming from the for- 

 ests are not what they were some years ago. 

 i la \ are further removed trom the center of 

 i perations ; it costs more to get them to the 

 sawmills; and you don't get the quality of 

 lumber you did years ago. It is a condition that 

 lias brought into the market certain kinds ot 

 lumber which you did not consider five or ten 

 years ago : which are growing in importance 

 daj after day. replacing some of the woods you 

 counted on some years ago. The question is, 

 What is going to be the character of the lumber. 

 hardwoods as well as pines, in the future, and 

 how best may the changed conditions be met 7 

 I am not a great believer in trying to pry into 

 the future and say what will happen, but it is 

 always wise to look a little into the future and 

 see where we are going. 



If you will look at the trend of business in 

 the past you will find that the first operators 

 in lumber were sawmill men. As they increased 

 their business the yard business started, oper- 

 ated usually by another man. As the yard busi- 

 ness increased and lumber was more difficult to 

 get the yard man turned around and became a 

 mill operator, and the lumber was obtained from 

 one or more distributing points. As the result 

 of this sort of policy we see the great manufac- 

 turing establishments of today holding vast 

 anas of timber land, with a large daily output. 

 Smaller plants have, to a large extent, gone out 

 of existence— at least small in number compared 

 with the larger ones— and hand in hand with 

 that has gone an increased cut year after year 

 of a certain definite hardwood supply which 

 existed when the hardwood business first began. 



What are we going to expect to happen in 

 the next few years? With that increased output 

 of the large mills will come a corresponding 

 future decrease of supplies. A certain number 

 of the largest sawmills have to stop in their op 

 erations because of the exhaustion of supplies, 

 and whether it is going to be five or ten years 

 from now I foresee the swinging back of the 

 pendulum -the condition of the small operator 

 going on to the tracts abandoned by the large 

 operator, and you will have the small sawmills 

 again, possibly with the return of the independ- 

 ent yards in our cities. Those are reflections of 

 a general nature, which I want to prefix to some- 

 thing more specific and definite. I think most 



A. DEUTSCH, SAX ANTONIO, TEXAS VICE 

 PRESIDENT. 



