14 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



American sawmilling and woodworking machinery, not in ex- 

 ceptional instances, but in the majority of cases, is so much 

 superior to the same line of tools manufactured in Great Britain, 

 in accuracy, efficiency, speed and economy as to bear no com- 

 parison whatever with the foreign-made articles. In the intelli- 

 gent operation of this equipment the American mechanic is far 

 the superior of his over-the-seas cousin, and in the quality of 

 the lumber product, with regard to accuracy of sawing, edging 

 and trimming, the greater percentage of lumber manufactured in 

 this country when dry will dress two sides on one-six- 

 teenth of an inch. To be sure, considering the vast aggregate 

 of lumber produced in the United States, there is still a consid- 

 erable quantity manufactured in small ground circular mills. How- 

 ever, a good proportion of this is well and accurately made, al- 

 though there are still some amateurs in the trade who butcher 

 their logs and make pretty bad lumber. 



When the wise British merchant sends a representative to this 

 country with instructions not to bid anything like a reasonable 

 price for lumber, the buyer sometimes, is perforce compelled to 

 seek out the owner of some little portable saw mill and buy from 

 him a dinkey lot of lumber in the attempt to save his scalp at 

 home. That sort of lumber is entirety unsuitable for the trade 

 of Great Britain and the continent of Europe and /when such con- 

 signments of stock arrive on the other side, they should not be 

 set up as a criterion for the genera] run of American lumber 

 products. When Great Britain is willing to pay a price equal 

 to that of the home market it can secure in the United States 

 just as well manufactured lumber as was ever produced on a 

 crude and cumbersome, slow-moving .English sawmill. A modern 

 American sawmill will drop three boards to one of its English 

 prototype, sawed just as accurately, and the quantity of good . 

 lumber in the log can be just as carefully conserved. 



The Timber Trades Journal acknowledges that it is not asking 

 the impossible, "as is proved by the well-carved boards produced 

 by a few of the successful oak and poplar exporters in the 

 States." It' the Journal had reversed the proposition and said 

 "by the well-carved boards produced by the majority of exporters 

 in the States," it would have come very much nearer hitting the 

 mark. 



Cigar Box Lumber. 



Among the cedar wood and cedar veneer manufacturers there i*; 

 considerable indignation expressed over what they claim is an unfair 

 and unjust article, which has appeared in a paper published in the 

 interests of tobacco and cigar dealers and manufacturers. In this 

 article the cigar box manufacturers are criticised and charged with 

 raising unfairly the price of boxes at a time when there is no ne- 

 cessity for so doing. This newspaper article is doing considerable 

 harm, as it has arrayed cigar manufacturers against box makers to 

 the extent that it has already been proposed that the first named 

 should combine to start a large box factory for themselves. 



It is evident that cigar manufacturers do not realize the great 

 scarcity of raw material required in the manufacture of these boxes. 

 It is well known that cedar is today selling at 60 per cent more 

 than at this time a year ago, while cedar veneer costs from $2 to 

 $2.50 more than at the same period of last year. There never was a 

 time when cedar logs were so scarce as now, and the scarcity is not 

 only local, but is felt even in Cuba, where it is difficult to obtain 

 sufficient logs for the trade. Veneer mills are working day and night 

 and yet it seems almost impossible to keep ahead of increased orders. 



These are facts that should prove to every fair-minded cigar manu- 

 facturer that the present condition of the cedar market is the real 

 cause of the rise in prices and not an agreement among the box 

 makers. 



The Woodworking Trade Down East. 



Tins country is so big and the conditions in its various sections 

 so unlike that there must needs be diverse customs prevailing. 

 The eastern manufacturer of anything made out of lumber has 

 been by inheritance, taste and education, a stickler for high- 

 grade lumber products. He has always been willing to pay a 

 Tittle higher price for a little better lumber than his western 

 confrere^ He has frequently been criticised for his inability to 

 recognize a western or southwestern grade as being up to his 

 standard of requirements. In fact, he has often been denomi- 



nated a "kicker." In a great measure this stigma has been 

 unjust. 



A singular feature of the woodworking trade in the east, that 

 is scarcely conceivable in the middle west, is the absence of a 

 lumber yard as an adjunct to a general woodwork manufacturing 

 establishment. In many cases in the west this • is a larger in- 

 stitution than the average metropolitan lumber yard of the whole- 

 sale dealer. The western man buys lumber from a manufacturer 

 or merchant in a wholesale way. In the east there are thousands 

 of woodworking establishments which have no lumber yards at- 

 tached to them. In fact, they do not presume to be in the lumber 

 business but in the business of making furniture, pianos, interior 

 woodwork or what not. Their lumber is bought from the local 

 hardwood dealer and delivered at their mill doors day in and 

 day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, in exactly 

 the quantity and quality which they require. Such methods of 

 business are entirely unknown to the woodworking manufacturer 

 of Chicago, Grand Bapids and other great commercial centers 

 of the middle west. 



These observations concerning eastern methods are of course 

 confined to the large manufacturing trade centers like Pkiladel- 

 phia and Xew York, and to a few of the smaller cities; in all 

 these larger trade centers, however, this system of buying lumber 

 from the local yard man on almost daily requisition prevails to a 

 very great extent. These manufacturers argue that, they succeed 

 in buying just exactly the quantity and grade of lumber that they 

 want and by not being obliged to carry stock on hand and by 

 the avoidance of yard cost and yard rentals they can better afford 

 to pay the retail hardwood lumbermen a reasonable profit than 

 they can by being jointly in the lumber and manufacturing busi- 

 ness. 



The Manufacturing Situation. 



The cartoon in this issue of the Hardwood Record depicts the 

 sentiment prevailing to a considerable degree in regard to the 

 current situation in the hardwood lumber industry. The weather 

 the country over is bad and has been so for some time. The 

 tides in the mountain streams have torn out bridges on the log- 

 ging railroads and damaged the roadways to an alarming extent. 

 In other sections of the country the woods are inundated and the 

 loggers have been drowned out. In both sections it has meant a 

 great reduction of the lumber output. One redeeming feature of 

 the situation is that the heavy rise in the streams of the poplar 

 country has given the mills depending on the Big Sandy, Guyan- 

 dotte, Ohio, Kentuck}', Tennessee and Cumberland rivers a fairly 

 good stock of poplar logs. In fact, it has been the best "run" 

 they have had for several years. The extra output in this sec- 

 tion, however, will be more than offset by the diminished quan- 

 tity of lumber available from the mountain mill regions and 

 from the southwestern oak and gum sections. 



The car situation in all the remote and most of the central 

 distributing lumber sections has been desperate for months and 

 still the supply of cars for the shipment of stock on hand is en- 

 tirely inadequate for the demand. Shippers who have had use 

 for ten cars a day have on an average not received one. This 

 state of affairs has tied up the stocks of the majority of hard- 

 wood lumbermen. 



Again, the supply of woods, sawmill and yard labor has gone 

 from bad to worse. This unfortunate condition prevails from 

 Maine to the Pacific coast and from Lake Superior to the Gulf 

 of Mexico. The large number of young, stalwart woodsmen of 

 a decade ago seem to have disappeared and many and many a 

 camp today is manned by any available recruits, from old men 

 to mere youths, capable of hanging on to a cant-hook or slowly 

 dragging a crosscut through a log. 



Another serious menace to the hardwood lumberman's peace 

 of mind just now is the tightness of the money market. Lum- 

 bermen who for several years have not been obliged to have re- 

 course to bank accommodations find today that it is with diffi- 

 culty that they obtain money, and if obtainable at all it is in 

 limited quantities and at very high rates. 



The only redeeming feature in the situation is that the limited 

 output with the very strong demand is tending to conserve values 

 to the point that they are on the increase rather than on the de- 

 cline. 



