HARDWOOD RECORD 



43 



bat man realized that it would be a good thing to squeeze a little 

 return out of his waste, which is now being burned. 



"Eemember, though," he said to the visitor, when the latter 

 suggested the possibility noted above, ' ' that it would take a 

 mighty low freight rate and a fairly good price to us to bring 

 about the combination of a good buy for the consumer and a 

 worth-while operation for us. We have not been able to locate 

 a consumer of material of this kind within a reasonable distance 

 of our plant, and we have been impressed also with the large 

 amount of labor involved in handling it." 



One bad feature of the attempt to get rid of waste is that the 

 man who has it to sell necessarily looks at it as so much offal, 

 and considers that he is making as "velvet" whatever he gets 

 for it above the freight bills. That is how it happens that a 



furniture manufacturer in a certain Ohio valley city can purchase 

 chair stock cut to dimensions at a lower price by far than he can 

 manufacture it himself; and that is a good reason why those who 

 would like to enter the dimension stock business find themselves 

 baffled when they attempt to quote prices which would enable 

 them to do business with consumers. 



The development of the dimension stock trade would really be 

 the best thing, economically, and from the standpoint of con- 

 serving material, that could be devised; yet the sometimes ill- 

 considered attempts of those who are producing material of this 

 kind in the form of waste to dispose of it and thus prevent the 

 loss of the stock, as well as to reduce their own material expense, 

 are the chief obstacle to the realization of the ideal of using every 

 bit of material that can be cut out of a board. 



Aphorisms of the Trade 



There are a good many new inventions in the glue spreader line, 

 but there is still room for one that will stick all the different 

 factions of the various trade associations together so they will 

 hold and not blister off. 



When a saw is dull and won't take a thin slab right it is a 

 stupid sawyer and a dull manager that will permit it to run very 

 long. 



When the carriage rider gets too lazy to block out the small 

 end of a tapering log it is time for him to take a walk. 



Have you noticed that there is more call for walnut logs this 

 summer than for several years? And the call is bringing out the 

 timber too. 



If the figured gum door is not prominent in millwork orders in 

 the near future it will be missing a good booking that is ready 

 for it. 



The boys that had to buy oak this summer to help fill contracts 

 at prices above what they contracted to furnish it for will look 

 at contracting in the near future like a burned kid looks at the 

 fire. 



Polities may think it is the big ring in the summer circus this 

 trip but the average voter gets a whole lot more enthusiastic 

 about the ball game. 



It is not a case of "I told you so," but just the same if the 

 lumber people had been boosting quartered oak more in the past 

 they would not have so much occasion to be concerned right now 

 over the progress in millwork made by mahogany. But that 's no 

 bar to getting busy right now. 



Down at the plant of the Edward L. Davis Lumber Company in 

 Louisville there was recently seen a train load of fine poplar logs, 

 many of the big, yellow thin sap fellows of the old virgin forest 

 days. Asked where they came from, Ed Davis replied, ' ' Oh, we 

 got 'em out of our back yard; we're having a clean-up back 

 there." And it wasn't so far from the fact, either — they came 

 from a nearby boundary that still had virgin timber on it. 



When it comes to that part of scientific salesmanship known 

 as transportation the railroad experts have the average lumber- 

 man tagged and out at first base. 



The people that call for mahogany these days are rather hog- 

 gish about it at times from the veneer standpoint, for the call 

 is urgent for lumber thickness while the warehouses have a good 

 stock of veneer for which the call is rather light. 



The size of the future dimension stock business is going to 

 depend on how well it is handled a great deal more than one may 

 think. The outlook is good for development, but the development 

 also must be good if it is all to work out right. 



The report that railroads are treating hickory and using it for 

 ties makes the handle ;nan who is hungry for timber tear his hair 

 and wonder where he will get off at to find his next winter's sup- 

 ply of raw material. 



The big splash line figure in quartered oak does not cut as big a 

 figure in the eyes of the furniture maker today as it did a few 

 years back, for he is in a more subdued mood — and that ought to. 

 be pretty good talk for the makers of quartered oak. 



Wisconsin Statistics 



The Xorthern Hemlock and Hardwood Manufacturers' Associa- 

 tion has issued its statement covering cut and shipments for fifty- 

 nine firms, comparing June, 1912, with June. 1911. According to 

 the figures shown there was practically no increase in the cut of hem- 

 lock, while shipments of that wood were fifty-three per cent greater 

 than last June. There was a thirty-three per cent decrease in hard- 

 wood cut and an eight per cent increase in shipments. The com- 

 bination of these figures results in a total decrease of thirteen per 

 cent in cut of all woods, with a thirty-seven per cent increase in 

 shipments. The total cut of both hemlock and hardwoods by the 

 members of the association during June, 1912, was 63,66.3,000 feet, 

 of which 17,628.000 feet were hardwoods. The total shipments 

 amounted to 72.768.000 feet, of which 20,703,000 were hardwoods. 



The greatest cut during the month in hardwoods is recorded for 

 maple with a total cut of 6,101,000 feet. Birch led in shipments 

 during the month with a total of 6,163,000 feet against 4.814.000 

 feet cut. The shipments of maple were exactly the same as the 

 cut. In basswood there is a total of 2,106,000 feet cut with 3,204,000 

 feet shipments. The cut of ash totaled 822,000, while 674,000 feet 

 of this wood was shipped. The cut increased in ash and maple, and 

 decreased in basswood, birch, elm and oak. 



A Comparison 



Eeports of building operations in this country and Canada have 

 come simultaneously to hand, and it is interesting to ctmpare 

 figures covering the operations in the two countries. In both 

 instances the.y deal with building which has been .^ont^actod lor 

 in the first six months of 1912. The Canadian statistics cuver 

 twenty-seven leading cities of the Dominion, while a report from a 

 leading building paper of this country covers seventy-eight 

 American cities. Therefore actual totals would have no signifi- 

 cance. It is an interesting fact, however, that the high mark of 

 building in the city of New York, which totaled about sixteen 

 and a half million dollars, was only a little over three million 

 dollars in excess of that of Toronto for the same period. At the 

 same time the average increase in building operations over the 

 first six months of 1911 shows that in Canada the increase was 

 twenty-eight per cent while in this country it was but seven per 

 cent. Of the twenty-seven Canadian cities reporting, all showed 

 increases but four, which means that in only about one out of each 

 seven cities did the record fall off. In the United States on the 

 other hand thirty-four per cent of the seventy-eight cities report- 

 ing showed decreases in building operations. 



Another interesting comparison is shown in the totals. The 

 twenty-seven Canadian cities for the first six months of 1912 con- 

 tracted for $69,580,000 for building, while the seventy-eight cities 

 of the United States during the same period spent $92,630,000. 

 There are three times as many cities reported from this country, 

 while the actual excess in total volume of building expenditure was 

 approximately one-half more than that of Canada. The increase in 

 Canada's building during the year over the first six months of 

 1911 was about fifteen and a half million dollars, and in this 

 country it was only about six million dollars. 



