HARDWOOD RECORD 



ig 



Meeting Wisconsin HardWood Manufacturers. 



The Hardwood Lumber Manufacturers of 

 WiseoDsin held a special meeting at the 

 Pfister hotel, Milwaukee, Wis., on Wednes- 

 day, June 26. President Charles A. Good- 

 man, of Marinette, occupied the chair, with 

 Secretary George H. Chapman recording. 



The meeting was held particularly to 

 ratify or adopt the grading rules on hard- 

 wood lumber which were perfected some 

 time ago by a joint bureau on grades rep- 

 resenting the National Hardwood Lumber 

 Association, the Michigan Hardwood Manu- 

 facturers ' Association, the Indiana Hard- 

 wood Lumbermen 's Association and the 

 Hardwood Lumber Jlanufacturers of Wis- 

 consin. The membership of the latter or- 

 ganization is now thirty-five, representing 

 a total annual output of about 1.50,000,000 

 feet of hardwood lumber — a very excellent 

 showing for an association yet in its in- 

 fancy, it being at the present time consider- 

 ably less than a year old. To the Wiscon- 



C. A. GOODMAN, PRESIDENT HARDWOOD 

 MANUFACTURERS OF WISCONSIN. 



sin manufacturers is due credit for hav- 

 ing accomplished as much or more than any 

 other faction in securing the revision of the 

 National rules, aud their acceptance by that 

 body. As is well known, the rules submit- 

 ted by the joint bureau of grades, were 

 adopted by the National Hardwood Lumber 

 Association at its Atlantic City meeting, 

 and their ratification was practically the 

 only business transacted at the Milwaukee 

 meeting of the Wisconsin manufacturers. 

 General reports were presented by the 

 various officers regarding the work that has 

 been accomplished by the association since 

 its organization in December, 1906, and evi- 

 dencing that it has the backing of prac- 

 tically all the hardwood manufacturers of 

 Wisconsin; also that the jobbers as a whole 

 approve of its methods and efforts to accom- 

 plish measures for the general good of the 

 trade. 



The report of Chairman A. K. Owen, of 

 the grading committee, is herewith repro- 

 duced, as being the most important paper 

 presented to the gathering. After conclud- 

 ing his statement, Mr. Owen read the 

 changes in the National rules adopted at At- 

 lantic City, explaining clearly and minutely 

 every detail in connection therewith. 



Report of Grading Committee. 



At the early meetings of your committee it 

 became apparent that the first work we would 

 have to do in order to give the members of our 

 association all the benefits of an inspection sys- 

 tem was till! revision of the existing grading 

 rules, which we found did not meet the present 

 day conditions. At the time these rules were 

 formulated the grades were made with a view 

 to their uses at that time. Since then, however, 

 lumber has become scarcer and more valuable, 

 timber in the woods is being cut closer than ever 

 before and consequently the lumber produced 

 contains more low grades. Consumers have 

 not only substituted less valuable woods than 

 they have heretofore used, but they are also us- 

 ing poorer qualities of the same material. 



ATTAINMENT IN VIEW. 



Your committee, after taking these things into 

 consideration, believed that the present rules 

 should be revised, giving more grades, and that 

 these grades should be made with a view to 

 their uses. At one time we decided and did 

 recommend some changes in the grading rules. 

 We even went so far as to draw up and consider 

 an entirely new set of rules. We came to the 

 conclusion, however, that no hasty action in 

 this matter should be taken, and that a set of 

 rules drawn by us would simply be a local affair 

 and would probably be known only in this sec- 

 tion of the country. What we wanted, we be- 

 lieved, was a set of rules which would be as 

 nearly universal as possible. Our members should 

 know when a carload of lumber is graded in 

 their yards and shipped to New York, San Fran- 

 cisco or any other place, that it will be in- 

 spected by the consumer or the one receiving it, 

 under the same rules and along the same lines 

 as it was in their ow'n yards by their inspec- 

 tors. This led to the conclusion that the best 

 thing to do was to arrange for meetings with 

 committees of other associations to find out 

 what their views and requirements were. 



GETTING TOGETHER. 



With this in mind, your committee was rep- 

 resented at the meeting of the Michigan Hard- 

 wood Lumbermen's Association- held at Grand 

 Rapids, Mich., on May 5. We met with the 

 grading committee of that association, presented 

 the set of rules that we had drawn up and 

 which we believed would fit the conditions in 

 Wisconsin, and also received from them a copy 

 of their recommendations to their association. 

 We found that Michigan varied little from us 

 in their views, but they did not go as far as we 

 desired. After some negotiation it was arranged 

 that a committee from Michigan, Indiana and 

 Wisconsin should meet the inspection rules com- 

 mittee of the National Hardwood Lumber Asso- 

 ciation in the Rector building, Chicago, on May 

 19. 



In addition to the committees present, various 

 other lumbermen and members of other associa- 

 tions were present. The discussion was general 

 in character, and was participated in by nearly 

 all who attended. There was a disposition 

 shown by the National committee to bring out 

 as fully as possible every one's ideas with a 

 view of obtaining all possible information. At 

 the request of Mr. Fatbauer, chairman of the 

 National committee, a member of the Michigan 

 and Indiana committees, as well as myself, were 



requested to remain and to attend the meetings 

 of the National committee. We met with this 

 committee the following morning and remained 

 in session with them four days. At this meeting 

 every section of the country, its woods and re- 

 quirements were carefully considered. The re- 

 sult was the formulation of the report as pre- 

 sented by Jlr. Fathauer to the National associ- 

 ation at its meeting in Atlantic City, a copy of 

 which I have filed with your secretary and 

 which I believe had best be read. 



"BIFFALO AGREEMENT." 



As you doubtless all know, at the meeting of 

 the National association above referred to the 

 Buffalo resolution was rescinded and the recom- 

 mendations changing their rules as made by its 

 committee was passed to take effect December 1 

 of this year. I want to take this opportunity of 

 saying that I was very well Impressed with the 

 manner in which all members and their views 

 were received by the National committee. They 

 showed a' desire to be fair, to get all the infor- 

 mation possible and at the proper time to con- 

 sider this information in formulating their re- 

 port. Unquestionably the reports and recom- 

 mendations made l)y committees are only too 

 often drawn up hastily and without proper con- 



GE0R(;E H. CHAPMAN, SECRETARY HARD- 

 WOOD MANUFACTURERS OF 

 WISCONSIN. 



sideration, liut I believe the above referred to 

 committee has done its work thoroughly and 

 with fairness to all. 



PERFECTION NOT YET ATTAINED. 



This report naturally does not meet the views 

 of your committee in every way. There were 

 some things that have been recommended that 

 we do not lil;e, and others that have been left 

 out which we would like to have seen adopted : 

 but we believe that it is better to have a set of 

 rules approaching universality, even if in the 

 getting of them we have to sacrifice some of our 

 local ideas. We believe you will agree with us 

 in this conclusion. We found after attending 

 these meetings that it was a much larger propo- 

 sition to make grad80 for four and one-half bil- 

 lions of lumber scattered all over the country 

 than it was for us to make rules for the five 

 hundred to six hundred million feet of hard- 

 wood lumber which is annually produced in 

 Wisconsin. 



COMMITTEE'S RECOMMENDATION. 



Y'our committee respectfully asks and recom- 

 mends that we adopt the Wisconsin or National 



