HARDWOOD RECORD 



17 



'Builders of Lumber Histort;. 



NUMBER 



Robert E. Wood. 

 (See portrait supplement.) 

 "Some men are born great, some achieve 

 greatness, and some have greatness thrust 

 upon them." Of the classes thus desig- 

 nated, Americans may be said, as a general 

 rule, to belong to the second. They are the 

 men who achieve greatness. A review of 

 the life histories of the successful business 

 men which have been presented in the 

 Hardwood Eecord from time tu time re- 

 veals the fact that these men, in the ma- 

 jority of cases, were of humble origin, and 

 made their way to success by dint of 

 strenuous work — by a combination of brawn 

 and brain. 



As another and most worthy example of 

 this type, this sketch will tell something 

 of the early struggles and final success of 

 Eobert Elmer Wood, president of the R. 

 E. Wood Lumber Company and the Mont- 

 vale Lumber Company, of Baltimore, Md. 

 Mr. Wood was born July 30, 18U5, at White 

 Pine, Pa., situated eighteen miles north of 

 Williamsport near the Susquehanna river. 

 He is of mixed English and Holland an- 

 cestry. His father was a farmer-lumber- 

 man at a time and in a place where inces- 

 sant toil was necessary for existence. He 

 owned a little farm on which he lived and 

 supported his family of seven boys and six 

 girls by carrying on a small business in 

 lumber in conjunction with his farm work. 

 Under these circumstances it was impos- 

 sible for the father to give his children 

 more educational advantages than could be 

 gained by an attendance of a few terms at 

 the district school, and Robert early recog- 

 nized the necessity of work. When he once 

 saw his duty he embraced it with the de- 

 cision and vigor that have always been 

 characteristic of the man, and at once went 

 to work in the old Beaver mill at Williams- 

 port, pulling lath at fifty cents a day. At 

 the time he was only sixteen years old. 

 Later he secured a place in the W. H. Jen- 

 kins sheathing lath factory at Williamsport, 

 where he received a salary of $35 a month. 

 Always of an inquiring turn of mind and 

 with an insatiable thirst for knowledge he 

 soon became master of whatever work he 

 had in hand, and while still a boy was re- 

 warded with the post of inspector for Kline 

 Bros., of Williamsport, manufacturers of 

 furniture. When he was 20 he set up a 

 business for himself on the mountain side 

 near the old homestead, with a home-made 

 still of the most primitive type, and became 

 a producer of birch extract, made from the 

 limbs and smaller growth of the black birch 

 and commercially known as the oil of birch, 

 or more commonly, wintergreen oil. For 

 two years he practically lived in the woods 

 in a little shack of his own construction, ' 

 felling sapling birch, splitting it up into 

 small bits, packing it into his still and 

 making wintergreen oil. The business, al- 

 though small, was a success. He made good 

 oil and got a good price for it. He rigged 

 up appliances to economize labor, even to 



XXXIII. 



the extent of a tram road and a car to 

 carry the wood and brush to the still. Aftei 

 the distillation was complete, he sold the 

 wood refuse for firewood. The experience 

 was valuable for the work he was to do in 

 after life, for besides early revealing his 

 self-confidence, it developed the qualities 

 of method, economy and grasp of detail 

 which afterward made his leadership in 

 wider lumber affaiis pre-eminently a safe 

 one. In Januar}', 1S91, when Mr. Wood was 

 between 2.5 and 26 years old, he went to 

 Lynchburg, Vt., to take a position with the 

 West Lynchburg Furniture Company as a 

 buyer and inspector of lumber. He re- 

 mained with this concern until June, 1893, 

 when he became foreman of Denman & 

 Ritter's little semi-portable saw mill at 

 Welsh, West Virginia. In the fall of 1803 

 he graduated to a position of log scaler for 

 the Elkhorn & Sandy River Coal & Tim- 

 ber Laud Company, and in July, 1894, he 

 entered the service of the Panther Lumber 

 Company at Panther, West Virginia, as 

 grader. For some time after this he made 

 his livelihood and something to spare by 

 estimating timber for various people. 



At this time Mr. Wood felt that he was 

 thoroughly equipped for the lumber busi- 

 ness and, with the few hundred dollars 

 which he had saved, he began business on 

 his own account. His first venture was on 

 May 6, 1895, when he bought of C. L. Ritter 

 and the estate of W. J. Denman a car of 

 oak lumber which he sold to the Wood & 

 Johnson Furniture Company, of Lynchburg, 

 Va. He continued to trade in lumber in 

 this way for three years. He was his own 

 buyer, his own salesman, his own inspector. 

 During all this time, the personality of the 

 man and his steady application to business, 

 besides winning for him many friends 

 among the more powerful dealers in the 

 lumber world, was steadily widening his 

 trade. 



As a lumber manufacturer Mr. Wood's 

 first venture was a small portable saw mill 

 which he hired on Indian Creek, in south- 

 ern West Virginia. He bought logs from 

 the small operators of that section, had 

 the lumber sawed in the little portable mill 

 and sold the product. Like his previous 

 undertaking, this enterprise was a success 

 and it was not long before he was the owner 

 of a saw mill which he put in at Sandy 

 Huff, West Virginia, in 1898. From this 

 date his operations took in a constantly wid- 

 ening field. He commenced to buy timber 

 and supplemented his original portable mill 

 at Sandy Huff with a band mill at Huff 

 Creek and eventually with a third mill on 

 Lick branch of Cub Creek. This latter or- 

 ganization was known as the Harman Branch 

 Lumber Company. Since that time he has 

 cut over 30,000 acres of the splendid poplar 

 and oak timber of McDowell and Wyoming 

 counties. West Virginia, and has manufac- 

 tured, during the last six years upwards of 

 150,000,000 feet of lumber. 

 ' For the sake of giving some of his em- 

 ployees an interest in his enterprises, Mr. 



Wood organized in June, 1902, the R. E. 

 Wood Lumber Company, which has grown 

 to be one of the best and most favorably 

 known of the poplar and oak producing lum- 

 ber houses in the United States. The com- 

 pany still owns some 25,000 acres of virgin 

 timber in McDowell and Wyoming Counties, 

 besides having valuable holdings in Carter 

 County, Tennessee, equipped with modern 

 mill and railroad facilities. 



In November, 1903, Mr. Wood organized 

 the Montvale Lumber Company, and asso- 

 ciated with himself in the enterprise are 

 the well-known Williamsport banker, Allen 

 P. Perley, F. L. Winchester, J. K. Painter, 

 G. Leidy Wood, H. L. Bowman, Clarence E. 

 Wood and E. L. Warren. The Montvale 

 Lumber Company, of which Mr. Wood is 

 jiresident, acquired by purchase on the 

 south slope of the Blue Ridge, in the Sap- 

 phire country. South Carolina, near the 

 North Carolina line, 53,000 acres of virgin 

 timber land, a new double band saw mill, 

 and a complete equipment of dry kilns and 

 j)laning mill located at Oalhoun, South 

 Carolina. The timber- of this extensive 

 ]iroperty is chiefly poplar, oak and chestnut, 

 but also contains quite a quantity of white 

 and yellow pine. The company also bought 

 extensively in North Carolina, having hold- 

 ings in Cherokee County, with an estimated 

 cut of 12,000,000 feet and a mill of 30,000 

 capacity now running. This operation is on 

 the Murphy line of the Southern Railway. 

 At Eagle Creek, in Swain County, on the 

 new line of the Southern Railway, now 

 building, the company has a holding esti- 

 mated at 140,000,000 feet, on which they 

 are constructing a mill. They have also an 

 extensive property on Bone Valley, a tribu- 

 tary of Hazel Creek, which is a heavily tim- 

 bered tract located in the line of future 

 railroad construction. 



Personally Robert E. Wood is a most in- 

 teresting man. Although his various enter- 

 prises keep him extremely busy, he always 

 has time to greet the stranger or friend 

 who calls upon him, and his hospitality and 

 good fellowship are proverbial among the 

 wide circle of his business and social 

 acquaintances. He is a deep student and a 

 profound and intelligent reader, singularly 

 well versed on the important matters of the 

 day. Always fond of outdoor life, his chief 

 diversions have been a good saddle horse 

 and an automobile. 



In business Mr. Wood has met with great 

 success. He is recognized as a progressive 

 lumberman, yet as an example of his safe 

 methods it can be stated that the entire 

 losses of his companies during the past five 

 years have not amounted to one-tenth of 

 one per cent on bad sales. Starting with 

 absolutely no capital, his courage, persist- 

 ence and foresight, combined with a rare 

 talent for making friends and an inflexible 

 honesty, have won him an enviable place 

 among the greater leaders of the lumber 

 trade. It is therefore with pleasure that 

 the Hardwood Record takes this opportu- 

 nity of presenting to its readers this sketch 

 and portrait of Mr. Wood as a type of man 

 who is honored by his associates in the 

 hardwood lumber field of this country and 

 who is, himself, no less an honor to the 

 business he has selected as his life work. 



