30 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



Hardwood Lumbering Along the Appalachians 



FR.OM THE COAL FIELDS TO THE COTTON COUNTRY 



A PEN AND PUTXIHE SKETCH OF THE OPEHATril\s OF 



The R. E. iVood Lumber Company and The MontVale Lumber Company of "Baltimore, Md. 



D 



N THE last issue of the Hardwood 

 Recokd was jiublislied a biief 



biographical sketch of Eobert E. 



Wood, iircsiilent of the E. E. 

 Wood Lumber Company and the Montvale 

 Lumber Company of Baltimore. Md. 



Mr. Wood made a friendly call at the 

 office o£ the Hardwood Record some two 

 months ago. I have known him about ten 

 years, but so little did I know of 

 his affairs th.nt I was surprised 

 when, by dint of questioning. I 

 discovered that instead of being 

 a comparatively small poplar and 

 hardwood operator in West Vir- 

 ginia, his commercial affairs 

 have grown by leaps and bounds 

 until he has become one of the 

 foremost timber owners and 

 hardwood lumber producers in 

 the United States. It was only 

 after vigorous peisuasion that I 

 prevailed upon him to permit me 

 to print a brief biographical 

 sketch and his portrait. When I 

 further appealed to Mr. Wood to 

 permit me to visit his timber 

 properties ami sawmill operations 

 lying along the lower Appala- 

 chian Eange in AVest Virginia, 

 Tennessee, North Carolina and 

 South Carolina, w-ith a view of 

 telling the lumlier ]iurchasing 

 ))ublic of his gigantic enterprise, 

 he balked at the ]iublicity anil 

 said : 



"I have always done business 

 in a very unostentatious way. I 

 am not a man who seeks the lime- 

 light. I am not seeking distinc- 

 tion for my achievements. I 

 have always lived in the woods. 

 I have earned my way in the 

 world by hard and strenuous en- 

 deavor. Every piece of timber 

 property that I ever operated I 

 luive bought only after a 

 thorough and systematic exami- 

 nation, and my judgment of tim- 

 ber values has been based on the 

 experience that has arisen from previous 

 purchases and thc-ir operation. My busi- 

 ness has been one of gradual and steady 

 growth. I started for myself by the pur- 

 chase of a single carload of lumber, and 

 made a profit on the transaction. A little 

 portable sawmill that I leased was a suc- 

 ceeding venture. I first bought a few trees, 

 then a small area of timber. I bought a 

 small mill and then others; then more tim- 



ber. 1 eventually arose to the dignity of 

 owning a band mill and bought more tim- 

 I'Cr. Ail during my business career I have 

 kept myself poor — lumber poor, timber 

 ];oor. Today myself and the young men 

 who are associated with me in the R. E. 

 Wood T.,umber Company and the Montvale 

 Lumber Comjiany have tracts of timber in 

 the mountain districts of almost all the 



()tILL ROSE AND HIS -MOWIXG MACHIXE'— IWMOUS BEAR HUN 



TEH OF EAGLE (KEEK— TYPICAL IIO.ME XOKTII 



C.^ItOLIXA BACKWOODSMAN. 



southern states. We have nearly 12o,000 

 acres of as fine poplar, oak and chestnut 

 forests as grow in the country. Every acre 

 of it is virgin timber, carefully selected, 

 for its quality, its undepredated nature 

 and its availability to lines of transportatiou, 

 and hence the ready and economical means 

 by which the lumber can be placed upon 

 the market. We are at present operating 

 three sawmills, each with a daily capacity 



of from tliirty to forty thousand feet, and 

 are about to put in a fourth operation to 

 convert another timber tract into lumber. 

 We are marketing lumber all over the east- 

 ern part of the United States and shipping 

 large quantities abroad." 



"Give me the privilege," I uiged, "to 

 visit these jiroperties, to ]iii-ture and de- 

 scribe the qualities of your forest, to 

 photograph your saw'mills, to tell 

 something of the work involved 

 in producing lumber from the 

 (■(umtry in which you operate, 

 .Mild to inform the lumber buying 

 jpulilic of what you have and 

 how you do things. ' ' 



Tlie small, wiry man winced at 

 this idea of iiublicity and depre- 

 lated the fact that either he 

 or his affairs were a matter 

 of public interest. I eventually 

 jiersuaded him that he was wrong, 

 in his assumption, and that the 

 exploitation of his timber prop- 

 rrties and lumber operations 

 would be a matter of more than 

 ]iassing interest to the great lum- 

 ber buying public. Thus I have 

 been permitted to visit not only 

 his sawmills — which is about as 

 far as the average lumber news- 

 paper writer or lumber buyer 

 ever goes — but also to cruise his 

 forests in a general way from the 

 ■oal fields of W'est Virginia to 

 I he cotton country of South 

 I arolina. 



My trip lasted nearly a month, 

 and veteran timber cruise r 

 though I am, I must say that I 

 imve seen more magnificent pop- 

 lar, oak and chestnut timber than 

 1 ever saw before in my life 

 within the holdings of the Wood 

 cor|iorations. 

 The West Virginia Operation. 

 1 landed with my c-anu'ra from 

 the Norfolk & Western train at 

 laeger, McDowell county, \V. Va., 

 and was welcomed l)y G. Leidy Wucul and 

 Clarence E. Wood, brothers of R. Ji. Wood, 

 and respectively general manager and as- 

 sistant general manager of the R. E. Wood 

 Lumber Company. We took the morning 

 tiain (uit of laeger, and shortly after noon, 

 after traversing twenty-five miles of the 

 laeger & Southern branch of the Norfolk & 

 Western Railroad, carved most of the way 

 out of the rocky sides of Dry Fork creek, 



