HARDWOOD RECORD 



33 



forester. We may love the poetry and the senti- 

 ment of forestry, but to be valuable to this and 

 to succeeding generations the lumbermen should 

 take the lead in the practical application of 

 conservation. 



It has been the mistake of unwise, uninformed 

 and unprincipled politicians in leading the peo- 

 ple through the inHuence of the press and the 

 rostrum to believe that the lumbermen veere not 

 only committing an intentional and ruthless 

 waste of the forests, but were in a trust to cause 

 them to pay far more than they should for their 

 lumber ; when the fact is, that if forest conser- 

 vation is ever a success, lumber has got to be 

 worth more money than it is now. It must 

 bring what it will cost to produce it. It is our 

 duty to educate the people to this fact, and that 

 if conservation comes the people will have to pay 

 the bill. There is no way of saddling this cost 

 upon the lumbermen. It has got to come fairly 

 upon all classes. There is no way to legislate 

 that the lumbermen, or any one class, have got 

 to be at the expense of growing trees. Taxes 

 on an investment, depreciation, interest on capi- 

 tal, insurance and labor, are all charged up to 

 the cost of a product, and the consumer pays the 

 bill. But we are all consumers and we pay each 

 other's bills, and this is fairly the law of ex- 

 change from which there is no appeal. 



Reforms that are the most useful and the 

 most lasting have come through persecution, 

 and the misunderstandings and the abuse that 

 have been charged against lumbermen will react 

 and result in greater confidence and in improved 

 methods of conservation and in restoring and in 

 regrowing the forests. There can be no trust 

 in lumber. The people of the United States, 

 through their government, now own about 175,- 

 000,000 acres of fine forests west of the plains 

 and in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Arkan- 

 sas that will be perpetuated and taken care of 

 by a wise forest commission ; and the trees, as 

 they mature, will be sold at a price not exceed- 

 ing the cost of growth, so that the people will 

 get lumber as cheaply, relatively, as they will 

 get anything that grows. In the interest of for- 

 est conservation and the stopping and preven- 

 tion of timber and lumber waste, in the sum- 

 ming up, lumber must yield the necessary prolit 

 to protect itself. Fires must be kept down and 

 efficient laws enacted for this purpose. 



Byprodocts. 



I notice that Canada is going to stop pulp- 

 wood coming into the states. We are going to 

 utilize the waste of Cottonwood, yellow pine, fir, 

 hemlock and other woods in the manufacturing 

 of paper. Tiiere is now being built another 

 paper mill in Orange, Tex., to cost half a million 

 dollars, to make paper from yellow pine waste. 

 Stills and extract works are being built in other 

 places for the purpose of extracting from for- 

 est and mill waste turpentine, wood alcohol, 

 pine oil, tar and other valuable byproducts. So 

 we are improving, and other discoveries to this 

 end will follow in other ways to the benefit 

 of the lumbermen and of the people. They are 

 now grinding up wood waste and making co;npo 

 board and fiber board. 



At the last meeting of the National Lumber 

 Manufacturers' Association a resolution was 

 passed favoring the cutting and creating of a 

 market for short lengths in siding, flooring and 

 other items that have to be cut by a carpenter 

 in the erection of a building. 



The retail dealer is not interested in the hard 

 work of trying to make his customers take these 

 lengths by trying to convince them that they are 

 just as convenient. It is far easier for him 

 to refuse to buy only these stated lengths that 

 have long been the standard. The lumbermen 

 are anxious to conserve. It is manifestly to his 

 financial interest for every manufacturer to save 

 and market everything that he can make a profit 

 on, or even, in many cases, get out without actu- 

 al loss upon. 



I will close by quoting from the present United 

 States forester, Henry S. Graves, copied from 

 the April number of the Review of Reviews, as 

 follows : 



An important feature of state forestry is the 

 establishment of state forests. A further duty 

 of the states is to enact reasonable laws of taxa- 

 tion. In the long run the present system of tax- 

 ation, if continued, will contribute directly to 

 forest destruction. The states should help pri- 

 vate owenrs, not only by aid in fire protection 

 and reasonable taxation, but by advice given 

 through the state forester as to best practical 

 methods of forestry. Timber values are still 

 too small to encourage large investments in tree 

 planting and other measures of silviculture. 



There is a responsibility on the part of forest 

 owners to use every practicable means to prevent 

 waste, and to conserve the productivity of the 

 forests, and avoid such a management of their 

 property as would result in injury to others. On 

 the other hand, the burden of providing for the 

 future and securing other public benefits must 

 be shared by the states and the national gov- 

 ernment. 



Practical lumbermen and forest owners In- 

 dorse all of the above. One of the Louisiana lum- 

 ber companies, in which I am interested, has 



thirty-five Yale Forest School students now 

 camping in our forests near Clarks. A few 

 years ago we invited them to our Missouri mills. 

 They did us good. The lumbermen are friendly 

 to foresters and to forestry, and we are pro- 

 gressing in the knowledge of the theory, and we 

 hope soon to be able to realize the successful 

 practice of forest conservation. 



The report of Manager Leonard Bronson 

 who has been looking after the affairs of the 

 association but a brief period as yet, shows 

 how indispensable he intehds to make his 

 office in the near future. 



Report of Manager Bronson 



Gentlemen, members of the National Lumber 

 Manufacturers' Association ; President Hines has 

 so ably covered the details of the work of my 

 oifice in his own report — for my office is, after 

 all, a branch of the president's office — that I 

 found, when he confided to me some of the 

 things he was going to say, that there would be 

 but little left for me to say as to the work itself, 

 and even as to the details ; there is not much 

 for me to say. I wish, however, to impress upon 

 you at the outset what this association really 

 means. 



We are all familiar with the fact that this 

 industry in which we are engaged is perhaps the 

 second in the United States ; it is the second in 

 some particulars, the third in others, and the 

 fourth in some others. It is an industry dealing 

 with fundamental things, dealing with the natu- 

 ral resources of the country. It is not only 

 because of its figures in reference to feet of out- 

 put, capital and labor employed, but also in its 

 scope, for every state in the Union has a saw- 

 mill, and in about twenty-five states it is one of 

 the leading industries and is ranked as such. 

 Here in New Orleans, looking north up this great 

 central valley, not only does the lumber indus- 

 try extend clear to the northern borders of this 

 country, but the membership of this association 

 covers the entire north to the Great Lakes and 

 to the Canadian line in Minnesota ; it extends to 

 the Atlantic on the east, and to the west it 

 reaches the shores of the Pacific, and it extends 

 to the Gulf, on the south. We have members 

 in Arizona and New Mexico as well as in Cali- 

 fornia. Washington and the mountain states. 

 That is the territory of the National Lumber 

 Manufacturers' Association. There are thirteen 

 affiliated associations on the membership list of 

 this association. They represent every wood 

 that is produced in the United States except red- 

 wood, and yesterday we received an application 

 from the Redwood Manufacturers' Association to 

 become an afliliated member of this association. 

 We lack yet that territory up in the far North- 

 west. Pennsylvania is not organized at all, but 

 many of its manufacturers are members of affili- 

 ated associations ; so, in a sense, we cover Penn- 

 sylvania and New Jersey. New York was organ- 

 ized recently into the Empire State Forest Prod- 

 ucts' Association. That we hope to have with us 

 soon. West Virginia and the Southern Appala- 

 chians have the Spruce Manufacturers' Associa- 

 tion, whose president is here, E. V. Babcock, and 

 that association sliould soon be a member of this 

 association. Then there is the New England ter- 

 ritory right on the border, bearing the brunt 

 of niany difficulties that confront the rest of 

 us, and it is torn by dissensions, by conflicting in- 

 terests and it has never been organized from a 

 manufacturers' standpoint. That territory we 

 also aim to organize and bring into the fold, so 

 that we can present a united front as manufac- 

 turers upon any problem that is of common in- 

 terest. 



One of the problems that confronts every man- 

 ufacturers' organization, with affiliated associa- 

 tions, is, how to increase its membership so that 

 all the manufacturers can work more harmoni- 

 ously and effectively together. The affiliated as- 

 sociations in the National Association represent, 

 in the product of its membership, about fourteen 

 billions of feet of lumber product. The total 

 product of this country is now or will be very 

 soon, close to forty billions of feet. So that 

 we have about one-third of the entire product 

 represented by the affiliated associations ; but 

 the territory "of those associations produces at 

 least four-fifths of all the lumber of the United 

 States. So that we are now national, and we 

 refuse to believe, if we stand together and work 

 together, that we cannot accomplish everything 

 that we ought to try to accomplish in a national 

 way. We are not going to hide our heads and 

 be ashamed in the presence of anyone, be he 

 president or congressman or United States Sen- 

 ator ; we are going to state our position. We 

 stand on the right. We are not going to ask 

 for anything that we are not entitled to and 

 what we are entitled to we demand. 



The work of the National Lumber Manufac- 

 turers' Association is somewhat general, origi- 

 nally, as I understand, it was organized to meet 

 the demand for common action on the tariff 

 question, or at least the tariff and reciprocity 

 matters which came up nine or ten years ago ; 

 and it was realized that, along with those things 



were other matters also of national importance 

 which affect every lumberman. 



We are avoiding controversal matters, and for 

 that reason there are many subjects that we 

 leave solely to the affiliated associations, those 

 associations representing particular sections or 

 certain woods. In respect to certain problems 

 there may be some widespread complications. 



The work of the association for several years 

 w^as somewhat formal. It was an association 

 preparing for a great work, and it was fortunate 

 that we were ready and well preijared when the 

 tariff fight was inaugurated last fall. President 

 Hines, in his address, has spoken of the attitude 

 of lumbermen on that matter. I presume there 

 are some lumbermen who are free traders, theo- 

 retically, some who are protectionists, some who 

 are tariff-for-rcvenue-only men, but I think most 

 of us will agree upon the proposition that 

 equality of treatment must be accorded to every 

 interest in the country, and that if protection is 

 the policy we are entitled to our share of it. 



Other questions, however, are constantly aris- 

 ing, especially out of the new movements for 

 conservation — and the word "conservation" has 

 been made to embrace conservation of pretty 

 nearly everything you can think of in the way 

 of resources and force. There is conservation of 

 the soil, and we might, perhaps, call upon our 

 farmers to replace a pound of nitrates for every 

 pound taken out in the production of crops. It 

 is the kind of a proposition that is far-reaching, 

 and there are almost numberless questions inter- 

 woven with the conservation question. There is 

 also the question of uniform state laws, very 

 closely related to the conservation question. The 

 Congress of Governors was almost coincident 

 with the first national and international conser- 

 vation congresses. The result is that business 

 men believe that we are likely to have new ques- 

 tions, or newly stated old questions, presented 

 to us every day, and wo must be prepared to 

 meet them. 



I was selected to take charge of certain fea- 

 tures of this work on behalf of the lumber manu- 

 facturers of the United Slates. I felt deeply 

 my inexperience, my lack of that kind of ability 

 that is most effective : and yet it is a work in 

 which I was interested and I felt complimented 

 and was pleased to have the opportunity to do 

 work along this line. If in attempting to do the 

 work I shall be successful. I shall succeed onl.v 

 with the aid of the officers of this association, 

 Tlie Board of Governors, and every member of the 

 affiliated associations. Right here let me say 

 that I want every lumber manufacturer in the 

 United States who is a member of a local asso- 

 ciation or any other association, to feel that he 

 is a member of the National Lumber Manufac- 

 turers Association, although he may not receive 

 a certificate of membership. Mr. Hines has gone 

 over the subjects which this association is han- 

 dling, and is to handle, most of which will come 

 through m.v hands, and in the working out of 

 which I must ask your cooperation. 



A particular subject which interests you and 

 me, and the subject which I was supposed to 

 'oe particularly able to handle. Is the matter of 

 wide publicity which will educate the public as to 

 the facts concerning the lumber business, its 

 needs and Its relations to other Industries and 

 the laws of commerce. The demagogue has played 

 on the public mind until the people believe there 

 Is a lumber trust, which exercises a mysterious 

 influence and controls everything pertaining to 

 the lumber industry, the timber land, mill pro- 

 ducts, distribution of products and prices. I be- 

 lieve if we could know the facts, we could find 

 that nine out of ten of the ordinary people of 

 this country believe such an impossible and ab- 

 surd thing. But there have been some reasons 

 for that. Notwithstanding the wide variations 

 in lumber prices, there comes a time when, for a 

 few months perhaps, the demand is greater than 

 the supplv. and every lumber manufacturer and 

 ev?ry dealer gets as much as he can. and he Is 

 bound to get as much as his neighbor. If he can 

 find out wiiat his neighbor is getting. Prices 

 then are substantially uniform. Then" a certain 

 kind of politician saw a chance to make a point 

 and said. "There Is the lumber trust. That ac- 

 counts for It." Then he pointed to the fact 

 that some people, who were far sighted finan- 

 cially and commercially, had the daring to do 

 things that the average man would not do years 

 ago. and bought some timber land and kept It 

 until It has shown a very handsome profit. They 

 confused the timber owner with the manufac- 

 turer, and they confused the raw material with 

 the product, and so they said, because there were 

 some men who had gotten wealthy In the timber 

 business, that the lumber manufacturers were 

 extortionists. They forget about the cost of 

 transportation, and forget about the men who 

 are enjoying the advantage of the high prices 

 today, the farmers and the worklngmen, and who 

 are not willing that the people from whom they 

 buv their lumber should share in the high prices 

 aniJ have the advantages which they themselves 

 enjoy. 



So strong was the belief in the lumber trust 

 that it was practically impossible to get anything 

 before the people to the contrary. We could go 

 to Washington and go before the Ways and Means 

 Committee of the House and talk to them and 



