HARDWOOD RECORD 



34a 



ical dominion no less than to the improper 

 economic dominion of the great special inter- 

 ests. This country, its natural resources, its 

 natural advantages, its opportunities, and its 

 institutions belong to ail its citizens. They 

 cannot be enjoyed fully and freely under any 

 government in which the special interests as 

 such have a voice. The supreme political task 

 of our day, the indispensable condition of 

 national efficiency and national welfare, is to 

 drive the special interests out of our public 

 life. 



Unfortunately for the greatest benefit 

 that might have accrued from the work of 

 this congress, too much politics entered into 

 it. The action demanding the ousting of 

 Edward Hines from the committee on cre- 

 dentials was a sad mistake. 

 < The jolts Mr. Koosevelt gave to certain 

 political enemies were hardly warranted 

 with the purpose of the convention as 

 alleged — the outlining of a practical plan of 

 state and federal conservation of the natural 

 resources of the country. 



Mr. Roosevelt 's plea for national forests 

 was a splendid one. He urged cooperation 

 between state and national governments in 

 the reclaiming of swamp lands. He then 

 turned to the question of foresi protection 

 and forest extension, saying. 



"The fight for our national forests in the 

 West has been won, but the fight to create 

 the southern Appalachian and White moun- 

 tain forests in the East is not over. The bill 

 has passed the House and will come before 

 the Senate for a vote next February. The 

 people of the United States, regardless of 

 party or section, should stand solidly be- 

 hind it. 



"The national forests are increasingly 

 useful as well. During the last year the 

 national forests were used by 22,000 cattle- 

 men with their herds, -5,000 sheepmen with 

 their flocks, 5,000 timbermen with their 

 crews, and 45,000 miners. More than 5,000 

 persons used them for other special indus- 

 tries. Nearly 34,000 settlers had the free 

 use of wood. More than 700,000 acres of 

 agricultural land have been patented or 

 listed for patent within the forests, and the 

 reports of the forest officers show that more 

 than 400,000 persons a year use the forests 

 for recreation, camping, hunting, fishing 

 and similar purposes. All this is done 

 without injury to the timber, which has a 

 value of a thousand million dollars. 



"Moreover, the national forests protect 

 the water supply of a thousaud cities and 

 towns, about 800 irrigation projects, and 

 more than 300 power projects, not counting 

 the use of the water for these and other 

 purposes by individual settlers. I think that 

 hereafter we may safely disregard any 

 statements that the national forests are 

 withdrawn from settlement and use." 



State and Federal Jurisdiction 



After toiling of the formation of the 

 North American Conservation Congress, in 

 which Mexico and Canada joined with the 

 United States, Mr. Boosevelt said: 



"One of the most important conservation 

 questions to the United .States relates to the 

 control of water power monopoly in the 

 public interest. There is apparent a tend- 

 jency on the part of our opfionents to cloud 

 the issue by raising the question of state as 

 against federal jurisdiction. The essential 

 question is not one of legal technicalities; 

 it is simply this: Who can best regulate the 

 special interests for the public good? Most 

 of the predatory corporations are interstate 

 or have interstate atfiliations. Therefore 

 they are largely out of reach of effective 

 state control, and fall of necessity within 

 the federal jurisdiction. 



One of the prime objects of those among 

 them that are grasping and greedy is to 

 a\wid any effective control either by state 

 or nation; and they advocate state control 

 simply because they believe it to be the 

 least effective. That is why I oppose the 

 demand to turn the matters over to the 

 states. It is fundamentally a demand 

 against the interest of the plain people. 



Must Interest Many People 



"One of the difficulties iu putting into 

 practice the conservation idea is that the 

 field is constantly growing iu the public 

 mind. It has been no slight task to bring 

 before 90,000,000 people a great conception 

 like that of conservation and convince them 

 that it is right. Their misunderstandings 

 are due in part to direct misrepresentation 

 by the men to whose interest it is that 

 conservation should not prosper. 



"For example, we find it constantly said 

 by men who should know better that tem- 

 porary withdrawals, such as the withdrawals 

 of coal land, will check development. Yet 

 the fact is that these withdrawals have no 

 purpose except to prevent the coal lands 

 from passing into private ownership until 

 Congress can pass laws to open them to 

 development under conditions just alike to 

 the public and to the men who will do the 

 developing. 



"Abuses committed in the name of a just 

 cause are familiar to all of us. Many unwise 

 things are done and many unwise measures 



are advocated in the name of conservation, 

 either through ignorance or by those whose 

 interest lies not in promoting the movement 

 but in retarding it. For example, to stop 

 water power development by needless re- 

 fusal to issue permits for water power or 

 private irrigation works on the public lands 

 inevitably leads many men, friendly to con- 

 servation and believers in its general prin- 

 ciples, to assume that its practical applica- 

 tion is necessarily a check upon progress. 

 Nothing could be more mistaken. The idea, 

 widely circulated of late, that conservation 

 means locking up the natural resources for 

 the exclusive use of later generations, is 

 wholly mistaken." 



Garfield Tells of Needs 

 In an address following Mr. Roosevelt, 

 James R, Garfield told of the growth of the 

 conservation policy, defended the right of 

 the President to withdraw lands, and de- 

 clared that some of the greatest of frauds had 

 been committed under the guise of compli- 

 ance with the law. For example, he said, 

 timber and coal lands have been taken out 

 under the homestead act. The only remedy, 

 he said, lay in the rigid use of his power 

 by the chief executive. Protests of "usurpa- 

 tion of power by the President" and "vio- 

 lation of state rights," he said came from 

 those seeking to grab public lands. 



Drying of Lumber 



The Record is indebted to Harry D. Tie- 

 luann, engineer iu timber physics at the Forest 

 Products Laboratory of the United States 

 Department of Agricndture at Madison, Wis., 

 for the following communication : 



M.U)isox, Wis., Sept. 1, 1910. 

 Mr. H. H. Gibson, 



Editor, Hakdwood Record, 



355 Dearborn St., Cliieago, 111. 



Dear Sir — I have read with interest the 

 comments upon your recent article on drying 

 lumber, which contains much information of 

 value. I note, however, some technical errors 

 in some of these replies which, I think, would 

 be helpful to bring to the notice of your 

 readers. The interpretation by one writer of 

 Dalton's Law of Gases is not correct. A cubic 

 ■ foot of saturated air at 212° F., it is true, 

 contains the same amount of water vapor as 

 a cubic foot of steam at the same tempera- 

 ture, but noi at the same pressure. When air 

 is mixed with saturated vapor of a given 

 temperature the same quantity of vapor is 

 present as there would be at the same tem- 

 perature in the absence of air, but the re- 

 sultant pressure is the sum, of that due to the 

 vapor and that due to air taken separately. 

 Thus, if we start with saturated vapor at 

 212°, its pressure will be 14.7 pounds per 

 square inch. Now, dry air may be added to 

 this without condensing the vapor, but the 

 pressure will be correspondingly increased, 

 directly with the amount of air added. In 

 other words, if a cubic foot of dry air be 

 enclosed in an air-tight chamber at atmos- 

 pheric pressure, and steam be then added 

 until the entire space is saturated at a tem- 

 perature of 212", the space, it is true, will 

 then contain the same amount of vapor as it 

 would were there no air present, but the pres- 

 sure will be twd atmospheres or 29.4 pounds 

 per square inch, or a gauge pressure of 14.7 

 pounds above the atmosphere. It is impos- 

 sible to have saturated air at atmospheric 

 pressure and 212' temperature, since under 



these conditions it would be ail steam and 

 no air. At any temperature less than 212° 

 and atmospheric pressure there would be some 

 air present; thus, at 179° the proportion at 

 saturation would be half air aud half vapor. 

 The amount of vapor present would, there- 

 fore, be the same as saturated steam at 179°, 

 which would be under a vacuum of fifteen 

 inches gauge. 



A little thought will shov,-, from this, that 

 saturate steam alone and steam and air mixed 

 at atmospheric pressure do not have the same 

 heating and, therefore, the same drying 

 capacity. Air which is not saturated at at- 

 mospheric pressure is eqiuvalent to super- 

 heated steam under a vacuum plus enough dry 

 air to make up the difference in pressure. It 

 may well be remarked here that the term 

 ' ' vacuum ' ' is misleading, and has no peculiar 

 properties difl'ering in any way from "pres- 

 sure." A so-called "vacuum" is merely a 

 pressure which happens' to be less than that 

 of the air in which we live, and should be so 

 thought of in all drying problems. It is in 

 no sense a peculiar condition any more than 

 a low steam pressure is peculiarly different 

 from a higher steam pressure. 



A mixture of air and vapor, therefore, at 

 atmospheric pressure and 212° contains less 

 heat than steam (which is saturated vapor) 

 at the same temperature and pressure, since it 

 necessarily contains less vapor, there being 

 air present, and consequently less latent heat. 



Another erroneous impression is conferred 

 by the expression "breaking the cell.-" It is 

 a well-established fact that no ordinary gas 

 or steam pressure can ' ' break the cells. ' ' 

 The closed cells are so small in proportion to 

 the size of their walls that they can with- 

 stand an enormous gas pressure. It has been 

 stated by a botanist of repute that the natural 

 tluid pressures in living cells may run as high 

 as 100 atmospheres. When one considers how 

 great even a direct mechanical pressure in 

 liie weakest direction of the wood — across the 

 grain— is required before any injury to the 

 fibers results, it becomes self-evident that ito 



