38 Forestry Quarterly. 



variably are, in order to secure abundant labor supply and easy 

 access to transportation facilities and markets. 



For example, considering only present utilization in mills in 

 the Puget Sound region, it can be stated that the mill in the 

 larger coast cities which does not sell a large part of its slab- 

 wood for fuel is a rarity if not absolutely unknown. The mill in 

 the interior which does not burn most or all of the slabs in the 

 waste burner is equally rare. This, of course, is an advantage 

 due largely to location. Other products commonly manufactured 

 in the mills in the Sound cities but not in the interior mills, except 

 the very largest and then rarely, are lath from slabs, and sash 

 and door stock from planer ends. There are still others which, 

 with those already mentioned, make up a large aggregate of pro- 

 ducts utilized in the Puget Sound mills from material which is 

 wasted in the interior mills of the region. 



There remain to be considered the great fields for utilization of 

 waste as yet scarcely touched, such as the manufacture of pulp, 

 ethyl alcohol, etc. Plants for the manufacture of these products 

 are expensive and the margin of profit is narrow at present. 

 Hence, none of them will be constructed where there is any 

 doubt as to the permanency of the supply of raw material. Con- 

 sidering the Puget Sound region again as an example, waste from 

 the interior mill is thus barred from this field of utilization, since 

 all the advantage in this region is with a plant on Puget Sound 

 where the supply of wood waste is enormous. There might be a 

 few exceptions to this rule in the case of mills drawing supplies 

 from National Forests should the policy of regulating the cut by 

 watershed.'^ be adopted by the Forest Service, since this would in 

 many localities insure a permanent supply of timber to mills and 

 plants for utiHzation of by-products. Even then, along the 

 Sound, the particular kind of wood waste wanted can be better 

 secured because it is not necessary to depend on one mill alone 

 for the supply. 



This sort of utilization is already beginning. Some Seattle 

 mills now have no waste burners. At least one of them visited 

 personally sells its waste to an ethyl alcohol plant. This mill cuts 

 the lowest grade of logs in the Sound, but all the waste aside from 

 sawdust is reduced by a fuel grinder to material the particles of 

 which are only slightly larger in size than planer shavings. As 



