SF 
| il 
337 
railroad. The prices paid for hewing ties varied from 30 cents for No. 1 
up to 50 cents for No. 5, and about 25 cents each was paid for hauling 
’ them a distance of six miles. During the summer of 1921 prices had 
fallen considerably for both ties and labor, so that the best ties brought 
about $1 delivered, and the cost of hewing was from 15 to 25 cents each. 
Ties are produced in this region chiefly in three ways: (1) by small 
portable mills, sawing a large proportion of beech, (2) by farmers who 
get out ties during the winter or other slack periods, and (3) by profes- 
sional “tie hackers’ who generally work in pairs, maintaining a small 
temporary camp financed by the operator who has the contract. Where 
coal companies are clearing off timberland it is the custom to send in men 
after the logging to work up the tops of trees into railroad and mine 
ties, effecting in this way a rather close utilization of the tree contents. 
Wood Preservation and Tie-treating Plants in Illinois 
The increasing prevalence of preservative treatment in Illinois will 
vitally affect the future timber supply and forest management. Any proc- 
ess by which the durability of a species can be doubled or trebled will 
lessen to just that extent the drain upon our forests; and instead of taking 
a longer time to grow white oak, for example, attention may be given to 
cottonwood, soft maple, willow, sycamore, gum, and other fast-growing 
hottomland timber, on short rotations. According to C. P. Winslow, 
Director of the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, for- 
esters are prone to emphasize the great loss in the forest through forest 
fires and say little about the amount of material saved to the country by 
preservative treatment. This is a phase of conservation which therefore 
deserves some consideration. 
A complete list of the tie-treating plants in Illinois, several of which 
we have visited, is as follows: 
American Creosoting Company, Marion 
Ayer & Lord Tie Company... .Carbondale 
Joyce-Watkins Creosoting Co. . Metropolis 
Indiana Tie Company....... Joppa (Main office at Evansville, Ind.) 
Kettle River Company......... Madison 
T. J. Moss Tie Company...... Mt. Vernon and East St. Louis 
C. B. & QO. Treating Plant..... Galesburg 
Midland Creosoting Co........ Granite City 
We have visited personally the plants at Marion, Carbondale, Mt. 
Vernon, Metropolis, and Galesburg, to get some information about proc- 
esses and number of ties and amounts of other timber treated annually. 
In general these plants may be divided into two classes, those which pre- 
serve ties for their own railroad lines, as those of the C. B. & Q., and 
