-3- ^ 



o 



flooring, finish, dimension stuff, timbers, coranon boards, car 

 siding, car lining, lath, and mill run. 



The Forest Service has furnished the Price Section with copies 

 of all these bulletins. >>! e have re -arranged the data to show prices 

 for aach grade of each kind of lumber at each mill in successive 

 quarters. From the data thus arranged we have selected those series 

 of prices which are most nearly complete for t>resentation in this 

 bulletin. 



Cefctain peculiarities of the data should be noted, (1) There 

 is a considerable range in most cases between the prices reported 

 by different mills even in ths same state. The following is a 

 typical example. In the above mentioned yellow pine bulletin, for 

 the second quarter of 1915, the price of Flooring, No. 2, D. and M, 

 1" x 4" in Texas is reported by two mills at $8.00 per M feet; by 

 one mill at $8.25; by three mills at $8.50; by one mill at $S.O<JJ 

 and by one mill at $10.00 (2) In few erases does the same mill pre- 

 sent an uribroken record of prices for every quarter from 1S13 to date. 

 Average prices from the mills that do report on each date would be 

 misleading, because the dropping out of a high-priced mill would fre- 

 quently lower the average materially in a time when the remaining 

 mills show no change in prices, or the dropping out of a low-priced 



mill would raise the average. It seems better to choose, quotations 

 from the one or two mills that report most regularly, and in case of 



breaks to supply a figure from some other mill, subtracting or adding 

 the differential shown by prices in the preceding or following quarter 

 unless, as often happens, there was no difference in prices. 

 In other cases a mill which reported regularly in the earlier part of 

 the period stops reporting altogether, or reports seldom, while another 

 mill begins to report regularly. Then the two series of reports are 

 spliced together with a differential or not, according as the prices 

 reported in the overlapping reports agreed or differed. In a few 

 cases a quotation is supplied by interpolating a price midway between 

 the price reported by the mill in question in the preceding and in the 

 following quarter. In all these cases specific explanations are made 

 in foot-notes. 



It is not contended that these Forest Service quotations are satis- 

 factory in every respect. But their very irregularities probably reir. . 

 fleet actual trade conditions. If prices in the central markets are r 

 substantially the same on a given grade of lumber, fron. whatever source 

 it comes, the f.o.b. mill prices must vary with cost of shipping fron. 

 each mill to that market. The irregularity of reports, again, arises in 

 part from the cutting-off of timber from the region supplying a given 

 mill. While central market f.eports are better tha theEe f.o.b. mill 

 prices for certain purposes, tna latter have their own special signifir 

 ance . The precise methods of splicing series together and of supplying 

 missing data from other mills, and of interpolating are matters of judg- 

 ment and therefore cpen to question: but it is not probable that tr.e ,'. 

 differance between the figures arrived at by any two who edited the 



(W. I.E. -359 -3) 



