84 



SELLING LUMBER 



Co-Operation 

 in Extending 

 the Uses 

 of Wood 



New Speci- 

 fications for 

 Wooden 

 Boxes 



told me that they tested the material before they sold it, as they 

 want to have confidence in their goods. They told me it cost 

 about half as much to get a good sized rug out of this material. 

 Long leaf pine will make a wonderful quality of fiber rug. (Ap- 

 plause.) 



A Voice: What do you call that? 



Mr. Weiss: We call it sylome. 



Now, with these in mind, I have written down a few sugges- 

 tions which I am very glad to offer you for what they are worth ; 

 and I tried to make these suggestions so that they will reduce to a 

 minimum the expense of the manufacture of lumber. In the first 

 place I believe that there will be a much closer and real co- 

 operation between the lumber manufacturer, the lumber salesmen 

 and various technical organizations throughout the United States. 

 We ought to be on a better working basis. I was astonished, 

 when I was appointed and took charge of the work at the Madison 

 plant, by the tremendous variety of the products that can be 

 made from wood ; and they are running into new ones all the 

 ,time. We had several of the gentlemen from the Yellow Pine 

 Association at our place the other day and we fed them on 

 biscuit made of baking powder made from pine from Australia. 

 I believe we need this closer co-operation. We have simply got 

 to work in co-operation with industrial concerns. I want to call 

 your attention to a few things that our own organization has 

 done to help out the cause of lumber. As you know, there has 

 been a tremendous dye shortage in this country, and we discovered 

 that a little tree known as the osage orange, which grows largely 

 in Oklahoma, contained a yellow dye, which on test we found 

 compared very favorably with the dye obtained from Mexico. We 

 took this up with two of the large extract houses in the East, and 

 they are now extracting from this wood $800,000 worth of dye. 



We have men at Atlantic City now working with the Amer- 

 ican Society for Testing Materials and drafting new specifications 

 for wooden boxes, to co-operate with the National Box Manu- 

 facturing Association. Now, here is an interesting thing that has 

 been brought to light. Instead of putting five nails on the end 

 of the box, if we put in seven nails two more nails we figure 

 we increase the strength of the box 300 per cent that little sim- 

 ple innovation. There has been a redraft of specifications for 

 two types of boxes, number three canned goods, and an iron- 



