\ Decennial Kecokd 1.5:3 



depends on it. The Secretary of Agriculture has been working to have 

 the salaries of these men and women put on a basis comparable to sal- 

 aries paid in private industry for like service, and in this we must assist 

 him in every way possible. Adequate salaries must be paid. 



The necessity of such action rests not only on the paper and pulp 

 industry but on every other branch of forest products conversion in- 

 dustry in the country. From my conversation with lumbermen and 

 others connected with wood-working industry, I am convinced there 

 is a woeful lack of information as to this work and the possible advan- 

 tages of it to the individual concern. 



Take, for instance, this problem of deterioration of pulp wood and 

 wood pulp. Experiments have demonstrated enormous losses in yield 

 from infected wood and a falhng off in quality which is surprising. 

 Heretofore, deterioration of pulp wood and other forest products has 

 been looked upon as a matter of course and no great effort made to 

 correct it. We have heard of the rapidly decreasing timber supply, 

 public men howl about it, and newspapers harp on it continuously. 

 Conservation has been preached by every man who could get an audi- 

 ence. Lumbermen and others of days gone by have been criticised for 

 what was at that time an unavoidable waste of unsuitable timber and 

 what was a necessary waste to open up what is now our best agricul- 

 tural territory. Criticism of everybody and everything has been the 

 order of the day, but when it comes down to a proposition to finance 

 this laboratory, the only department of the Forest Service which can 

 point the way to conservation of our natural timber resources after 

 they are removed from the land, it is only after the greatest effort on 

 the part of the Secretary of Agriculture, the Chief Forester and all 

 others connected M-ith that department, together with the efforts of 

 various associations of industry represented here, the splendid Mork 

 of some newspapers and trade journals and the actual work in com- 

 mittee of Congressman Xelson and Senator Lenroot, that Congress 

 would appropriate barely enough to keep this institution alive for 

 another year. 



Another strange fact is that within a few months of the time the 

 appropriation was fixed for the laboratory anotlier committee made 

 up of men from the same body which considered the appropriation, 

 tack on to another bill an appropriation of $100,000.00 for the investi- 

 gation of a substitute for pulpwood, cornstalks or sugar cane. The 



