9 



State, and the thoroughness and accuracy of this report were made possible by 

 the kind co-operation of the wood users in giving detailed information as to 

 their individual operations. Report blanks were mailed to each, with the 

 request that they be filled in and returned. After a time, agents represent- 

 ing Pennsylvania and the Federal Government were sent throughout the State 

 to visit factories which had failed to report, and more particularly to study 

 at close range processes of manufacture, waste problems, and industrial 

 conditions. On completion of the field work, in accordance with agree- 

 ment, the data were compiled and the report written by the office of Indus- 

 trial Investigations of the Forest Service, whereupon the manuscript was 

 turned over to the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for revision and 

 publication. 



For a number of years the Federal Government has kept a record of the 

 annual production of rough lumber and other forest products by States, and 

 for the last seventeen years the State has been gathering similar statistics 

 for Pennsylvania. These reports should not be confused with the present in- 

 vestigation, which in no way concerns the output of sawmills, except in a sup- 

 plemental capacity. This investigation relates to the rough lumber after it 

 leaves the sawmills and to the bolts and billets after they leave the woods, 

 tracing them through different channels into commodities of final manufacture. 

 It is not the purpose of this study to record the total quantity of wood used 

 annually in the State. Much of it, in the form of rough lumber, goes into 

 construction, which needs no other change than cutting or trimming the tim- 

 bers, planks, or boards, to fit them into place in the house, bridge, tunnel, 

 concrete forms, scaffolding, fences, etc. This material has not been taken 

 into account and neither have the large quantities of dressed lumber which 

 are brought into the State in the form of flooring, siding and ceiling, finished 

 and ready for use. In addition there are parts of products made in other 

 states and sent into Pennsylvania merely to be assembled; vehicle parts 

 and box shocks are examples; also there are commodities partly manufac- 

 tured, like club turned handles, spokes, rough bobbins and speeders, chair 

 stock, etc., that have not been included in Pennsylvania but accredited to 

 states in which the principal operations that change the forest material into 

 the finished articles occur. 



PURPOSE OF THE STUDY. 



The Pennsylvania investigation has been conducted under the same plan 



as that followed by the Forest Service in 30 other states. Eventually, the 



information from all the states will be correlated in a national study and a 



series of publications issued by the Federal Government relating to the 



. wood-using industries and the commercial woods of the United States. 



Every factory was asked to state the amount of each species used, the com- 

 modity into which each was made, the form in which it was received, and 

 whether these woods came from within Pennsylvania or from outside the State. 

 Inquiries referred also to tendencies of manufacture, closer utilization, and 

 methods followed for waste utilization. As stated above, no data were solicited 

 from sawmills or those producing veneer, laths, shingles, crossties, cooper- 

 age, stock, posts, telegraph poles, chemical wood, pulp wood, etc. This in- 

 formation for all the States has been kept and reported annually by the Bu- 

 reau of the Census, and such of these statistics as relate to Pennsylvania, 

 appear in the appendix of this report; they were taken from the census 

 bulletins issued for 1911-1912. Apart from the concerns producing 

 the above named rough forest products, there are scattered throughout Penn- 

 sylvania nearly 5,100 factories that take wood and convert it into articles 



