HOW TO SAVE COAL 



MANY people believe that it is impossible to get 

 cordwood into the cities at anything but fabulous 

 prices and that no one would use it even if it were 

 cheap. This is very largely a superstition that has been 

 built up and carefully fostered by the coal men. A 

 recent experiment tried in St. Anthony Park North, a 

 part of St. Paul, shows pretty conclusively that both 

 assumptions are poorly founded. 



A community of about five hundred families was 

 chosen as a basis of the experiment. The members of 

 the Forestry Club of the University volunteered to dis- 

 tribute some order blanks as their bit in helping out 

 the fuel shortage. A little later they collected the or- 

 ders. Orders for one hundred and ten cords. One 

 hundred and twenty cords of tamarack wood, a species 

 that the coal dealers claim cannot be sold at any price. 



The wood was bought up North, shipped to the city 

 in carload lots, sawed into 12, 16 and 24-inch lengths 

 and delivered at $9.00 per cord. A carload of oak was 

 handled in the same way and sold at the same price. 



If the same plan could be worked throughout the 

 city, and every community of this size could be sold the 

 same amount, and there is no reason why it could not 

 be done, it would mean a sale of eleven thousand cords 

 of wood in St. Paul alone. Ten thousand tons of coal 

 saved for Uncle Sam. 



At least one man in Minneapolis is successfully heat- 

 ing a sixteen-suite apartment house with tamarack and 

 finds it the equivalent of hard coal, cord for ton. More- 



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