:>92 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



corduroy and wire entanglement stakes by the hundreds 

 of thousands of pieces. We have recently undertaken 

 the manufacture of a large order of excelsior for the 

 bedding of soldiers at the front, and must add probably 

 two excelsior mills to our plant equipment. Our hardest 

 immediate problem is to supply dock materials piles, 



stringers, and caps, for the enormous additional dock- 

 age under rush construction at the American base ports. 

 It is a strenuous game, where life-long training in busi- 

 ness efficiency and economy must be subordinated to the 

 one goal of speed. But the American lumberjacks are 

 right on the job. 



WAR LUMBERING IN FRANCE 



A DIRECT ACCOUNT OF THE WORK OF THE 20TH ENGINEERS (FOREST) 



BY LIEUT. R. H. FAULKNER 



Editor's Note The following aritcle by Lieut. Faulkner, with the accompanying photographs, will be of unusual 

 interest to foresters and lumbermen as indicating the output and character of the lumbering work done by the men of 

 the lumber regiments under war conditions. It also indicates that the men are in good health and well cared ftjr, a large part 

 of which is due to the timely assistance rendered by the Welfare Fund Committee for Lumbermen and Forestry Soldiers. 



THE larger and earlier fortunes made by lumbermen 

 in America were due chiefly to the acquirement 

 of vast areas of stumpage at a price so ridiculously 

 low that conservation was a thing to be scoffed at, while 

 today the ever increasing price of stumpage makes 

 necessary the most careful and conservative manage- 

 ment. 



Could any operator today in the United States of 

 America make a tour of the lumbering operations of the 

 Forestry Regiments, 10th and 20th Engineers, in France, 

 they would see economical operations carried out to the 

 minutest detail. And this is not fanatical conservation, 

 it is not conservation that adds excessively to the cost 

 of production but it is due to an entirely new spirit of 

 lumbering, the spirit of the American forestry troops, 



which taboos absolutely the waste of any mate !a! which 

 can be of use. And when this is said, in France, it means 

 the utilization of every part of the tree, down to branches 

 only one and one-half inches in diameter. 



The American forestry troops are divided into ten 

 districts scattered practically through all timber areas 

 of France and this, by the way, is approximately one- 

 tenth of the total area of the country. These ten dis- 

 tricts are divided- into about forty operations ranging in 

 size from small pole, piling and tie cutting to the opera- 

 tions of 20 thousand capacity mills, running night and 

 day shifts. 



There is a great variety in the species of timber over 

 here, with the consequent variety in operating condi- 

 tions. There is everything from a spruce forest, with 



ONE OF THE AMERICAN LOGGING OPERATIONS IN FRANCE 



Notice the method of handling the logs, and their size. This is one of the saw mills operated by the Forestry Troops of the American Expe- 

 ditionary force, where we find a wonderful example of economical utilization down to the smallest detail. 



