WOOD FOR WATER AND AIR SHIPS MUST BE HAD 



SINCE the War Industries Board has placed airplane 

 material first in the priorities classification of in- 

 dustry necessary to win the war, employers of the 

 big army of men at work in the fir and spruce opera- 

 tions of Western Washington and Western Oregon will 

 be obliged to ask local draft boards to provide deferred 

 classification for such men as are essential to the con- 

 tinued maximum operation of their plants. 



Representatives of the government as well as the lum- 

 ber operators themselves have been impressing upon the 

 men the fact that those of their number who are given 

 deferred classification on occupational grounds will be 

 rendering a valuable service to the country by remaining 

 at home and helping to get out the material that the 

 government so badly needs and that is so necessary in 

 winning the war. 



It is apparent, however, that the lumber industry does 

 not propose to ask for wholesale exemptions for its em- 

 ployes. Each application for exemption or for deferred 

 classification will be presented on its individual merits. 

 The test in each case coming before a local draft board 

 will be whether the man is indispensable in the plant in 

 which he is employed. Final determination of exemp- 

 tions will lie, as at present, with the draft board officials. 



The new law will affect thousands of men engaged in 

 the lumbering industry, as most of the skilled employes 

 are between the ages of 31 and 46. Were all the men of 

 those ages taken into the army the industry would be 

 unable to meet the government's demands for the pro- 

 duction of airplane lumber and ship timbers. 



The forests of Western Oregon and Western Wash- 

 ington alone have been able to produce the quantity and 

 quality of fir and spruce necessary for airplane construc- 

 tion. The volume of this production has been increasing 

 every month but further increases are necessary in the 

 future. The needs of the government are urgent and 

 every man necessary in getting out this material is re- 

 quired on the job. 



At the same time fir is absolutely essential in future 

 wood ship construction as it is the only wood that pro- 

 duces timbers of the lengths and strengths necessary to 

 build the big ships required by the Emergency Fleet Cor- 

 poration. The main bulk of all the> wooden ship material 

 used in the country is in the fir woods and can be pro- 

 duced only by the fir mills. The mills of Western Oregon 

 and Western Washington also are furnishing the deck- 

 ing required for the steel ships both on the East and 

 West Coasts. 



Orders also have been placed in the Northwest for 

 immense quantities of large and long timbers and special 

 length planks for Eastern ship construction. 



To fill all these government orders the mills of this 

 territory have been forced to speed up their operations 

 and any considerable loss of men, it is pointed out, will 

 result in curtailed production of government lumber. 



The lumbermen will co-operate with heads of the gov- 

 ernment and with the local draft boards in their desire 

 to furnish the required number of men for the army 

 without crippling the industry. 



The production of sufficient quantities of spruce of 

 the proper quality is one of the critical phases of air- 

 plane manufacture. The Forest Service is co-operat- 

 ing with the Signal Corps of the War Department in the 

 West and the Navy Department in the East in speeding 

 up spruce production. The co-operation consists in the 

 compilation of existing estimates of stand, the location 

 of suitable bodies from the standpoint of quality and 

 accessibility, where advisable the collection of logging 

 engineering data, such as costs and the best methods of 

 exploitation, and in general recommendations of any 

 character whatever as to means of increasing production. 

 The work in the West is being conducted by the Dis- 

 trict Forester at Portland, who has detailed a force of 

 approximately 20 men, and in the East by the Office of 

 Forest investigations by the detail of two men. These 

 activities, which are under the general direction of the 

 Branch of Research, supplement other activities of the 

 Branch under way at the Forest Products Labora- 

 tory at Madison. The satisfactory kiln-drying of spruce 

 in from one to three weeks rather than in an entire year 

 required for air-seasoning, the selection of other species 

 as satisfactory substitutes for spruce, and the determina- 

 tion of methods for kiln-drying them, tests to develop 

 laminated construction and joints which will permit the 

 use of a much larger proportion of the spruce cut, speci- 

 fications for individual airplane parts for the same pur- 

 pose, and finally, veneer tests with the idea of partial 

 substitution for spruce, all bear directly or indirectly on 

 the problem of speeding up spruce production and have 

 the same general effect. 



Some idea of the enormous quantities of wood going 

 into war material for the United States Government, 

 may be gained from a statement of John D. Ryan, Direc- 

 tor of air craft production, before a crowd of several 

 thousand soldiers, working in spruce lumber camps, at 

 Vancouver, Washington. Mr. Ryan declared that the 

 Government aircraft program is coming to frution so 

 rapidly that 50,000 Liberty Motors have been ordered 

 for airplanes in the course of construction or already 

 finished. This means that spruce for that many planes 

 has already been used up, and it also means that much 

 more of the same sort of wood will be necessary before 

 the Government air craft program has been completed. 



SAVE PAPER BY ECONOMICAL 

 USE AND HELP WIN THE WAR. BY 

 REQUEST OF THE WAR INDUSTRIES 

 BOARD. 



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