68 



THE ST. LOUIS LUMBERMAN. 



The Wood-Using Industries of Missouri. 



By Charles F. Hatch, Statistician in Forest Products, and Hu Maxwell, 

 Expert Forest Service, United States Department 



of Agriculture. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following report was prepared by Charles F. 

 Hatch, statistician, and Hu Maxwell, expert, under 

 the direction of H. S. Sackett, chief, office of 

 wood utilization, United States Forest Service. It 

 is published and thus made available to the pub- 

 lic through the courtesy of the St. Louis Lumber- 

 man. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The area of Missouri is 69,415 square miles, of 

 which G80 are water. About 40,000 square miles 

 are under forest cover, but that includes many 

 large areas of cut-over or brush land, where timber 

 of commercial size is scarce. Other regions contain 

 uuculled forests of great value. Estimates of the 

 total remaining stand of timber have not been 

 made, nor does such an estimate appear practica- 

 ble with the meager available data. If it is assumed 

 that the average for the entire wooded area of the 

 State is 1,000 feet board measure per acre it would 

 foot up 25 billion feet still uncut. It has been esti- 

 mated that the State contains 10 billion feet of un- 

 cut short-leaf pine, on 3 million acres. 



Originally, the surface of the State was covered 

 with forests, some very heavy, others thin. Much 

 of the best was removed to open farms. The pio- 

 neers selected the rich bottom lands for their home- 

 steads where the best timber grew. There being 

 little market for it, the settlers used what timber 

 they needed and destroyed the rest. All accounts 

 agree that some of the timber on the fertile bot- 

 tom lands was of exceptional size and quality, and 

 rich in variety. There are more than one hun- 

 dred tree species native to Missouri, and most of 

 them attain sizes fitting them for use, and practi- 

 cally all have been put to some use, either sold as 

 lumber in the market, pressed into service as farm 

 timber, or at least as fuel. Many valuable trees 

 reach their largest size in the region in which Mis- 

 souri is situated. It is well known that when a 

 species covers a large part of the country it attains 

 its highest development in some favored part of 

 its range. The table which follows presents at a 

 glance some of the well-authenticated records of 

 finely developed trees of numerous species in Mis- 

 souri. Doubtless, in many cases, individual tree* 

 much larger have been seen in the State, but rec- 

 ords were not preserved. 



RECORD OP TREE MEASUREMENTS IN MISSOURI. 



of the Census in co-operation with the Forest Ser- 

 vice. 



LUMBER CUT PN MISSOURI, 1909. 



Total 



660,159,000 



The oak listed in the table includes several spe- 

 cies, perhaps all of the following: 



In 1909, which is the latest official return of lum- 

 ter production by the United States Census, Mis- 

 souri stood 23 in the list of 45 States reporting. 

 It is worthy of mention that the State which stands 

 midway in the list in point of lumber production, 

 nlso occupies a place nearly in the geographical 

 center of the United States a little east of it. 

 The table which follows gives the cut of lumber in 

 1909, and the average value of each species at the 

 mill. The figures are from "Forest Products of 

 the United States, 1909," compiled by the Bureau 



White oak Yellow oak 



Post oak Spanish oak 



Bur oak Pin oak 



Overcup oak Black jack 



Chinquapin oak Water oak 



Swamp white oak Shingle oak 



Cow oak Lea oak 



Texas or spotted oak Willow oak 



(red oak) 



The maple probably includes sugar or hard ma- 

 ple, silver or soft maple, black maple, and box elder. 



The elm includes white elm, slippery elm, cork 

 elm, and wing elm. 



The ash includes white, black, red, green, blue, 

 and pumpkin ash. 



The hickory listed in the table doubtless em- 

 braces the following species: 

 Shagbark Small pignut 



Shell bark Bitternut 



Mockernut Pecan 



Pignut 



The "al! others" is made up of a large number of 

 species, some of which are of much greater im- 

 portance in other States than in Missouri, such as 

 yellow poplar, beech, basswood, cherry, hackber'ry, 

 and willow. 



This report, in its plan of treatment of the sub- 

 ject, is divided in three parts. In the first part, 

 consideration is given to the kinds of wood growing 

 in the State or brought in for manufacturing pur- 

 poses. The supply of available timber in Missouri, 

 and the extent to which it will probably figure in 

 the future, are considered. In the second part the 

 industries which draw a portion or all of their 

 raw material from the forests are presented statis- 

 tically, and their annual demands are shown. The 

 tables which accompany the discussion of the in- 

 dustries show what woods are employed in each 

 industry, the cost, and the quantities used. The 

 third part is a summing up of uses for each species 

 in all the industries. It does not pretend to give 

 a list of all the uses for which a certain wood has 

 been or may be found suitable, but only those re- 

 ported in actual practice by manufacturers in Mis- 

 souri. In the discussions of industry tables in the 

 second part, the purpose has been held constantly 

 in view of explaining, as far as information war- 

 rants, what reasons underlie the use of a wood for 

 a particular commodity. 



THE WOOD-USING INDUSTRIES OF MISSOURI. 



Kinds of Wood Used. 



Missouri manufacturers report the use of 5G spe- 

 cies of wood, and in 1910 they consumed 443 mil- 

 lion feet in producing their commodities. - These 

 woods, with the quantity of each, are shown in 

 Table I. The common names are given in the first 

 column, and the botanical names in the second. 

 These are the official names recognized by the 

 United States Forest Service. Nearly all commer- 

 cial woods have different names by which they are 

 known in different localities. It occasionally hap- 

 pens that the name by which a wood is known in 

 one part of the country is never spoken in another 

 region. Thus, a well-known wood is called white 

 wood in Massachusetts and yellow poplar in Mis- 

 souri. Some of the pines possess more than a 

 dozen names, and some of the oaks nearly as many. 

 Confusion and misunderstanding often result. The 

 Forest Service, wishing to establish a uniform list 

 of names for the commercial woods as far as could 

 be done in a practical way, compiled an official 

 "Check List of the Forest Trees of the United 

 States, Their Names, and Ranges," and in all For- 

 est Service reports and publications each one of 

 the trees is always accorded its official name. It is 



believed that, in this way, a certain specfes will 

 finally come to be known everywhere by a single 

 and recognized name. The process, however, will 

 be slow. People in one locality who have always 

 known a tree by a certain name will not be quick 

 to drop that one for another. It will do no harm, 

 however, for them to know what the official name is 

 that which it is hoped will sometime be recog- 

 nized in all parts of the United States. 



This applies to the common names only. Nearly 

 every tree, however, has two names; one the com- 

 mon or English, the other the botanical or Latin. 

 The botanical names are given in the second col- 

 umn of Table I for the convenience of persons who 

 may wish to consult them, and to assist in the 

 identification of the species. There is no such con- 

 fusion among botanical names as among common 

 Tor the reason that comparatively few persons 

 (principally scientists) make use of the botanical 

 names, and they agree among themselves what the 

 names shall be, and all call them the same. For 

 example, the botanical name of short-leaf pine is 

 Pinus echinata, and botanists in all parts of the 

 world, whether in America, Germany, India, or Ja- 

 pan, all call the tree by that name when they speak 

 of it, though perhaps some of them do not know 

 what the tree's English name is. This is the ex- 

 planation of the purpose of the second column of 

 names in the table for the convenience of persons 

 who may wish to ascertain, or to refresh their 

 memory as to the world-wide name of any tree in 

 the table. 



Twenty-nine of the woods listed in the tables 

 came wholly from without the State, while 24 were 

 grown partly within. Only 3 were produced en- 

 tirely by Missouri. They were butternut, Spanish 

 oak, and hackberry, no more than 02,000 feet in all. 

 Ten woods were wholly supplied by foreign coun- 

 tries. Only one foreign wood mahogany supplied 

 a million feet to the Missouri manufacturers. 



Short-leaf Pine. 



Four valuable southern trees are usually grouped 

 as the yellow pines of the South. They are long- 

 leaf, short-leaf, loblolly, and Cuban, all confined to 

 the Atlantic and Gulf coast region, and the lower 

 Mississippi valley. Only two were reported by 

 Missouri wood-users, long-leaf and short-leaf. The 

 latter grows in Missouri, the former does not. 

 Short-leaf pine is of more rapid growth than long- 

 leaf, and the wood is softer, often a little lighter 

 in color, and many prefer it for doors, sash, blinds, 

 and window frames. The softest of it bears con- 

 siderable resemblance to white pine. The State 

 now furnishes a little more than half of what is 

 demanded by its manufacturers of wooden products. 

 Most of the remainder comes from Arkansas. THfe 

 short-leaf pine does not grow north of Missouri in 

 the Mississippi valley, and there is no reason to 

 suppose that it ever will. As a species, it is not 

 extending its range, but is withdrawing from re- 

 gions where it once grew, and seems to be retreat- 

 ing south. It once was found in New York, and 

 later it was lumbered on the Potomac river and 

 on some of the upper tributaries of the Ohio. In 

 some of those regions a single tree can now scarcely 

 be found. Southern Missouri is at this time the 

 northern range of the species in the Mississippi 

 valley; and it is the opinion of many observing men 

 that the tree is soon to disappear there as a com- 

 mercial wood. Young trees are not coming in 

 sufficient numbers and vigor to make up the loss 

 of old forests which are passing. The Missouri 

 manufacturers use more short-leaf pine than of any 

 other two woods. 



Red Gum. 



Of the woods used in Missouri, red gum is sec- 

 ond largest in quantity, and the State supplies one- 

 third of it. Most of the State-grown wood of the 

 species conies from the southeastern part. Users 

 frequently list two kinds, white and red. The 

 white is more often called sap gum. It is all the 

 same wood, however. The white wood is the out- 

 side, or sapwood; the red is the colored heartwood. 

 Some gum trees are nearly all colored wood, others 

 are largely the white sapwood. One manufacturer 

 prefers one kind of wood, another takes the other 

 kind. It depends upon the purpose desired. Some 

 of the fine rotary-cut veneer which is finished to 

 imitate Circassian walnut is sapwood. The natu- 

 rally watered or clouded appearance of the wood 

 bears close resemblance to the very expensive Cir- 

 cassian walnut which comes from the Caspian sea 

 region. Few woods have risen more rapidly and 

 steadily in favor during late years than red gum. 

 It was not so long ago that it. was little thought of, 

 and most of it is still employed in this country 



