New Orleans, La., March 15, 1912.] 



THE LUMBER TRADE JOURNAL 



24 



BOXES AND CRATES. 



Table 3. 

 BOXES AND GRATES, PACKING. 



50,000 



Total 39,295,093 



FURNITURE. 



100.00 



$13.45 



$528,607 



38,180>,093 1,115,000 



Red gum leads the list of furniture woods in Mis- 

 sissippi, and supplies nearly twice as much as any 

 other, but it is third from the bottom in average 

 price. A man does not need a long memory to carry 

 'him beyond the time when red gum was not consid- 

 ered suitable material for furniture, or for much of 

 anything else. If thrown upon a lumber pile in the 

 mill yard, as was the custom once, and left to sea- 

 son in sun, wind, and rain, red gum boards warped 

 so persistently that they became a discouraging .prop- 

 osition. Artificial heat in an old-style kiln was not 

 much .better; but mill men knew that red gum had 

 the stuff in it that makes good lumber, and they be- 

 gan experimenting with it, and gradually the secrets 

 of seasoning it were found out, although experi- 

 enced lumbermen say there is something to be found 

 out yet. When seasoning is done according to the 

 latest approved methods, it sometimes falls a little 

 short of expectations. The test frequently comes in 

 working veneer glued upon a backing of some other 

 wood. It appears that three things must work to- 

 gether to make success sure: the red gum must be in 

 proper condition, the wood upon which it is to be 

 glued must be just right, and the glue must lack 

 nothing. If one of these factors is wanting, the job 

 may fall short of success. That is true, of course, 

 for all woods to some extent, but since it occurs a 

 little oftener when the veneer is red gum than when 

 it is mahogany, oak, or walnut, the conclusion has 

 been reached that red gum has some peculiarities 

 which must be carefully studied if success is to be 

 attained in high-grade work. On a former page of 

 this report something was said of the manner of 

 making red gum veneer and of the characteristic 

 figure of the wood. Furniture makers study these 

 matters carefully. They not only use the gum under 

 its own name, but they finish it in imitation of sev- 

 eral other woods, among those most frequently imi- 

 tated being Circassian walnut, mahogany, cherry, 

 birch, maple and oak. Some of these imitations are 

 produced almost wholly by the application of stains 

 to give proper color; others have grain and figure 

 printed upon the wood. That is the usual method 

 of imitating oak. A certain manufacturer (not in 

 Mississippi) suggested the process when he said: 

 "We bring nothing but red gum into our mill and 

 send nothing but oak out." 



It should not be supposed that all red gum in the 

 furniture business is choice figured veneer for out- 

 side use. Much common lumber and cheap veneer 

 are employed for inside. It goes into frames, slides, 

 drawer bottoms and backs, shelves, partitions, 

 pigeonholes and boxes. Some cheap furniture for 

 kitchen or pantry use is solid red gum, though many 

 other cheap woods are as good or even better for 

 that ipurpose. In England they make furniture of 

 red gum and call it "satin walnut." That is only 

 a trade name, as there is no such wood as "satin 

 walnut." It has been said though specific instances 

 have not been cited that red gum from the southern 

 states is exported to Italy and Prance, is there made 

 into furniture of artistic patterns, is reshi-pped to 

 this country and sold under the name of French and 

 Italian walnut. At any rate, there is a good market 

 in Italy and France for red gum, and its identity 

 seems to be lost when it reaches these countries, and 

 at least some of it must be manufactured under the 

 name of some other wood. Exporters of the wood 

 say that foreign countries have been very successful 

 in handling this wood and it is popular there. The 

 field 'for the development of the red gum industry 

 in this country, the making of high-grade commodi- 

 ties, appears 'to be only opening. The prediction 

 has been made that the wood in a few years will 

 sell for as much as good white oak. 



The second wood on the furniture list, shown in 

 Table 4, is red oak. That is the name under which 

 it was reported, but the low average cost casts doubt 

 on the wood's identity. It was probably Texan oak, 

 yellow oak and others, with some genuine red oak; 



for the latter cannot be bought in Mississippi in 

 grades suitable for furniture, for $15.23 per thousand 

 feet. The low cost of yellow poplar was due to the 



low grades used which went into drawer bottoms, 

 sides and other unexposed parts. The average low 

 cost of all the furniture woods in the table is sur- 

 prising, except for cypress, white ash and longleaf 

 pine. The table shows that the average cost of the 

 10,278,000 feet of material was only $13.44. That in- 

 dicates a remarkable opportunity for building up a 

 furniture manufacturing business in Mississippi 

 Cheap material ought to more than offset high 

 freight rates in carrying the finished products to 

 market. If northern manufacturers can buy lumber 

 in Mississippi, freight it north, make furniture of it, 

 ship the furniture back and sell it in the region 

 where the timber grew, there ought to be 'business 

 for somebody in making and selling the finished arti- 

 cle near the source of the raw material. The amount 

 of furniture now made in Mississippi is a fair be- 

 ginning only. There are possibilities of enormous 

 expansion. Every foot of the wood used in the fur- 

 niture factories of the state grew in Mississippi. It 

 is doubtful if another state in the Union can make 

 that showing. 



Total 10,278,000 100.00 $13.44 



VEHICLE AND VEHICLE PARTS. 



Statistics of the vehicle industry are given in Ta- 

 ble 5. The investigation is two-fold, in a measure; 

 that is, the making of finished vehicles constitutes 

 only part of it, while the manufacture of pants of 

 vehicles ranks almost as a separate industry. Con- 

 ditions are peculiar. Some shops take raw material 

 and turn out the finished wagon or buggy ready for 

 hitching the horses, but that is not the customary 

 way of doing it. A portion of the work is done in 

 one shop, and another shop finished it. Perhaps one 

 factory makes wheels only, ready for the irons and 

 the paint; it may be that hubs are the sole product 

 of another. Some rough-turn spokes; some 'make 

 poles and shafts; others assemble the parts, put the 

 irons on and apply the paint. Occasionally a shop 

 confines its operations to producing carriage bodies. 

 Thus a number of factories may have a hand in the 

 production of a single vehicle, and the report of no 

 operator will give complete statistics. The finished 

 product of one factory may become the raw material 

 of another. The job must be followed through all 

 the operations to get the first and last of it. Ve- 

 hicle making is one of the most difficult of all the 

 wood-using industries for the statistician to handle. 

 There is constant danger of counting the same ma- 

 terial twice, as it passes from factory to factory, or 

 of missing it altogether. The difficulty is often 

 much increased by the fact that parts of the work 

 may be done in different states. The assembler of 

 a carriage may buy the unpainted wheels in Ark- 

 ansas, the pole or shafts in Kentucky, the body in 

 Tennessee, and put on the irons and the paint in 

 Mississippi. How can each of the states, in a case 

 like that, receive its proper credit for the part it 



$138,110 



10,278,000 



makes of the carriage? The only practicable course 

 for the statistician in a case of that kind is to check 

 and recheck as carefully as possible, and offer the 

 result as the best approximation obtainable under 

 the circumstances. 



White oak, hickory and yellow poplar are the 

 three chief vehicle woods in Mississippi, and consti- 

 tute more than ninety-seven per cent of all. The 

 hickory and the oak are made into wheels and other 

 running gear, while the poplar is converted into 

 bodies. Beds for farm wagons take some of the 'best. 

 Poplar has always been a favorite material for wa- 

 gon beds in this country, but the advance in its cost 

 within the past twenty or thirty years has opened 

 the way for substitutes, and cottonwood, willow, 

 and some of the pines have taken much of the wa- 

 gon-ibed trade. Yellow poplar, however, is still large 

 in spite of high price. The same wood has long 

 filled a place of equal importance in the manufacture 

 of fine carriage bodies, particularly broad-panels and 

 curved parts. Yellow poplar finishes with a fine, 

 smooth surface, and it receives and displays paint 

 better than any other wood. It is much used for 

 the tops of light business wagons, for butchers, ba- 

 kers, grocers, milkmen and others. 



The only water oak and pin oak listed in the state 

 are found in this industry, and they are the cheap- 

 est in Table 5. Most of the longleaf pine was made 

 into wagon bottoms, and the small amount of cot- 

 tonwood listed was converted into farm-wagon beds. 



In addition to wagons, this industry includes 

 carts, trucks, sleds, wheelbarrows and push carts. A 

 good many hand trucks are used at wharfs and land- 

 ings on the banks of navigable rivers where bulky 

 commodities are loaded on boats or unloaded. 



VEHICLES AND VEHICLE PARTS. 



Table 5. 

 VEHICLE AND VEHICLE PARTS. 



Average 



cost 

 per 1,000 ft. 



$21.89 

 28.10 

 44.27 

 37.61 

 10.00 

 15.00 

 28.00 

 40.00 



$26.85 



Total 

 cost 



f . o. b. factory. 



$101,490 



121,555 



46,130 



4,325 



750 



750 



840 



120 



Grown in 



Mississippi, 



feet B. M. 



4,636,000 



3,826,000 



1,042,000 



40,000 



75,000 



50,000 



30,000 



3,000 



Grown out 



of Miss., 



feet B. M. 



500,000 



$275,960 



9,702,000 



75,000 



575,000 



Ten woods contribute to this industry, but four 

 of them aggregate ninety-eight per cent of all, and 

 three-fourths are longleaf and shortleaf pine. Win- 

 dow and door frames are important commodities be- 



longing here, as are stair work, railing, balustrades 

 and posts. Among the woods listed, sweet birch is 

 highest in price, and of course comes wholly from 

 without the state, as it does not grow in commercial 

 quantities in Mississippi. Most of the 40,000 feet 

 was made into doors. In only one other industry, 



