18 THE AMES FORESTER 



a careless camper, hunter or smoker may convert into a destructive 

 fire. The refuse of a sawmill, except for the portion which can 

 be used for fuel to drive the saws and other machinery, must 

 be disposed of at the expense of the owner. A mill producing 

 daily 100,000 feet board measure is not large as mills go, yet 

 it is estimated that $10 is a fair average cost for destroying the 

 waste from a day's cut. The total annual waste of all mills 

 in the United States has been given as 36,000,000 cords or 4 l / 2 

 billion cubic feet, enough to make a solid cube one-fourth mile 

 high. Naturally the intelligent, progressive lumberman desires 

 very much to find a use for his waste raw material and con- 

 siderable sums have been spent in experimentation looking to- 

 ward means of accomplishing this. 



Keen competition has reduce^J the profits on lumber until 

 at times they have threatened to disappear entirely. Under 

 these conditions the profits on by-products may play an im- 

 portant part in the advancement of wood-using industries now 

 employing 10 per cent or over 1,000,000 of the country's wage 

 earners, and having an annual output roughly valued at $2,000,- 

 000,000. The cutting of timber has progressed at three times 

 the normal rate of growth and of the original 5,200 billion feet 

 in our virgin forests, 2,300 billion feet have been removed. 

 The danger of timber famine has been pointed out and has given 

 rise to the widespread study of conservaton. This in turn has 

 fostered utilization and we are on the way to doubling our for- 

 est resources by reducing waste. In 1914 the estimated wood 

 waste used as pulpwood by our sawmills amounted to 330,000 

 cords valued at about $1,400,000. In the same year these 

 mills consumed an estimated total of 4,290,000 cords valued at 

 $36,800,000. The average cost per cord of wood delivered at 

 mills of reporting concerns was $8.58 ; for wood waste only $4.25. 

 The Forest Products Laboratory reports that one lumber com- 

 pany in the Lake States region claims the removal of 3 times 

 the material from the forest and the employment of twice the 

 number of men formerly employed in producing an equal amount 

 of lumber. A progressive lumber company in Pennsylvania is 

 securing from its waste a gross return of $124 per acre, or 34 

 per cent of the total gross return from its hemlock and hard- 

 wood logs. 



Germany has accomplished more along the line of systematic 

 development of forest resources than any other country. In 

 the roll of honor the United States ranks second. No small part 

 of this is due to the work done in the Forest Products Laboratory 

 at Madison, Wisconsin, established in 1910 by the Forest Service 

 of the Department of Agriculture in co-operation with the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin. Nowhere else in the world is there a 

 laboratory of this kind so completely equipped. Its various sec- 

 tions specialize in investigations of the mechanical, physical and 



