38 The Forest Products Laboratory 



telegraph lines, docks, ships, boxes and crates, furniture, fuel, and a 

 multitude of other uses normally associated with modern commerce 

 and industry. 



Then there were the multitudinous special war uses of wood in 

 the building of airplanes, trucks, artillery wheels, and escort wagons, 

 as well as for gunstocks, handles of trench tools, mortar boxes, and 

 posts for entanglements, to mention but a few. In the building of 

 trenches, essentially a mining operation, there were required in the last 

 war millions of feet of lumber to mantain these works and make them 

 habitable. For most of these uses experience has found no other mate- 

 rial to substitute for wood. 



In war time the demand for wood pulp jumps tremendously, 

 largely through the increased demand for paper. For instance, in 

 France, despite the suspension of many journals the number of copies 

 of papers issued daily jumped 100 per cent over peace times. Wood 

 pulp, in the emergency, in the blockaded central European countries 

 assumed vast importance in the manufacture of explosives, as a sub- 

 stitute in surgery for absorbent cotton dressings, in the making of 

 textiles and clothing. As one German editor expressed it fervently, 

 "To be without wood is almost as bad as Ijeing without bread." 



The chemical aspects of the wood situation likewise play a tre- 

 mendously important part in the game of the nations — distillation 

 products, for instance, — methyl alcohol and its important part in the 

 making of medicines and disinfectants, in the manufacture of dyes 

 and other products; acetic acid; the turpentines and resins. These 

 need merely be named to conjure up the impossibility of carrying on 

 important functions connected with modern warfare lacking ample 

 supplies of these products derived from wood. 



Personnel and Financial Situation 



In addition to establishing contact with the various war agencies 

 and getting under way the most urgent researches, plans were imme- 

 diately undertaken for the expansion of the organization to meet the 

 greatly increased demands which it was evident would be made upon 

 it, and for providing the necessary funds and the additional labora- 

 tory space. 



The demand for the facilities of the laboratory at once raised a 

 critical financial situation that needed solution before expansion could 



