i!0±tJi6i SERVICE. 39 



Addresses were given before the Western Society of Engineers, the 

 Engineering Congress at the Lewis and Clark Exposition, American 

 Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association, Ameri- 

 can Society for Testing Materials, American' Car Builders' Asso- 

 ciation, National Advisory Board on Tests of Field and Structural 

 Materials, and before Purdue University and the University of 

 Illinois. 



The Advisory Board on Tests of Fuels and Structural Materials, 

 appointed by the President during the year, considered and approved 

 the general plan of the timber tests conducted by the Forest Service. 



The year fully demonstrated the need of a wood-testing laboratory. 

 Such a laboratory will benefit the wood users of almost every class. 

 A strong tendency to reform the traditional methods of handling and 

 judging wood as a material, and to put commercial standards upon 

 the more accurate basis of actual test is widespread. Plans have 

 been drawn for a laboratory providing for tests along the three lines 

 of preservative treatment of timber, the strength of wood and wooden 

 materials, and the chemical problem of wood utilization. 



LXTJIBEE TRADE. 



The Section of Lumber Trade was organized during the year. Its 

 work has been of peculiar value both m giving the Forest Service 

 systematic touch "with large classes of wood users whose problems 

 have not in the past been considered by the Forester and in enabling 

 foresters to gain a thoroly practical idea of the problems confronting 

 the makers and users of forest products. The manufacturers of lum- 

 ber and other forest products have been brought to realize more fully 

 than ever before the possibilities of direct practical usefulness to 

 them of the Forest Service. At all meetings of associations of wood 

 users attended by members of the Service committees on forestry 

 were appointed to further the work of the Service. Real progress is 

 being made in promoting the most economical utilization of the forest 

 products of this country. 



With the aid of the National Lumber Manufacturers' Association 

 the hearty cooperation of the secretaries of the leading associations of 

 lumber manufacturers was secured early in the year in an eifort to 

 collect statistics of the annual production of lumber and other forest 

 products, beginning with 190.5. These statistics cover lumber, lath, 

 shingles, slack and tight cooperage stock, pulp wood, cross-ties, tan 

 bark, veneer stock, mine timbers, wood distillates, and other products. 

 The reports upon mining timbers were secured thru cooperation with 

 the Geological Survey. The statistical work has aroused great 

 interest among the lumbermen, and is of distinct value to them, as 

 to the Forest Service. 



The principal grading rules of lumber manufacturers in the United 

 States have been compiled. To bring them together in one publica- 

 tion will show their inconsistencies and promote the movement 

 toward the unification of grades, so desirable to both the producer 

 and the user of lumber. 



Field studies of the manufacture of slack and tight cooperage 

 stock were made in the Northern and Southern States, with particu- 

 lar reference to possible economies in manufacture, the substitution of 

 less valuable species, and the utilization of waste. Tables showing 



