FIFTH NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 107 



I am not much of a forester, and I will admit it, but I have practiced it in 

 my weak way, and in something of a practical way, according to the laws that I 

 was living under and I have done it in this way: During the month of October, 

 the mills that I am interested in at Clarks, Louisiana, and Standard, Louisiana, 

 where the Chairman has been with his forest students from Yale University, my 

 lumber averaged in price upon the cars, f . o. b. at Clarks, Louisiana, and Standard, 

 Louisiana, just $11.78 a thousand. 



I have had the foresters of Yale Forest School and of different States down 

 in our woods, and we have talked these matters over and we pick up everything 

 that we can get anything out of and something that we do not get cost out of, 

 and that reduces it down to $11.78 a thousand last month. I have some neighbors 

 in the state — one mill in particular — who claim their average is a great deal more 

 than that. The reason is they are leaving their tops, 30 or 35 per cent, in the 

 woods. If there was some law passed by which it would be a crime, or an offense 

 against the laws of the State, to permit waste, so that we would be obliged to 

 pick up these logs and these tops and bring them into the mill and saw them and 

 ship them out as lumber, they would not get that big price for their lumber and 

 we would have lower prices and our lumber would last longer. 



I will state another proposition while I am on the floor. I, began in Missouri 

 thirty-five years ago, and I was the first man in the South who made a number 

 three, yellow pine board. I did get only $3 per thousand for it, at the mill ; and 

 later, when I could get $8 a thousand for the number three board, I made the 

 first number four board and that only brought $1.50 the next year, and my stock- 

 holders grumbled. But that was conservation, I was bringing it in, I was con- 

 serving the best I could under the laws of the State of Missouri. Then lumber 

 got up so that I got $6 or $7 for my number four boards, but a great many of 

 my neighbors made a great deal more money. I was figuring up yesterday, look- 

 ing over the accounts and seeing what dividends we have paid, and I found this, 

 that we put in a half million dollars into the lumber in Missouri thirty-five years 

 ago, and that half million dollars, if put out at compound interest forty years ago, 

 at six per cent, would amount to a great deal more than we have gotten out of 

 that timber. If the lumberman leaves his stuff in the woods and sells the upper 

 grade, he can make greater dividends and get a great deal more money out of 

 the timber. I took the other course and therefore I am going to say that in the 

 investment of that one-half million dollars in the State of Missouri, in forty 

 years — we have only been using it thirty-five — at compound interest at six per 

 cent, my stockholders would have had more money if they had let the half mil- 

 lion dollars out at six per cent interest. But we practice conservation in just that 

 way and the first time that a forest school ever sent anybody out into the woods 

 that I know of, they came to my woods down in Missouri. 



Just a few years ago when there was a great talk about a lumber trust, 

 because I was trying to be a conservationist under the present laws, I said I 

 was not in any trust, but I wish you would go down and find out if I am. I got 

 Mr. Herbert Knox Smith to send three men to our mills in Missouri and Louisiana 

 and look over our accounts and all our books, and those three men asked if I 

 had any objection to their boxing them up and sending them to Washington and 

 I told them not a bit. They brought them up here to Washington, a thousand 

 pounds of that kind of stuff and they did not find that I was in the trust. 

 (Laughter.) 



I do not think any of you fellows would be in the trust if you make lumber 

 for $11.78 and put it on the cars in Louisiana. I do not think it is possible, but 

 I do think that we ought to have enough from our lumber to pay for the cost 

 of growing it. 



I am interested with Mr. Alexander and the Honorable Mr. Hartner in their 



