246 REPORT OF THE FORESTRY COMMITTEE 



Material is saved only as it is valuable. Closeness of timber utilization is in 

 direct proportion to stumpage values. In some large and well located Eastern 

 lumbering operations, practically all waste is utilized because of high timber values 

 and good markets for a wide variety of products. In many Pacific Coast opera- 

 tions where standing timber of low value is abundant, and sawing capacity in 

 excess of market demand, there is much waste at present unavoidable. 



Overproduction of lumber and other products is a prolific cause of forest 

 waste. Overproduction results from unlimited competition in the exploitation 

 of forest resources. 



Much can be accomplished in decreasing forest waste through the educa- 

 tion of the consumer to the use of grades and sizes of material now rejected. 

 The consumer has the final say in the disposition of the products of the manufac- 

 turer. This is not a condition peculiar to lumbering alone. It applies to the 

 market for all manufactured and agricultural products. A market for forest 

 products equal to that in Germany would result in as close timber utilization in 

 the United States as exists in Germany. 



The lumber industry needs more information than is yet available upon the 

 merchantable products that can be obtained from trees of various kinds and 

 sizes. Further investigation should be made of the costs of manufacturing many 

 by-products, and of the conditions under which such operations are successful. 

 The effect of unrestrained competition in timber exploitation upon our forest 

 resources should receive serious study. 



THE CLOSEE UTILIZATION OF TIMBEE 



PUBLIC opinion has charged the lumberman with a long series of high 

 crimes and misdemeanors. He has cut unnecessarily high stumps, broken 

 many trees in the felling, left long tops, strewed the woods with skid 

 poles, ties and defective logs, and left to burn up scattered patches of timber 

 containing in the aggregate many million feet of lumber. He has driven logs 

 down narrow, rocky streams where many have become stranded on the banks 

 never to be gathered up. Many others have sunk in dead water to remain forever 

 on the bottom. He has neglected to pick up logs dropped from railroad cars 

 along the track or scattered when wrecks happen, as they sometimes do. When 

 the remaining logs have reached the mill the lumberman is said to have used saws 

 which make twice too much saw dust, to have cut heavy slabs where light ones 

 might as easily be made, to have edged and trimmed the lumber to even inches 

 and feet only, and to have thrown on the waste heap or run out to the burner, 

 vast quantities of short lengths of all his products. 



Still further, the lumberman has been accused of failing to follow the modern 

 manufacturing practice of reaping a profit from a wide variety of by-products. 

 It is even said that in the marketing of his standard grades and sizes he has 

 shown little of the foresight and ability of the modern merchant. In short, the 

 lumberman is charged with being wholly inefficient in the planning and operation 

 of his business. A multitude of outsiders have freely offered him unlimited 

 quantities of good advice, and when he has not accepted it, he has been called 

 a wilful waster of one of the greatest natural resources. 



