American Forest Congress 279 



Another point which may be alluded to here is the 

 influence which the use of less valuable woods, always 

 after preservation, has on local business and feeling. 

 The less valuable woods are generally distributed along 

 most of the railway lines, and should they come to be 

 generally used, every owner of woodlands would find 

 a local market for one class of his farm product which 

 he now has but little use for. This is not only true for 

 ties, but for other classes of material. Take fence 

 posts as an example. Many roads now use cedar, 

 shipped long distances from oflf their lines. If birch, 

 sycamore, maple, red oak, and saplings of other trees, 

 which grow on every farm, were generally used, it 

 would stimulate local interest, encourage home indus- 

 tries, as it were, and at the same time serve to give a 

 large and comparatively cheap supply. That such 

 saplings can be easily and cheaply treated (at a cost of 

 5 to 6 cents per post) has recently been successfully 

 demonstrated. 



While the foregoing points are doubtless worthy of 

 consideration, it is, nevertheless, true that the foremost 

 and immediate interest in timber preservation is one 

 which deals with the more economical handling of the 

 timber problem. Timber preservation would not mean 

 anything if it could not be shown that in the long run 

 it is cheaper to use shortlived woods when preserved 

 than unpreserved longlived woods. 



Without going into details at this point, it may be 

 stated that there is probably no one to-day who does 

 not believe that timber preservation in one form or 

 another pays. The extent to which preservation will 

 pay will depend upon several factors, such as the first 

 cost of the wood, the cost of renewal, the cost of the 

 treatment. In a recent discussion of this subject it 

 was pointed out that the following table of annual 



