2 BULLETIN 1298, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
are Maine, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, 
and Minnesota. Thirty per cent of the newsprint-manufacturing 
industry is in New England, nearly 50 per cent in New York, and 15 
per cent in the Lake States. 
Statistics {20) 1 recently published will give some idea of the magni- 
tude of the operations. During 1920, 253 establishments reported the 
use of 6,114,072 cords of wood valued at $116,495,720, with an 
average cost per cord of $19.05 f. o. b. mill. This material produced 
3,821,704 tons of pulp, of which 1,583,914 tons were mechanical, 
1,585,834 sulphite, 463,305 soda, and 188,651 sulphate pulp. The 
pulp wood consumption in 1920 showed an increase of 16 per cent 
over 1918. This demand was met in part by the importation of 
nearly a million and a quarter cords of spruce and poplar. 
An abnormal demand for pulp developed in 1919, because of the 
world shortage following the war, and this continued until the latter 
part of October, 1920. Wood and pulp increased correspondingly 
in value, and losses from decay and mold, assuming greater monetary 
significance, came sharply to the attention of operators and evoked 
many requests for assistance in controlling or reducing the losses. 
The Federal Government did not have funds immediately available 
to finance the necessary investigative work, and a group of 33 inter- 
ested mills subscribed to a fund which enabled the Forest Products 
Laboratory to employ two pathologists (who were detailed from the 
Bureau of Plant Industry) and two chemists to study the problem. 
A preliminary survey of the situation was made at some twenty 
of the cooperating mills in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and 
Pennsylvania. At these mills the problems were discussed with the 
operators, and inspections were made of wood and pulp storage 
facilities and methods. The survey disclosed heavy losses at 
most mills, particularly in the storage of wood, and past losses of 
considerable extent in the storage of ground wood pulp. One mill 
had lost more than $100,000 on ground wood stored inside for a 
comparatively short time. At another mill a loss exceeding $10,000 
occurred in a 7,500-ton lot of hydraulic-pressed ground wood from 
Canadian spruce stored for two or three years. This was in an out- 
side pile about 20 feet high, unprotected above but placed on a plank 
foundation. The company reported this pulp about 72 per cent air 
dry (65 per cent oven dry). There were also several instances in 
which ground wood, infected at one plant and shipped to another, 
had rotted very rapidly after arrival. Such direct cancellations of 
unsalable pulp from the books create a very distinct impression of 
loss; but there is a much greater loss, in the aggregate, from deterio- 
ration which is not sufficiently marked to cause rejection, though 
sufficient to reduce the market value of the product. All these ele- 
ments the present investigators have*tried to take into account. 
Little attention has been paid in the past to losses from pulp wood 
rotting in the yard or in the woods. Kot has been recognized only 
after it became sufficiently advanced to affect the strength of the pulp, 
thus necessitating a larger proportion of sulphite to produce news- 
print. In only one instance was wood found which was so far 
rotted as to be considered unfit for use. This had been in storage 
about four years. Many mills have been operating for years on 
1 Numbers in italics in parentheses refer to literature listed in "Bibliography," p. 80. 
