The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-12
yAEUr OF nEp CEDAR.

In one of the letters of William E. Curtis. written from Mobile. there oc- CUTS a paragraph of more, than ordi- nary interest to the people of Alabama He writes:
 The river banks in washington and Clarke Counties, Alabama, furnish the cedar for nearly all of the lead pencils and pen holders manufactured In the United States and Europe. The sup ply of soft red cedar required for this purpose in the European forests was exhausted several years ago, and now the Faber family of Germany, which pencils used in all the world. gets its cedar near Mobile. The trees grow scattered, and cruisers are sent out to look for them. When found they are shipped to mill on Three Mile Creek, cedar Is cut into little strips half the size of a lead pencil and tied up in punches to be shipped abroad. When they reach the factories in Germany they are cut into semi-cylinders, or oc- tagonal shape, the grooves are cut and filled with plumbago. and the two pieces are glued together and polished. The same kind of cedar was formerly used for buckets, but has lately be- come too rare and expensive. A con- siderable quantity was formerly used for wardrobes and chests, because the odor keeps moths away, and even now you can buy trunks veneered on the comes chiefly from Cuba and is of much coarser fiber and different odor.
 This Is both interesting and import ant to all the people of this State. Many attempts and experiments have been made to find a substitute for red cedar in the manufacture of lead pencils. Other woods have been tried. and paper has been used to some extent, but no satisfactory substitute for red cedar has been found. It possesses qualities and advantages to be found in no other wood yet tried; hence the importance of the cedar growth and the necessity of preserving it for this purpose
 We do not know the source from which Mir. Curtis gets his information about Alabama supplying nearly all the cedar used in this country and Europe for the manufacture of pencils and in matters of figures and statistics. Even if he is but half right in his estimate, the matter is of vast import ance to our people, and plainly sets out the value of the timber, and the source of wealth to the owners if they will take advantage of 1t.
 Cedar trees are to be found in nearly or quite all sections of Alabama. Nat urally some is better than others. but all is useful. Millions of feet have taA hxys1 . and shingles. We have even ' seen houses built of cedar logs which would have been invaluable to pencil-makers. In many portions of North and Middle Alabama there are acres on acres of granite with fine cedar trees growing from every crack or break in the rocky bed. In other places it grows in the swamps and forests among the more common trees. Some of the trees are tall and long-bodied, while in others the limbs start near the ground and hence such trees will yield but lim- ited quantity of good material for the pencil maker.
 Whether the trees have long or short bodies if they are the genuine red cedar they are immensely valuable and will become more so as the sup | ply diminishes elsewhere. A tree which will make a few fence posts, or a thousand or two shingles would turn out many thousands of pencils or pen holders, worth scores or hundreds of times as much as in the commoner uses to which it Is so often put. The man who has some good red cedar trees has a good investment, and if ne Is wise he will save 1t for future profit
 As our red cedar is a tree of some what slow growth, the planting of fl would not be an immediately profitable | investment, but like all other trees planted for future use. it would un- doubtedly pay after some years. Un- less a new supply can be discovered il Is plain that but a few years will elapse before the sources now relied on will be exhausted and a substitute must be found. This would make the planting of it a good thing, and certainly 1t is a sound reason why the trees now growing should not be destroyed or wasted by being put to common uses It is too valuable to be used for build ing or for cabinet making.