The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-15
TIMBER PROBLEM
 BECOMING SERIOUS Great Demand is Rapidly Depicting Forests of
 the Country.
LUMBER COSTS DOUBLE.
It is Just Twice as High Now as it Was Seven
 Years Ago,

'S@i tlOlll lIle lOTeSlS or the cOuH-
 try as nature is supplying. The average
 American uses four hundred feet of
 lumber each year as against sixty feet
 used by his more economical brother in
 Europe. Lumber prices are jsut as high
 as they were in 1900, and the tendency
 IS still upward. The forest service of
 the department of agriculture Is doing
 everything in its power to bring Amer
 jeans to a realization of the prodigal
 waste of timber and the ruthless de-
 struction of the forests.
 Men in the lumber business are be-
 ginning to look at the problem seri-
 ously The federal forest reserves as recently increased by President Roose-
 Welt comprise an area greater than the
 total area of the republic of France or
 the German empire in Europe, but
 even with these precautions the most careful and conservative estimates
 show that the lumber supply will be practically exhausted in from thirty to
 forty years. The average age of the
 trees now being cut is 15O years The
 difference is marked.
 More than one-fourth of the annual
 lumber cut of the United States is made into boxes, crates, barrels and other packages. A great majority of the lumber thus used is destroyed when the box has been used once. The life of a packing case is very short, crates are rarely used but once, slack barrels are generally destroyed when once used while tight barrels are often used many timc. The box manufacturers are face to face with a serious problem Sug- gesttons have been made that standard size packing cases be adopted so as to permit use and reuse. The box man. ufacturers are not particularly struck with that ieda while packing-case us- CTS wish boxes that are new and of sizes made to fit the peculiar demands of the shipment. Another suggestion is that boxes be put together with screws Or some fastening not so destructive as nails, so that the lumber may be worked over and over again.
 The prices of packing cases have in creased in proportion to the increased cost of lumber. This has led to the too frequent use of boxes of inferior qual- ity, and one of the greatest drawbacks to American trade abroad Is that we too often ship good sin cases that are not strong enough to stand the wear of trips half way around the world. The barrel-makers In some instances have shown much more thrift. For ex- ample, Kentucky whiskey makers put their goods in barrels which are de- signed to hold iwne. The whiskey is shipped to California in the course of trade and the barrels when empty go to the vineyards to be filled with wine and sent back east, A whiskey barrel, one in which the liquor is aged in bonded warehouses, may easily have life of twenty or thirty years. The or dnary packing-case lasts about six months and then goes to l1indie the kitchen fire.
 The United States government de- stroys one hundred million cigar boxes a year, the law preventing the boxes from being used twice. Cigar manufac- turers are trying to induce the govern ment to relax this regulation, but as it would lay down the bars to fraud up- on the internal revenue, it is doubtful if anything will be done. The best Ha- vana cigars could not be sold for cost if they were packed in any but boxes made of Spanish cedar Imitation ve- neers and woods are used, but the best cigars go into cedar boxes. These cost the cigarmaker from ten to twelve cents each, The average price of all boxes Is about five cents each so that Uncle Sam destroyed $5,OOO,0OO worth each year. Cigar boxes of the better grades are now sold to the cigarmaker at less than cost, considering only the bare wood box, The profit comes in l printing the fancy labels.
 Red. cedar from which pencils are made has become So scarce that it is l bought and sold by the pound, the only lumber so honored and prized in the | country. The United States makes 32O,- 000,000 pencils year. Bavaria makes | even more. Both Germany and the | United States get most of the cedar in | Tennessee, Alabama and Florida. 9th | CT kinds of wood have been tried, but | the soft and stringy spruce or pine will not sharpen" easily. Everybody has pencil and he sharpens it with his own knife or one he borrow for the Such knives are rarely sharp and red cedar is the only wood that will cut smoothly with a dull knife.
 The Fabers began making Head" pensils, the lead being a mixture of graphite and clay, in Nuremberg. Eu- ropes supply of red cedar was ex- hausted years ago, and the Fabers came to Florida for more. The Ameri- can pencil makers started into busi- ness and drew upon Tennessee and Alabama In Tennessee the supply is aearly gone, and small mills all over the centrad part of the state are cut ting up scraps bought by the pound Into "pencil stock that Is blocks of cedar of the pencil length, seven 1 Inches. Fence rails that weathered the civil war have gone into pencils. Stumps nave been dug up and sold for more .han the trees which were cut from { hem to make railroad ties. Fence posts have given way to newer kinds ,f wood, and have been carted to the pencil factory to be sold for ten cents ] hundred pounds. And yet this red { cedar will grow anywhere in the Unit ( d States where the soil is not too much sand or clay will flourish on and that is unfit for agriculture, and will reach a size fit for pencil making when twenty-five years old. The for a sst service is trying to induce people