Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-12

thousand. Ordinary Cledr DulluiHS anu
finishing lumber has, in five years.
risen over so per cent. We use lumber
now that twenty years ago would have
been rejected with scorn by any build
err Yet prices are going up, and still
up; the lumbermen wish these prices
protected, and ask that the Sherman
law be revoked.
what should be our attitude today
toward the threatening destruction OF
one-half of our alarmingly small re-
naming supply? Last year we cut
nearly forty billion feet of lumber.
our railroads are said to use one
third of the Industrial timber cut. They
REQUIRE on the basis of the present de
mand 100, 100000 ties per year, and they
are always wondering where they are
going to get them. The demand is
for better ties, not poorer. Bad ties
mean wholesale murder, forfeiture OF
mail contracts, reduced dividends. A
tie contains about 80 feet of wood. All
sorts of wood are now being used Tor
ties. from hemlock at 2S cents to white
oak at 81 cents, an average of AZ
cents per tie. Suppose we could cut
100 ties to the acre, we should require
a million acres a year for ties. The
Santa Fe road has recently arranged
to plant a few thousand acres with
Alongside the ties run the telegraph
poles not so perishabe, but continual
renewal Two years ago we cut $685.
SIS poles over 20 feet in length.
Three-fifths of these were cedar, 2S per
cent chestnut. We cut hundreds or
thousands of smaller poles also, not to
mention vast quantities of what is
called lodge pole pine for other uses.
We annually reap for telegraph ana
telephone poles somewhere between
three and four million acres of land.
"Our tanneries two years ago re-
auired 100000 cords of bark. In the
same year we cut 1855 $50 shingles
and 3,S12,S07 laths. This represents one
of the real savings in lumber manu-
facture-the utilization of material
which otherwise would go to waste.
Then we had to timber our mines, and
for that we used 165 100000 cubic feet,
not board measure, much of which
was the best hard wood.
There is absolutely no hope for We
hicle and machine makers except
more careful use of hard wood forests
of the south and southwest; nor, in
deed. can that be called a solution
now. The highest estimate of our re-
naming hard wood is 4,OOO,0O0000 feet.
For lumber, ties, posts. fuel, manufac-
lures. etc, we use 25, 900 100000 feet per
annum or more. At that rate 1t will
take us sixteen years to use up all the
rest of our hardwood if we do not
burn it, and the demand remains the
same.
Some one has figured that big Sur
day newspaper needs twenty acres
pulp wood to make the paper TO" on
edition. The Chicago Tribune, a chlnce
instance, uses 1000 pounds of pape'
each Sunday. or 100000 pounds eaah
week. Do your own multiplying. We
used of domestic spruce alone for pu p
wood in one year 1.7S5.6S0 cords. If Il
costs twenty acres a Sunday. or forty
acres a week, or 20S0 acres a year to
print one daily newspaper, what doe
it cost in acreage to print all the news
papers in all the cities and towns o.
America? Add to this the enormors
editions of our magazines. Add to this
the paper used in books The total
staggers the imagination. and yet the
amount of timber cpt for pulp in the
United States annually is less than 5
per cent of what is cut for lumber.
More than 100000 acres of the tim
..HfA ft.ff4AEI