Bisbee daily review., 1918-06-25
COPPER MACNATE. GETS RESULTS IN
 AIRCRAFT OUTPUT

WASHINGTON, June 24.-John D Ryan. financier and copper magnate. has been saying nothing ever since he tCok over direction of aircraft produc- ticn, but considerable evidence has ac- cumulated that points towards definite accomplishment in one direction that military men say it would be most dan gerOus to neglect.
 That is the production of air2lane spruce.
 War figures are all large. too large for most people to digest, but lumber men say that MT. Ryan has demanded 15, ,O00 900 feet a month from the Gas cade forests, and little things like the drafting of 5000 men, the planning of logging railroads, and the mobilization of rather large existing industry for war production, indicate that he in- tends to get it.
 The consoling fact is that if Ameri- can factories are late in making planes so lcng as the raw material flows to France and England is maintained. the Allies will have machines.
 Spruce Production
 MT Ryan's first move was to call in Colonel Disque, head of the spruce division, from Portland, Or|., ard thereafter something was started. There had always been less criticism of the spruce production efforts than of any. hing else that had been c7ne, largely because the expected consump- tion of the raw material did not devel- op. About 3,000,0O0 feet of spruce was the by-prcduct of normal fir and other lumber cutting in the northwest each month. The allies were getting all of that from the open markets, and it was a simple matter for the American gcv- ernment to step in and take it all. It was also comparatively simple to in- crease prices a trifle, and double tte normal production.
 But when it comes 10 running the output up to the mark. Mir. Ryan is credited with setting, a task is pro jected that is immense when compared to even the inflated standards of q war work. It is because of the peculiar qualities of Sitka spruce that it sus- tains the stresses of high speed air planes better than any other substance the world knows, and it is becauce of it's peculiar distribution and habit that the United States is finding it a difficult task to get enough of it. It had but low esteem as a commercial wood in pTe-war days, most of it get ting into the waste pile of saw mill yards, though a little of the best and thickest, specially prepared, went into the sounding boards of pianos. Queer ly enough, Germany was always big buyer of that portion of the product.
 Bones Buy Spruce
 Now that the world needs spruce, a lot of Americans will have to buy Lib erty bonds and keep on doing it indefi- nitely just because the Sitka spruce has a retiring disposition and is finic- ky about the places where it grows It grows only when surrounded by trees of different species, which habit ike is describing when he says that from to 40 percent of a given timber stand is the best that spruce shows. It likes the sea-fog from the Pacific ocean, and grows to valuable size only in scattered belts where the fog comes regularly.
 Lastly, only about 35 or 40 percent l of tlse wood in the trunk has the | strength, toughnesa, and resiliancy that airplane struts and spare require. | It takes special machinery and special 1 in hundreds of mills, small | and large, to get out this 35 percent.
 It isn't practical or possible, the lum- | Der operators find, to take out the | spruce unless surrounding trees are | also removed. All the logs are i'm mense in size, and it takes railroads, | motor trucks, or donkey engine cables | to move them. Working out the prob lem means that to get the 15,000,I00 feet of airplane spruce will require the of at least 100.000,000 feet of other timber monthly It will involve also problems concerning the disposi- tion, present and future, of the unused fir and other timber that comes out with the spruce.
 But immense as the task is, there are signs that it is being done. Mir. Ryan continue his refusal to talk about the method. And it only takes 200 board feet of spruce to make one air