The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-09-25
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

Some Of you older people who read this will remember the time when wal nut furniture was the style, and if you go out into some of the old southern ante-bellum homes in the country you will still find some rare specimens of it. | It is tragedy how our people failed | to appreciate the hardwoods which the good Lord had so bountifuliy planted in the hills and valleys of the south. Our people cut the timber ruthlessly down and sold 1t for song.
 About twenty years ago I was living | In Georgia town. Cotton had gone down to five cents pound, yet a man living half dozen miles out in the country cut down what was probably the | finest walnut grove in America, piled up the logs and burned them in order to plant cotton.
 It was along the lines of Mrs. Mathis story about farmers in Alabama who spent half the year in killing grass to SOW cotton in order that they might get enough money to send west and buy hay for their stock. remember we'll the droll way in which she used to tell this and how her audiences would laugh at her indictment of their farming methods. Tho same idea is brought out in Acres of Diamonds," the famous lecture which has been delivered by pr. Russell more than 5000 times in the United States and is yet today the greatest drawing card on the lecture platform There is many a man who might have struck oil on his own land if he hadn't sold it to go elsewhere to seek his fortune, is the moral of the great preachers lesson. When the plants working on govern ment orders found that the country had been almost stripped of it's black wal nut and that there were no known tracts of it, the President issued an urgent call to the Boy Scouts of America. as the organization best fitted for the great task, to seek it out in fence corners and farmers wood lots and as shade trees on the lawns of residences and wherever it might be found.
 
 The leaders of the Boy Scouts of Amer ica quickly called upon the boys to make a canvass of the country and a plan was adopted after conferences with and the full approval of the bureau of air craft production. the ordnance depart ment, the forest service and the council of national defense The literature re- quired was printed for the scouts and 1 sent out by the government
 l The scouts went to work immediately and the reports began to pour in to Washington. The forest service in giv- ing the total of the figures as submitted to the ordnance department says that the scouts had reported 14,0Ss,56O board feet and that numerous letters and re-
 ports are still coming in.''
 To accomplish this task of making 3 census of standing black walnut timber would have cost the government millions
 of dollars. but the organized boyhoot
 of the nation has gladly done it as theil
 service to aid in winning the war. l
 The kids in khaki'' have thus beel
 able to help Uncle sam in his call 10 this desperately needed material by locat
 ing and reporting about SSs7 carloads
 This will add thousands of gunstock
 and Airplanes propellers to Uncle sam
 purpose of force to the utmost"
 Get every available black walnut ire
 to market is the aim of the forest spe
 ciaiists with whom the Boy Scouts (
 America are working in their effort t
 locate thn war material.