The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-13
TIMBER IS AMONG CHIEF RESOURCES
 OF TUSCALOOSA
Raw Material And Finish ing Mills Contribute To
 COunty's Wealth

The timber industry and its allied manufacturing activities comprise one of Tuscaloosa's most notable claims to commercial importance.
 Thousands of acres of virgin timber lands provide splendid forests of pine, poplar, gum and various hardwoods. Sawmills of various capacities are In operation all ever the county, plaining mills have been built in and around Tuscaloosa, furniture plants and other woodworking industries have been es-. tablished. Yet more than one-half of the county's total area of i 1,346 square miles is still covered with forests, and though the lumberman is constantly cutting timber, the trees are growing up almost as fast as they are being cut down.
 The Tuscaloosa region has national reputation as a timber district. Its profitable study that the Yale School of Forestry sent down a delegation of students and instructors to spend more than a month in the woods of the dis trict.
 More than fifty sawmills, with ca pacities varying from 2,000 to POO, 0,000 feet of lumeer day, are in operation in the county. The largest of these is the plant of the Raul Lumber company. with a capacity of 10000 feet daily, and employing five hundred men.
 Wide Variety Of Woods
 X factor which makes for the widest development in the woodworking in dustry of Tuscaloosa is the variety of woods found in the forests of the county. There are at least forty kinds of trees which might be spoken of as common, while of this number there are seventeen varieties, each of which makes up ? per cent or more of the standing timber of the county.
 grows in all sections, is the common per cent of the total timber growth. The long leaf pine comprises 8 per cent, the sweet gum, 5 per cent, the red oak, per cent, the white oak, poplar, dogwood and beech, 3 per cent, and water oak, willow, blackjack, sycamore and hickory, per cent.
 With this variety of raw material available. the woodworking industry of Tuscaloosa county is one that is expected to attain important volume during the years to come. Raw ma terial, moreover, is not the only ad- vantage that Tuscaloosa offers to such industries. The transportation facilit- ties of the district, both rail and wa ter, are such that attract manufac- turers. The river offers a cheap means not only of assembling raw material. but of distributing these materials and the finished products to the ports of the world. The district also is served by three of the largest and most pro gressive railroads in the south, and the traffic bureau of the Chamber of Commerce has been successful in se- curing satisfactory rate adjustments in all the major matters affecting Tusca- loosa manufacturers.
 Finishing Plants
 In addition to the sawmills of the county, there are already veneer and heading plants, factory making pat ent lath, and woodworking establish ments that manufacture ready-cut houses, handles, mallets, chairs and variety of other finished products.
 A paper mill would find abundant material in the waste of the numerous sawmills, and every other industry which is based upon an abundant sup ply of timber would find the Tusca- loOsa district a peculiarly favorable To- cation in every respect.
 Ranking high, as4it does, in mineral and agricultural wealth, the Tusca- loosa territory has q third great source of natural riches to depend upon in it's timber supply. Any one of this important trio of resources would be sufficient to maintain the conner cial solidarity of the district, but the combination of them gives Tusca- loOsa the advantage of trebly strengthened position among the com munities of the state.