Evening star., 1925-08-13
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL J.. COLLINS.

1928, for which year the estimate is
4O.O00,000 thousand board feet
The boom in home building since
the depression following deflation after
the World War accounts for the in
creased demand for lumber in recent
years. Offsetting that demand there
are other factors which few outside
of the lumber business have realized
These factors tend to retard the ex-
haustion of our supplies.
One of the factors referred to is the
greater economic handling of lumber
by the mills and dealers. The lumber
| associations have been STUDYING the
wastes They have found ways of
utilizing much more than was for
merly gotten out of tree. The new
methods are equivalent TO doubling
the forest areas of the country.
Standardization of mill measures. to-
gether with the use of shorter pieces
of boards, have resulted in vastly in
creased availability of odds and ends
OF boards. Formerly, boards must be
IL to 10 feet in length: now the car
penters have learned that boards are
just as useful if they are sawed at the
mill TO the shorter lengths actually
used In construction. So there are
boards of standard measure of 6 Z
and feet. At the mill it is found that
l6-foot board may have a defect in
one half. Formerly that condemned
the entire board; today the defective
part is sawed off and the rest of the
piece is used. In Europe that prac-
tice of using short lengths is carried
TO such an extreme that it is stand
ard to sell boards by the inch, in
pieces inches or more in length ac-
cording to the builders actual use
The railroads used to count on the
average life of tie as about 10 years;
today, by the use of creosote pre-
servatives, ties average 20 years in
the ground, hence the timber supply
for ties has been doubled. The same
is true of fence posts, telegraph poles
and all other timbers in contact with
the ground.
The introduction of artificial com
position board for interior finishing is
progressing, and it Is expected that in
short time synthetic lumber" :"
which will not warp or crack and can
be planed, will be Derfected
A process has = IN devised within
the last five years of extracting tur-
pentine out Of boards in the course of
their kiln drying, which makes bet
ter board and saves a merchantable
turpentine.
1t is said that now the lumber man
ufacturer utiliZeS every part of the
tree, from root to terminal bud, just
as a modern pork packer saves every
part of the pig except the squeal.
What the lumberman permits to es-
cape, corresponding to the squeal of
the pig, has not been explained out
side of trade circles, but it may be the
shadow.
Patriotic protectionists have been
somewhat disturbed recently by the
report that lumber was being import
ed into New York and Boston ports
from Sweden and Finland. The
amount of such importations is neg
| ligible at present. but may increase.
| Freight on lumber from our Pacific
States, where exists our only consid-
cradle supply of certain kinds, is
about $3.50 per 1000 board feet;
freight from Sweden and Finland,
across the Atlantic, has been as low
| as So per 900 feet. Most of such
shipments come in tramp steamers
as Occasional cargo, and lumber
men profess to be complacent about
1t because. of the small percentage
compared with the 10000, 900 900 thou
| sand feet which we produce.
Offsetting the importations of lun-
Der, we export more than 2.060, 900
thousand feet of boards and about
8 900, 900 thousand feet of railroad
ties, about half of which goes to Cam