The Wrangell sentinel., 1927-01-20
FORTY-FIVE HUNDRED USES FOR LUMBER CREATES
 GREATER DEMAND
New Industries and Progress Have Placed Big Demands on
 Lumber Supplies

Someone is always telling how near at hand is the end of lumber.
 A month or two ago Professor Wendt, in a magazine article, read it's funeral oration.
 In 1879, Carl shurz thought lum- Der manufacturing would be fading by 1900. As late as 1907, Clifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania, gave numbering 20 or 25 years at the outside.
 Yet in 1925 as much lumber was cut in the United States as the ay- craze for the great years of 1900 to 1910.
 Lumbermen have no conflict with the advocates Of substitute ma terals for wood, but they naturally object to being railroaded out of business by them. They know that wood cannot be as freely used by 12O million people as by 30 million with sources of supply necessarily reduced. If there were nothing but lumber to build with, there would soon be no building.
 A strange thing about merito- rious substitutes for wood is that they invariably create unforeseen uses for wood; every new disuse seems to turn up a new use. They know that whereas substitutes for wood have been in the field both in housing and in manufacturing for centuries, the world continues to consume at some price all the lum- Der and other forms of wood that the mills produce. Human nature, with it's likes and dislikes, depend ing more on feeling than logic, more on experience and custom than on reason and economy. can not be persuaded at once to alter it's ancient habits by a few laboratory demonstrations and snap judg- ments.
 When sewed shoe soles came in it was reasonable to predict the dis appearance of the shoe-peg, but millions of people. especially in Flu rope, prefer the begged shoe, and single factory in New Hampshire, is still turning out the little pegs by the billion.
 When the business and manufac- turing sections of our cities began to turn to concrete construction, thus cutting off a great outlet for lumber, many lumbermen were ap- prehensive of bitter days; but it soon developed that concrete ere ated a new great market for lum- Der, for it's forms and scaffoldings. Automobile Business Demands Wood
 When the automobile began to restrict the demand for buggies and wagons, there was more apprehen- sion, but presently it was found that the automobile industry was requiring a billion and half feet of lumber a year for the bodies of cars and sturdy boxes and crates in which to ship them.
 Recently there was new alarm because of the advent of the all-steel body, but already the body manu- lecturers are turning back to wood, and the greatest of them all - the Fishers = has just bought 60,0O0 acres of timber land to insure sup plies for 50 years. Henry Ford buys iron ore deposits - but also several hundred thusand acres of timber.
 Most Dwellings Are of Lumber
 There has appeared such substi- tutes as brick since the time of the tower of Babel, yet 75 per cent of the dwellings erected in the United States today are frame, and about 45 per cent of the material bill for the remaining 25 per cent is for lumber.
 We have had metal for furniture since time immemorial, but the new Palmer House in Chicago, and the still newer and greater Stevens, the largest hotel in the world, have chosen wooden bedsteads instead Of steel and brass. The latter has found i. wooden window frame and sash preferable to steel, after many years of steel sash.
 The old plank road of the fath- CTS has gone, but nobody had found a suitable substitute for 80 million