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Forest Products Association thanks you, and thru you the City of Syracuse, for a most cordial welcome. The hospitality of Syracuse is well known; its commercial progress; its civic pride, and its financial stability, make it one of the foremost cities of our state. It is a fitting place to hold this convention. Its people sympathize with and understand the communal interest in the forests of the state, with which the management of which our association is closely identified. This understanding and sympathy is influenced by your proximity to the section of the state where our forests stand, and to the resultant ebb and flow of trade and commerce to and from that section into your city. It is also influenced by education on these subjects at your very doors as exemplified in the progressive and vigorous work of the College of Forestry at Syracuse University. You also have the New York State Forestry Association with its headquarters in your city, which is another agency directing your people to an intelligent understanding of public and private rights and duties in relation to forests and forestry. The County of Onondaga, at the recent election, gave eloquent expression of the effect of this educational work in distinguishing itself as one of two of the counties in the state, outside the City of New York, as favoring the extension of the forest preserve. We, therefore feel, Mr. Mayor, that we are meeting among people who understand us and who will sympathize with an honest and intelligently applied effort to establish a policy in relation to our forests which will perpetuate them without needless waste and with economy in their management and which will at the same time guarantee those engaged in the commerce of the forests, full protection of their property rights. We extend to you, Mr. Mayor, a cordial invitation to attend our exercises and our banquet as a guest of our association.

Members of the Empire State Forest Products Association, I shall spend the time allotted to me in a practical talk rather than in the attempt to make a formal address. I am influenced to do this because of my experience as your President during the past year. In the discharge of the duties of that office I found that the Empire State Forest Products Association was valued at par by every one excepting its own members. I found general public approval of our organization and respect for our work and its ob

jects. I found that our organization was given a high place among similar organizations, public spirited, commercial or social. I found a membership lacking in appreciation of the opportunity which this association presents for the enforcement of its objects and for the presentation of its opinions and for the gaining of the rights of its members. Mr. Frank L. Moore, during his incumbency, established these things and they have imposed on us responsibilities of a high and refined character and high standing in our state, and the fact that we are so established imposes the responsibilities to which I have referred and they must be met, but I fail to find that our membership had supplied a means for discharging these responsibilities. We lacked an office for the keeping of our records and for the conduct of routine work. We lacked funds to pay even for stationery and postage. We lacked a Board of Control with flexible authority to express the opinion of our association on questions arising from time to time during the year. We, in short, lacked the fundamentals for successful organization work. We need increased financial support, a flexible management and a permanent office. With these we need, last but not least, the unanimous and active support of every member for the objects of this organization and for the work of attaining them. We need a management, industrious, intelligent and reliable, industrious enough to devote the time to the work of the association which it demands, intelligent enough to expound our views and reliable enough to maintain them for the benefit of each and every member. With these and with our feet firmly planted upon the policy that those engaged in the commerce of the forest seek only the constitutional right of equality before the law, we are bound to succeed in our work and we can guarantee to our membership full value for any support which it gives.

PRESIDENT OSTRANDER: The next on the program is the report of the Legislative Committee.

MR. MOORE: Mr. President, before you proceed to the regular program I would like to have the Committee on Resolutions meet and if any one has anything they would like to have the committee consider I would like to have them send them to the committee. Since Mr. Spencer Kellogg is not here and a vacancy occurs, I will appoint Mr. Frank A. Cutting to succeed Mr. Kellogg.

MR. OSTRANDER: Is Professor Brown here? Professor

Brown, would you mind making your report and we will have Mr. Kellogg's later? I introduce to you Professor Brown who will make a report of the Committee on Forestry.

PROFFESSOR BROWN: Your Committee on Forestry, in looking over the field of activities since the last annual meeting has decided to devote a large share of its report to the subject of utilization. This, at first sight, may seem an old story of relatively little importance but recent events underlying the economic welfare of this country have forced the attention of certain matters upon the lumbermen and producers of forest products not only in New York State but throughout the country.

The Chairman of your Committee, after the subject to be covered in the report was decided upon, has addressed letters to most of the prominent lumber manufacturers and producers of pulp wood in New York, to get the latest instances of close utilization both in the woods and at the mill.

Together with the high cost of living which has meant an advance in labor costs as well as the charges for machinery, supplies, food and practically everything else involved in the production and manufacture of forest products, the resultant prices of nearly every commodity on our markets have risen accordingly so that there is both governmental and private attention being paid to the high cost of living which can certainly be denoted as the most important single problem confronting the American public to-day. Sec'y R. S. Kellogg of the National Lumber Manufacturers' Assocation at Milwaukee, has brought out the fact that in spite of the increase in the cost of supplies for the lumber camps (an increase of from 30 to 50 per cent in the past year), to say nothing of wages and the fact that such food and supply commodities as coffee, potatoes, canned goods, wrapping paper, copper, creosote, etc., have risen from between 36 and 150 per cent since 1914, the price of lumber has remained substantially the same.

The answer to this important problem, therefore, is (1) that lumber will have to rise in price, (2) utilization of the waste and a closer utilization of all of the available raw product found in the woods.

Lumber has not come into its own with the advance of

all other commodities necessary to human life but it is as sure as the old economic law of supply and demand that lumber will rise in price in the future. For the immediate present, we must readjust ourselves to economic conditions in order to get more out of the raw product. It is an anomalous situation when New York manufacturers of woodenware, novelties, toys and other small articles made of wood send to Arkansas and other parts of the South as well as the West for small pieces from which to derive their product. The old story of Lincoln that the Lord must have. loved the common people because he made so many of them, can certainly be applied to trees and lumber where there is much more common, defective and poor lumber than selects or upper grades. Like the salesman, who, when he found he could sell the clears easier and with more profit, wrote in to his mill instructing them to cut all their logs into clears and selects.

The replies received from the leading lumber manufacturers of the Adirondacks indicate that we are turning to closer utilization both in the logging and manufacturing end of our lumber operations. The following conclusions have been drawn from the many interesting replies received.

1. In the woods there has been a universal turning from the axe as a felling device to the axe and saw. Stump heights have been brought down within recent years from between 24 to 36 inches to a point at the swell of the roots which is usually from 10 to 16 inches above the ground. There is a general uniformity among all of our logging operations to get stump down to a minimum.

2. Instead of making the logs a uniform length of 13 to 16 feet, etc., many of the Adirondack loggers are now making logs of all lengths from 8 to 16 feet to utilize the tree trunk to best advantage, thereby incurring minimum loss from crotches, crooks, large knots and other serious defects. Where stumpage and operating charges are relatively low, logs having a greater per cent of defects are now being taken out of the woods.

3. Pulp wood is now being taken out of the woods in 4 foot lengths more than ever. It is also being cut down to a limit of 2 to 3 inches in diameter inside the bark in the tops. Splitting of unsound and shaky butts of spruce, fir and

hemlock in order to save any sound fibre available is also in common practice. Some concerns are even peeling pulp wood in the woods because the smallest timbers are too small to ross at the mill.

4. In the matter of allowance for trim, it has been the common custom in the Adirondack region to allow 8 inches on each log length. Now it is the common custom to allow only about 4 inches where the logs are driven and only 2 inches on railroad operations. The possibility of portable gasoline engines being used for felling and cross cutting has been suggested and will be given attention. Cross cutting devices operated both by steam and compressed air are in experimental use in the case of big timber on the Pacific Coast but they have not been demonstrated to be a great success.

In the manufacturing end of our operations, the most significant development within recent years has been the elimination of our Adirondack sawmills in the past. The edgings, slabs and other waste not used for fuel, are sold in the case of softwoods, for paper pulp or are chipped up locally and sold by the cord. Edgings and slabs are also being made profitably into lath, box boards, crating stock and other forms. Hardwood waste is being converted into furniture parts, squares for wood turnery, broom handles, novelties, woodenware, etc., and hardwood ashes are often sold for fertilizer. Several mills have installed wood rooms in connection with their sawmills, to cut up small, crooked and defective logs into pulp wood and also to ross slabs. and edgings. The pulp wood and all forms of sawmill waste except sawdust, are chipped up and used for pulp. One mill manufactures 15 cords of sulphite chips per day from material that otherwise might be wasted. Straight logs below 6 inches in diameter at the tops, go into chips and all crooked or badly defective logs are also sent to the chippers.

Almost everything, therefore, is being closely utilized in the Adirondacks. The most important single problem still left unsolved, is the large amount of hardwood slash including defective butts, large limbs, etc., which lie about. for many years without rotting, throughout our Adirondack lumber operations. It is predicted that if the present high price levels of the products of the wood distillation industry are maintained, that the Adirondack region will con

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