Using the Forests

1916

Not more than 30 per cent of the timber in the forests of the United States is ever utilized as lumber, according to figures recently compiled by the Office of Industrial Investigations of the Forest Service. Seventy per cent, chiefly in tops, limbs, stumps, bark, sawdust, slabs and small and defective trees, is for the most part wasted. Of the wood in the individual tree 33.5 per cent is made into lumber and of the logs which reach the mill 40.3 per cent is worked up into lumber.

New uses for waste products are constantly being discovered. It is reported that dolls' heads are now being made from a composition of wood flour and rye flour. A planing mill company in California has discovered a profitable use for odds and ends, such as are generally sold for fuel under the name of mill blocks. It has established a shop for the manufacture of children's toys, which it is turning out by the carload. Another California plant is working up blocks into dowels; another into beekeepers' supplies.

Thru the medium of the Wood Waste Exchange organized and maintained by the Forest Service much waste material is finding use.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 6.