Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1911 — Go Back to Wood as Fuel [ARTICLE]

Go Back to Wood as Fuel

Director of Pennsylvania State Forestry Believes We Will Get to That Situation Within Near Future.

South Bethlehem, Pa. —That wood for fuel will rise again to an important or the most important domestic fuel even hereabouts, so near the coal fields, was predicted by E. A. Ziegler, director of the State Forestry school at Mt. Alto, in a most interesting address at Lehigh university. Mr. Ziegler spoke on the "Financial Aspects of Forestry," but before taking up the subject of finance gave a lucid description of the Forest academy at Mt Alto, an Institution conducted more in the German sense. He said:

“The primary aim of forestry is to grow trees as a crop—trees for lum-

ber, trees for railroad ties, trees fox' paper, trees for staves, posts, poles, fuel wood and so on down the long list of wood uses. And the growing of this tree crop will bring in a profit! if properly handled, as we shall presently see. If I should predict that wood for fuel will again rise to an important or the most important domestic fuel, here so near the coal mines, I should hardly be taken seriously. But that very thing is coming—-I need not try to foretell the moment Coal is rising is price gradually, and it is only a matter of reaching a certain point (one cord of wood equals, roughly, one ton of coal) when the financial advantage will go to the wood suel —in fact, in many districts where the transportation charges on coal are high, wood is today in universal domestic use. t "In southern California the high price of coal and scarcity of wood put the price of fuel wood delivered at sl2 a cord. A plantation of trees for fuel is a very remunerative investment there. In Washington, D. C., I paid $7.50 to $8 a ton for anthracite coal delivered in the suburbs. A’ cord of air-dried white oak cost me $6 to $7. The wood was the cheaper fuel and I used it largely in the kitchen range, using coal only as a more convenient fuel in the furnace. The significant fact is that coal beds cannot be renewed, but forests can.”