Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1915 — PRESERVATION OF TIES [ARTICLE]

PRESERVATION OF TIES

INDUSTRY 18 CONSTANTLY ADVANCING IN IMPORTANCE. Railroads W e . Recognized the Importance of the Work, and Every Kind of Encouragement Is to Be Given to It. Statistics show that wood preserving is one of the most rapidly advancing industries in the country. In 1895 there were 15 plants in the United States; in 1914 there were 122 plants of all kinds, 100 being of the pressure-cylinder type. Ninety-four of these plants last year used more than 79,000,000 gallons of creosote oil, more than 27,000,000 pounds of dry zinc chloride and nearly 2,500,000 gallons of other preservatives, such as coal tar and crude oil, treating a total of nearly 160,000,000 cubic feet of timber, an increase of about 7,000,000 cubic feet over 1913 and of 35,000,000 cubic feet over 1912. The most important consumers are the large plants in which railroad ties are treated. The preservatives materially lengthen the ties’ period of service, lessen the labor cost involved by renewal and decrease the drain upon the forests due to tie-cutting. To some extent the treatment of fence posts and other forms of farm timber is being taken up, an inexpensive apparatus and method having been devised by the department of agriculture; but as yet the use of wood preservatives by farmers is on too small a scale to have any importance, in the total, while the practice of treating telephone poles Is in its incipiency in* this country.. “With the rapid advance of this industry as a whole,” says the report, “the choice of preservatives has been fairly well established, but the kinds and classes of materials to be treated need development along certain lines. In Germany and other European countries practically all cross-ties laid by the railroads are treated with chemicals or preserving oils. In this country but 30 per cent of the ties purchased by the railroads are subjected to such treatment. The number of poles treated in this country is a very •mall per cent of the total in use.”