Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 239, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1917 — Utilizing Forests to Double Their Value [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Utilizing Forests to Double Their Value

by Robert H.Moulton

Forest Products Labora- > tory hopes to bring about a saving of two billion dollars a year—it's a rather neat saving!

AID the Chicago pork packer: “We make our money by saving everything but the squeal.” Says Frank J. Hallauer: “The wood Industries are going to go the pork Packers one better; they are going to save everything, including the bark.” And it is to teach the wood Industry how to do this that Mr. Hallauer has been working for six years. Engineer of a little-known branch of government, the forest products laboratory, situated at Madison, Wls.. Mr. Hallauer and his associates hope to teach this country how to save two billions of dollars annually. —— He is confident that it can be done; that is, that the annual cut of wood, now valued at two billions, can be made into articles of use which at present prices would bring double that amount. It is a man-size job, but the confident engineer points proudly to unbelievably vast economies already effected in the wood trades through the work of the forest products laboratory's chemists. They are in such terms that it would be hard to tabulate the * exact savings, but there is little doubt that they run over $100,000,000 a year. Few persons outside the wood trades know of the laboratory, the first of its kind ever to be established, but which has been imitated in a number of countries since it began operation. Its annual appropriation is small for the work it does; something less than $200,000. The laboratory is now looked upon to save the paper situation of the country, and it cheerfully tackles the job. Only recently announcement was made in Washington that the laboratory had discovered that good grades of paper can be made from a number of far Western woods and that Wisconsin paper mills were already ordering trainloads of wood chips from the West for paper pulp. The cost of freight to Wisconsin is more than offset by the cheapness of the chips, and the paper thus made is expected to prove a considerable factor in relieving the paper famine. A visitor who leaves Mr. Hallauer can scarcely believe that there is anything which cannot be made from wood. “How about the cabled story that the Germans have discovered a food they can make from wood which they are feeding to Russian prisoners?" was the first question asked. “Almost surely not true,” he said. “The human stomach cannot stand it. It is possible to convert sawdust into cattle food, and that was probably the foundation for the story.” But Germany from her forests is obtaining such great results that if, as an English writer recently suggested impractically, England were to destroy Germany’s forests, the war would surely end very soon. Artificial cotton is one of the, things which are being supplied from wood. Paper shirts are also being used, but then Japan is supplying these to the Russian soldiers. Germany has been driven to extreme use of her forests by necessity, but no country with the exception of Germany has made such a systematic effort at developing forest products as the United States. Charcoal for the manufacture of black gunpowders is being obtained from dogwood, willow and alder. Great quantities of alcohol imd ether are made from imported molasses, but if we were cut off from this raw material we could depend upon the forests. Alcohol could also be made from grain, but in war times grain, would be required for food. It is estimated that during the present year 40,000000 gallons of denatured alcohol will be used at home, while huge quantities are being exported. The use of wood for is generally fa--miliar. Our supply of seasoned black walnut, the most suitable wood for the purpose, has been entirely exhausted by the heavy demands of Europe. Heretofore the practice has been to let gunstock material air season for months before it would be forked up. Time became so Important that artificial seasoning was resorted to. but Improper methods destroyed too much of the material. The forest products laboratory has now perI fected dry kilns which overcome the trouble, and as a further aid is perfecting methods of using other woods, notably birch, for gun stock. Then there is the near relative of the gun stock, the iwooden leg, making heavy demands for willow. Millions of feet of lumber and heavy timbers are required in war times for structural purposes, such as the erection of docks, bridges, trenches and temporary shelters. Disinfectants are nowT necessity. They can *■ be made from wood. Pure wood alcohol Is the only substance that can be converted into formaldehyde, universally used for disinfection against such contagious diseases as smallpox, scarlet fever, dlptheria and tubereuldSis. It is also used to prevent crop diseases by disinfecting the seeds. But the Importance of forest products for war supplies in no way compares with their importance for Industries. The largest of these are the lumber, pulp, and paper, naval stores and distillation industries. „ They employ more than

l,Uvv ... . arners. Their products are valued at $2,000,000,000 annually. The most promising and novel developments in the line of by-products from wood are in the nature of chemical utilization. It might be said that the chemists of the forest products laboratory have put the prod to forest products. The lumber industry draws upon the forests for many times as much material as do all the other industries, and only about one-third of the tree cut for lumber is actually put on the market in that shape. Right here is more than enough waste, although not often in the right form or readily available, to supply raw material for all the other industries. The problem now becomes one of adopting means of utilization to suit the conditions. Years ago wood ashes were leached for home soap-making, to furnish potash. The practice disappeared. It is now being revived as a source of potash to offset the shortage of fertilizer due to the war. In the Red River vallqj’ of Texas the Indians used to pse Osage orange for dyeing, but that wood never gained commercial recognition as a dyewood. Within rhe last year, however, we have succeeded in getting it into the market as a -substitute for fustic, which we import from Jamaica and Tehuantepec, and' more than $1,000,000 worth of these dyes is how being made by .American manufacturers. . The forest products laboratory has just completed an analysis of the oils which can be obtained from the needles or leaves of all the coniferous trees of the country. From a number of species the oils obtained have very attractive odors; other oils can be used in greases and shoe blackings. In Europe the finer needle oils are used as perfumes in soaps; others are used for inhalations for lung diseases. It has been working on the production of alcohol from wood for five years. It has succeeded in

lowering the cost of production aud raised the yield to such a point that the introduction of this alcohol as a motor fuel seeius likely, particularly with gasoline going up as it has been. As Mark Twain said, “What chance has prohibition when a man can take a ripsaw and get drunk on a fence rail or drink the legs off the kitchen table?” Western larch has an unusually high percentage of galactan', vyhich it is believed can be converted into a fermentable sugar for use in making grain alcohol. This same galactan In oxidation yields large quantities of muric acid, and muric acid can take the place of tartaric acid in the manufacture of baking powder. A number of lumbermen recently visited the laboratory and one of the chemists made baking powder from wood, and his wife made biscuit with it. Another advance is the preparation of a fine, sweet sirup from galactose, a sugar derived from galactan. So if the people of Montana, the home of the Western larch, get hard pressed they can make their flapjacks with larch bakjng powder, bake them over a stove heated with alcohol and sweeten them with larch sirup. Converting cellulose obtained from wood into a gelatinous material known as a viscose opens up another field for research and adds a new line of products running all the way from sausage casings to tapestry. Five million dollars worth of silk socks sold last year got their silk from wood, as did many silk neckties and fancy braids. Probably it won’t be long before the whims of the silkworm will have little control over silk market conditions. Kraft paper is made from sulphate pulp, and the method of making it came to this country from Sweden ten years ago. Kraft is much stronger than other papers. It is brown, like what we usually think of as wrapping paper. Large (Quantities of it are used for that purpose and it is particularly suitable for large envelopes. Kraft is used for book covers, for imitation leather and for cardboard suitcases. An attempt is being made to produce a paper twine that will replace the binder twines now made from imported fibers. This question has become more active because of the recent shortage of these other fibers on account of tire conditions south of us. A successful paper substitute would provide for the utilization of a large amount of wood waste and at the same tima build up a home industry independent of foreign raw materials. The problems put up to the laboratory to solve are many and complex. One man in the frog business was suffering heavy losses from the death of his tadpoles. He asked the laboratory to find out if there was anything in the wood which when washed out poisoned the tadpoles. The government chemists undertook to study the matter. They could not locate the trouble, so it was put up to the section of timber tests. After a few experiments it was found that the resonant croaking of the large frogs produced vibrations in the boards of the tanks. The vibrations were transmitted through the water to the ganglia of the tadpoles (they have no brains), causing a disease somewhat akin to infantile paralysis. The remedy was simple. The man was advised to separate his tadpoles from his large frogs, thus confining the vibrations to the older generations. This was done and the mortality among the tadpoles decreased wonderfully.