The Relation o[ Forest Production and Use to National Defense

Portland, Oregon, December 13, 194O.-The effrciency of American forestry and forest-using industries is meeting the test of National Defense demands ranging from huge volume requirements for everyday lumber for troop housing to technical needs for engineering material, Col. W. B. Greeley, secretary-manager of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, told the Forest Policy Conference of the Western Forestry and Conservation Association Thursday afternoon, December 12. The Conference was held in Portland December 12 and 13. Col. Greeley and George P. Melrose, of the British Columbia Forest Service, opened the Thursday afternoon session with addresses on "The Relation of Forest Production and Use to National De' fense."

Every soldier in military training represents a need for 1500 feet of lumber when housed in permanent barracks, while tent encampments take 800 feet per soldier, Col. Greeley stated.

"The National Defense program of 1940 has called, to date, for approximately l-rl billion feet of lumber," Col. Greeley informed the Conference. "Close to a billion feet of lumber will be used in constructing the cantonments necessary to bring the men in military training up to approximately one million soldiers. The other half-billion feet has been required for naval air bases and for the projects already begun in housing workers at navy yards, aircraft

MR. AND MRS. SAMPSON RETURN FROM EASTERN TRIP

Bill Sampson, Sampson Company, Pasadena, and Mrs. Sampson, have returned recently from a trip that took them around and through the U.S.A. They left by trairr for Houston, Texas, and there took the boat to New York, stopping off at Miami, Florida, for one afternoon.

They spent a week in New York, four days in Washington, D. C., then went on to Detroit and Lansing, Mich., where they picked up a new Oldsmobile automobile, driving home leisurely by way of Louisville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. They were away 33 days.

factories and other wartime industries."

Col. Greeley pointed out that maintenance of England's fighting air fleets is largely due to use of laminated spruce construction, with parts cut, shaped and glued up in the thousands of little shops, and to new uses of Douglas Fir in plane construction.

"lJ. S. Army Engineers," he said, "are finding numerous engineering uses for lumber in the National Defense effort, with structural Douglas Fir meeting the need for heavy modern ponton bridges, and for framing and trusses in additions to aircraft factories. Through research at the U. S. Forest Products Laboratory," Col. Greeley said, "the United States has learned that, through a combination of plasticizing and pressure, wood can be converted into an extremelv dense tough material, interchangeable with metal for many purposes, as in the fins of airplane propellers."

Col. Greeley declared that the efficiency of forest industry in National Defense has its source in the peacetime efficiency of the industry. He described its basis as: "Wellestablished forest practices which maintain growing stock and continuing supplies of raw material; an industry with capital resources able quickly to enlarge plant facilities for unexpected demands; and a fully-developed wood technology that can fit lumber and other products of the tree into whatever places they may serve for Defense, either on the first line or in the reserves."

Pacific Holds Christmas Party

The Pacific Lumber Company held their annual Christmas party for the staff of the San Francisco office at the Palace Hotel. Charlie Shaw acted as Santa Claus and had a present for all in attendance.

IN THE NORTHVI/EST

Ernest H. Bacon, manag'er of Fir-Tex of Northern California, San Francisco, will return early in January from a visit to the Fir-Tex plant at St. Helens and the company's head office in Portland. He was accompanied on the trip by his family and they spent the Christmas holidays at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood.