Title: Canadian forest industries July-December 1922
Identifier: canadianforjuldec1922donm (find matches)
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors:
Subjects: Lumbering; Forests and forestry; Forest products; Wood-pulp industry; Wood-using industries
Publisher: Don Mills, Ont. : Southam Business Publications
Contributing Library: Fisher - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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earnestness. They are not lightly held. They are not urged with partisan intent. They are in all respects sincere. Coming now to Dr. Clark's report, and taking it up in detail, while at the same time, being as brief as possible. Departmental Re-organization:—Management of Wood We do not presume to be in a position to deal with this ques- tion in intimate detail, but we would urge as strongly as we can that whatever organization or re-organization may be required in order that the Department be enabled to properly perform its legitimate function and discharge its onerous responsibility, should be by and under the specific direction and control of the Honorable Minister of Lands and Forests, the responsible Head of the Department. We quote from Dr. Clark's report as follows: "The modern diversity of wood products, has long since anti- quated the measurement of the main forest product wood by the Doyle Rule, the Scribner Rule, Clarks International Rule, or any other product Rule. The forest administration of the province sells Wood, and it should not in the measurement of that wood, concern its mind with what the purchaser may do with it after he has bought it and paid for it. The province should sell its customers just so much wood, so many cubic feet of wood, and let the buyer saw it into feet, board measure, with a good or bad saw, or a good or bad sawyer, getting of course from the same sized logs various quantities of feet board measure, or let him pulp it, or burn it for fuel. Why indeed should the forest administration be concerned if a customer should convert the wood, which is sold and paid for, into sugar and eat it, or distil it for moonshine and drink it. With this statement we take complete issue. First, it is based on one of two assumptions, either or both of which we hold to be fallacious, and incapable of being subjected to reasonable scrutiny. The first assumption would be that the Department of Lands and Forests when selling forest products to any given purchaser is not concerned whether that purchaser received value for his money or not, a position that we hold strikes at the very foundation upon which any sound or moral business can be carried, on. The second assumption would be, that a cubic foot of wood would have the same value no matter what part of the tree it was cut from, or the size of the log that went to make its volume, or what could be cut out of it. An assumption that we submit requires only to be stated to show that it has'absolutely no foundation either in fact or practice. The Only Unit is Board Feet Dealing with this statement from Dr. Clark's report in detailA and confining ourselves for the moment to the question of scaling \ logs that are to be converted into sawn lumber. The unit of meas- urement recognized in the lumber business, on this Continent is the board measure unit. No man either buying or selling lumber as such would understand what you meant if you began to discuss with him the purchase or sale of any given quantity of sawn lumber on a cubic content basis, or in fact on any other basis than that of the board measure. So that from a practical standpoint the manufacturing lumber- man must take the board measure basis as his standard, both in estimating the forest volume and in the product that he produces. Coming then to the practical aspect of the case, and applying the board measure unit of standing timber, there have, it is true. been a variety of rules applied, but assuming that any given rule or unit of measurement is applied intelligently, it makes no difference to either the seller or the buyer what that unit is, so long as it is a unit easily understood and that properly comprehends what the pro- duct to which it is being applied actually is, and so long as it was the unit agreed on when the sale and purchase was affected. Coming to the rule immediately under consideration, known as the Doyle Rule, which rule has been in force in the province of Ontario for almost half a century, and under which rule, all areas of standing timber now under license have been sold, and about which, if we may be pardoned for saying so, there has been so much misapprehension and perhaps unconscious misrepresentation, the point of attack against this rule would appear to have been that un- der it the accurate scale of the log in the round as related to the finished product—lumber—was not possible, because of the fact that in applying it to the round log, allowances necessarily have to be made for crooked, rotten and defective timber, slabs, etc., which re- sulted in a varying output in proportion to the total scale content of different groups of logs, and in addition that in modern practice the size of saw-logs, taken from the woods have gradually become smaller resulting in a wider disparity between the scale product of the round log and scale product produced from the log. Province Has Been Protected But, if we examine the result and apply to it the test of real value as between the seller and the purchaser which after all, is the only genuine test that can be applied, we are confident that in both of the cases cited, the seller being the Province has been amply protected, because of the fact that the price paid for the standing timber in every case, was based on the practical knowledge of the man who was buying and the expert knowledge in possession of the Department, as to the ultimate product that could be got out of the round timber that was being sold and bought. For example, when the timber on any given area of crown lands is advertised for sale, prospective purchasers who are practical men examine such area in order that they may know the class and size of timber that is on it and they base their price one in competition with the other on three definite factors. First, the quality of the timber, second, the size of the timber, and third, its convenience from an operating stand-point. If the timber is of a class that will produce a large percentage of small or defective saw-logs, from which they will give a substantial over-run or margin in mill output over log measurement they will adjust their price accordingly, and against this, the Province, as vendor with its expert technical knowl- edge is protected in the same way and always has the right of with- holding an area if the price named by the highest bidder is not sat- isfactory to it. So that, summing the matter up, and without making any reference for the moment to vested rights existing on account of purchases already made, we take the position that the Province is not only amply protected, but has been getting and will continue to get out of its standing timber as great a financial return, under the Doyle Rule, as it possibly can by the application of any other rule or unit measurement. Dr. Clark refers to what he terms "The ridiculous side of using the product unit instead of the volume unit, etc.," and Dr. Clark proceeds to say, "The troubles of the province with its habit of meas-

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