322 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,
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of complaint by guaranteeing that all shipments made through them
shall be up to the specifications stipulated by the order, such as
grade, condition of lumber, and exact sizes; by requiring proper
measurement of the export shipments, so as to avoid claims for
shortage, or customs fines because of shipments measuring in excess
of the quantity of lumber declared on the ships’ papers. The neglect
of certain shippers to live up to the export requirements, either in
the character of the lumber ordered or the shipping regulations, has
been especially prejudicial to the extension of the American lumber
trade in South America.’
Another work of great importance, projected by the proposed
export combinations, is the increased foreign demand to be developed
through propaganda work in educating the foreign consumers to a
realization of the advantages which they can secure through the more
extensive use of American lumber. The influences of custom need
to be combated; prejudices against American lumber, based on
ignorance of the uses to which it is best suited or the proper methods
of handling it, need to be overcome; and new varieties of lumber,
adapted to the foreign conditions, needed to be effectively introduced.
 This is true throughout the world. In South Africa the
unsuccessful attempt of importers to resaw clears out of some shipments
 of dimension timbers of merchantable grade created a wrong
impression about fir. The importers had been accustomed to buy
hewn pitch-pine timbers and saw clears off the outside of them.
Virtually all the flooring sold as Oregon pine flooring in Sydney is
manufactured from the merchantable Oregon pine (fir) bought in
cargo lots and ripped up as occasion may demand. It is not the
fine, well-seasoned, and excellently machined flooring made from
select stock, such as is commonly sold in the United States in either
flat grain or edge grain; in fact, the Australian-made Oregon pine
flooring permits of no comparison with the flooring turned out in
America! Gradually the Chinese carpenter and contractor is being
led to give up the long-established custom of estimating the lumber
requirements for a building in cubic feet and buying the estimated
amount in the log and sawing it out. He is slowly realizing, after
some years of education on the part of the foreign yard trade, that
dimensions can be furnished direct from the yard in any number of
pieces cheaper than a 16 by 16 inch or 20 by 20 inch can be hauled
to the point of consumption and whipsawed into the required sizes

1 In the report on Lumber Markets of the East Coast of South America (by R. E. Simmons, Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 112.1916), the abuses in the vitch-nine trade
are discussed io detail.
2 Report of the Forest Branch of the Department of Lands, British Columbia, 1915, p. 9.
% ¥, H. Smith, Australasian Markets for American Lumber, Bureau of Foreien and Domestic Commerce.
Inecial Agents Series No. 102 (1915), p. 18.