Show day recently a man in a buggy stopped at a ONE I 1 farm in eastern jackson county kanas hitched his hors to the fence and climbed over into a field where several big stumps protruded from the plowed earth he bent over the stumps and examined them close ly then he crossed another fence into another field and examined some walnut trees that grew there A few minutes later he went to the farmhouse and was talking to the owner he told the farmer that he was buying walnut timber and that there were a halt dozen trees in the walnut grove on his place that he would like to buy they agreed upon a price and then the stranger said now give you 10 more tor those three stumps au the plowed field and will dig them out tor you and carry them away the farmer snapped at the proposition for 40 years he had been plowing around those massive stumps and a thousand times he had cussed when the point of his plow or a cor of his harrow had caught them he had an idea that the man who ot to dig them out and give him 10 into the bargain must be a little bit insane but anyway he was glad to get rid of them A few days later three men came to the farm and cut down the walnut trees and dug out the three old stumps and hauled them all away one of those old stumps was worth the others were worth not much more than the expense ot dig ging them up and hauling them to kansas city the stumps came to the mill ot a walnut corporation on the bank of the blue river near sheffield there the stumps will be trimmed and steamed for hours and then fastened into a veneer machine where they will re dolve against the cutting edge of a great knife that will sl ce oft a thin veneer as the stump turns this veneer will be used for cover ing pianos the finest kinds of ture and cabinet work and the inside finish of railroad cars this one stump was particularly val bable because of the wrinkles and burls and warts that ran through it the veneer sliced from it would have a beautiful waving grain with bird s eyes and all sorts of curious aloa the more of these a veneer has the more valuable it is there is not one walnut stump in a hundred that Is worth anything to the veneer mills there is not one in a thousand that Is worth and there Is not one man in a million who knows the value of a stump by look ing at it in the ground the men who do know this and who spend their time looking for these stumps are called cruisers they drive all over the states 0 missouri and kansas looking for walnut timber and stumps that are good for veneer the men who buy these stumps and cut them say that stumps of young trees are of no value the best ones are of trees centuries old the more aged and gnarled the tree the richer the stump will be in burls and bird s eyes some of the most valuable stumps are of trees that were cut 50 years ago by the pioneers of this country the best of them are found along the rivers where the lands were too rough to be cultivated from these tracts the trees were cut tor lumber or firewood and the stumps remained to be dug up a half century later and used to decorate some par lor in a modern house the men who cut these stumps into veneer do not always get them for a small price many farmers know their value and demand it in the yard of the mill near sheffield are stumps for which the owners paid from 50 to and there is one for which the man who dug it out de mands th s stump Is nine teet in dimmeler dia at the butt of the tree this mill has been sawing walnut lumber for 15 years in that time it has cut 90 feet of walnut lum ber the greater part of which has been sent to europe but shipments have gone from here to australia russia and china now the sawing of walnut into lum ber Is to be abandoned and the mill will cut only veneers the reason Is that nearly all the large walnut urn ber has been cut there Is plenty ot small walnut timber in missouri and kansas but it does not pay to cut it the black heart Is too small and the white sap Is of no value it Is the black hert of the tree that has the fine grain and takes the rich black polish owing to the scarcity 0 big walnut logs and the small lumber that has gone to the european market in recent years the demand tor it has tall en off and it has been supplanted by mahogany there are other reasons why ma bogany has taken the place of wal nut mahogany Is 30 per cent cheap er in europe than walnut it Is much larger too walnut logs from which segments tour inches thick may be cut are scarce and walnut logs from which such segments 26 feet long may be cut are almost impossible to get now another factor in the disappearance of walnut lumber Is that mahogany la much softer and easier to cut the Shet feld mill can cut feet of mahogany a day but it will cut only 20 feet of walnut A mahogany log will cut nearly three times as much lumber as a walnut log of the same size and therefore it Is more economical to cut mahogany although mahogany is taking the place of walnut over all the world it is not nearly so good as walnut there is no wood good as walnut for fine furniture and cabinet work the rea son Is that it Is hard it will never warp and it takes a beautiful polish it has a more varied and beautiful grain and the older it grows the rich er it looks instead of being sawed into board and posts the walnut will hereafter be cut into veneers not much thicker than a piece of blotting paper and it is only the gnarled trunks that will do for this in hundreds of homes in missouri walnut wood Is still used for fire wood but when a man burns walnut lumber he Is truly burning money tor while the market price of the logs la less now than it was ten years ago and the demand Is less there is a time coming when the lumber will be worth 20 times what it Is now when the walnut trees that are now a fool in diameter grow to several feet through they will be worth more than any timber that grows in north amer ica there will always be a good de mand for timber of that size and the baiger the tree the more value it will have |