NCWU Secondhand Wood Reuse Project Railroads 1920s-30s DOC Washington DC
$ 6.86
Description
NCWU Secondhand Wood Reuse Project Railroads 1920s-30s DOC Washington DC. This single-page typed circular, dating from the late 1920s or early 1930s, was produced by the National Committee on Wood Utilization, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce located in Washington, D.C. The document details the Committee’s "Secondhand Wooden Box and Crate Utilization Project," a federal initiative designed to promote the economical reuse of lumber derived from discarded shipping containers. Railroads are specifically identified, alongside manufacturers, shippers, chambers of commerce, and service clubs, as stakeholders who expressed interest in the project. This highlights the railway industry’s significance as both a generator and potential recycler of substantial quantities of wooden boxcar and crating materials. The text emphasizes the considerable volume of lumber consumed annually in the manufacture of wooden containers and promotes a series of related government publications titled "You Can Make It," which provided instructions for constructing various items from reclaimed lumber. The reverse side of the sheet serves as a national distribution directory, listing the addresses of District Managers for the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in over thirty American cities, ranging from Atlanta, Georgia, to San Francisco, California. These field offices facilitated order placement for the "You Can Make It" booklets. The network includes locations in key railroad hubs such as Chicago, Illinois (Room 577, 38 S. Dearborn Street), St. Louis, Missouri (1216 Liberty Central Trust Co. Building), and Portland, Oregon (Room 215 New Post Office Building), illustrating the federal government’s structured method for disseminating industrial conservation information to commercial centers. The document bears the signature of Axel H. Oxholm, Director, and represents an intersection of federal resource policy, Depression-era economic considerations, and industrial logistics, specifically addressing the railroad shipping sector within a national waste-reduction campaign focused on a common byproduct of freight handling.
