PURPOSE OF GRADING - LUMBER GRADES The aim of a grading system is excellently stated in one of the association rule books as being to make lumber of the same grade of approximately equal value when produced at different points, whether the logs from which the lumber is cut are large or small, coarseknotted, fine-knotted, black-knotted, red-knotted, sound, or shaky. In other words, the purpose of the system is to enable each manufacturer to classify his product into grades of practically the same value to the customer as are the corresponding grades of lumber made by other manufacturers from the same kind of timber. The advantage to the customer in being thus enabled to obtain a standard product is too obvious to need any discussion.
In the early days of lumbering in the United States, the manufacturer paid little or no attention to grades. In fact, about all he did was to separate his product into broad classes, known as "merchantable" and "cull" lumber. The former contained lumber of a character fit for general use; the latter, lumber of much poorer quality, which sold for a low price and was fit for little but temporary use or for the manufacture of boxes in the process of which the worst of the defects could be cut out. Under this system, or lack of system, the dealer purchased large stocks of lumber, and roughly separated them into classes adapted to the needs of his customers.
It was not until the later eighties that the manufacturers of lumber seriously undertook the establishment of a thorough-going system of grades for their products. By that time the annual output of lumber, and especially of white pine, had become so large that the adoption of uniform grades was really a necessity for both producer and consumer. And it was only through the organization of lumber manufacturers in a common territory and into an association, that standardization of product became possible. The first effective organization of this sort was that of the white pine manufacturers in the upper Mississippi Valley; and the plan which they adopted has been the essential basis upon which nearly all other organizations of lumber manufacturers have been built up.
The first thing the white pine manufacturers did was to agree upon the grades of lumber which should be recognized as standard, and to take measures to make these standards known to both producers and consumers. This required that specifications be carefully drawn and published, and that experts be employed to apply them. The manufacturers therefore organized an inspection bureau composed of experienced lumber graders, whose duty it was to travel from mill to mill, instructing the manufacturers how to conform the product to standard grades. Moreover, these inspectors were sent to reinspect a shipment whenever the buyer complained that the did not ship the grades named in the invoice. Work of this kind proved so beneficial that the example spread until, in every large manufacturing region in the United States, there is now an organization which determines the standard grades for each of the principal kinds of lumber, and whose authority in this respect is generally recognized. The development and general acceptance of these grading systems is one of the best examples we have of the growth of commercial usages which for all practical purposes are as binding as legal enactment.