50 Years Ago
Week of October 4, 1973
Octane Number
Is Explained
Charleston — Your favorite gasoline pump now bears an octane number. What does it mean?
Jack McCullough, chairman of the West Virginia Petroleum Association, explains: “The number is a measure of the gasoline’s anti-knock quality, and is a blend of two methods of figuring octane ratings—the “research” method and the “motor” method.”
“But whatever the technicalities, the best way to determine a gasoline’s anti-knock quality is to test the various grades in your car. Car engines, even in the same model lines, frequently have varying octane requirements.”
60 Years Ago
Week of October 3, 1963
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Hooker Brings Army
To Rosecrans’s Rescue
To the rescue!
That was the task that faced Union army officials 100 years ago this week as reports came in from southeastern Tennessee. There, bottled up in the city of Chattanooga, General William S. “Old Rosy” Rosecrans and his all-important 50,000 men of the Army of the Cumberland appeared in danger of liquidation.
To their south, east and west along the Alabama-Georgia-Tennessee state lines, sprawled the huge Confederate army of Braxton Bragg, waiting patiently for Rosecrans and his men either to starve to death or abandon Chattanooga. To the north lay the Tennessee River and the barren Cumberland mountains, over which any retreat would have to be made. Bragg’s men looked down from the mountains to the river and the railway that paralleled the river, ready to blast anything that tried to move along them. Hence Rosecrans’ main supply line along the river was cut, and his wagons had to struggle along the mud-filled paths through the Cumberland mountains for 60 miles to bring in food from Bridgeport, Ala., the nearest Yankee-held rail depot.
As a result, little food came in. Rations were cut in half, then in half again. Troops ate corn intended for the horses, and the horses gnawed on tree trunks until thousands of them died. Cattle were driven across the Cumberlands to Chattanooga, but many of them starved to death enroute for lack of pasturage in the mountains, and those that did arrive were so lean that they offered little food.
Then a disaster came even to the little supply line through the Cumberlands. Little Joe Wheeler, who had replaced Bedford Forrest as head of Bragg’s cavalry, crossed the Tennessee River October 1 with two divisions, moved up the Sequatchie Valley northwest of Chattanooga and fell on a ten-mile-long mule train of Union wagons, filled with supplies. The Confederates burned more than 300 wagons and killed and captured hundreds of animals. Federal cavalry rushed up the next day from Bridgeport and drove Wheeler off, but much of the vital supplies had been destroyed.
But as Wheeler made his attack on the wagon train, the first important help for Rosecrans was moving swiftly to the rescue on railway cars from the east. Under orders from Washington, General Joe Hooker had pulled 15,000 men out of the line in Virginia on September 24 and had put them on trains bound for Tennessee.
In an amazing five-day trip starting August 27, the huge force of men clicked southwestward across Virginia to Nashville, Tennessee, then southeast toward Chattanooga. On October 2, the advance of Hooker’s force reached Bridgeport, 26 miles west of Chattanooga.
The problem was far from solved, however. Hooker’s men would mean only more mouths to feed at Chattanooga, so they pitched camp at Bridgeport. The rescue of Rosecrans would come only when a good supply line was open, and that remained to be done.
Next week: Grant, Sherman and Davis Head for Chattanooga.
Finding Customers
Is Vital to Business
By Samuel S. Talbert
University of Missouri
This spring a California rancher sold a half million dollar estate through a want ad which cost less than ten dollars.
The sale illustrated one of the primary functions of newspaper advertising—locating unknown prospects. In the case of the rancher, there was probably only one prospect among thousands of people. The singular problem of the seller was to find the rare prospect.
The individual or the merchant who wishes to sell a highly specialized product would be at a loss without newspaper advertising. The newspaper is the only medium available to the entire public at any time. It is the only local medium which, within the bounds of reasonable cost, is likely to reach the whole citizenry in a trade area.
Who is the best prospect for a new automobile, a new tractor, a new home, a horse, an airplane, or a farm? Not even the most experienced salesman can be certain. The best prospect may be a person who would not appear to be in the market at all.
College professors buy farms. Children buy horses. Farmers buy airplanes. People with fine old homes buy modern homes. All of these people read the local newspaper. All might appear to be unlikely prospects before newspaper advertising makes contact with them.
The general retailer—the grocer, the drug store, the dry goods store—has a similar problem of locating new customers, since there is a rapid turnover of people supporting any business.
From the whole public, the general retailer must find new customers for hundreds of items each week. This problem of location is necessarily met by newspaper advertising.
70 Years Ago
Week of October 1, 1953
Fire Is Enemy of All
Species Birds and Game
By Eldon Hottinger
County Conservation Officer
Fire is an enemy of all species of wildlife. From the age of the caveman, when man first knew fire, it was used to frighten away wild animals from his abode. The animals knew that fire would cause them harm upon contact.
Now, in a civilized world, a fire is not needed for this purpose, but it still has the same meaning to the wild animals and birds that it had thousands of years ago. They know that it will cause them great harm, that a forest fire will take away their home and food supply, if they are lucky enough to escape the flames.
What we should know as a civilized people, is that a forest fire not only runs off or kills the wild birds and animals, known in the sportsman’s world as game, at the present, but it ruins for future years the prospect of game in a burned area. Game depends on the forests for its two main necessities of existence, food and cover, and to produce this a forest must have some age or maturity.
With the passing of the chestnut timber, a great supply of game food disappeared. Some game animals depend on hollow trees for their homes. This is especially true of the squirrel and the raccoon. Anyone witnessing a forest fire knows that these “homes” become burning flues or chimneys when reached by fire. Scarcely any remain in a burned-over area. Food supplies always go, too. A fire destroys the productive function of a tree, thereby creating a food shortage for game. Birds and animals depend almost entirely on forests for food.
Many birds and animals perish in the fire. I have seen, after nightfall, at a forest fire, grouse fly directly into the fire, being blinded by the smoke and darkness, and rabbits and squirrels with blazing fur run out of the flames, only to die shortly after from the burns.
One excuse I have heard for burning a forest is to run out a bear which had killed sheep for a farmer. With a little thought I believe one can see how useless and how temporary this sort of tactic would be. Bruin is a roving animal, covering great distances. The fire seldom catches him but it does destroy his food supply. This would make him seek food elsewhere, which might be another farmer’s sheep. He will probably move to new range, but as they move about a great deal, another one will probably pass through the region before long. The newcomer finds his natural path burned over and no food so he may detour into the farmer’s sheep pasture in passing by.
Forest fires mean mainly one thing to the game supply and that is, as fires increase, the game supply decreases.
Forest Products
Of County
Are Many and Varied
By DAVE JUDY
Sawmill Operator
The production of forest products in Pendleton county has been a major element in providing these facts. Financial statistics show that during the past few years, compared with the country as a whole, the average family income in Pendleton county has risen tremendously and is now near the top and, that the average individual family savings are near the top.
Important forest products of the county are saw logs, pulpwood and extract wood. Saw logs are by far the major product.
There are 36 sawmills in Pendleton county with 12 of them operating on a year-around basis. The remainder of these mills operate part time with some of them doing only a small amount of custom sawing.
The sawmills which employ men and women on a full time basis, employ about 275 persons. Also much labor is provided for persons who produce logs and sell to the sawmills and persons who produce the pulpwood and extract wood.
Sawmills operating on a year round basis require about 15 million board feet of saw logs annually. This means that our forest land should produce this amount every year in order to maintain the present sawmills.
The mills cannot continue to operate without a continuous supply of logs to each mill. In order to assure this continuous supply of logs, the mills must buy several tracts of timber in advance of cutting. This is particularly true in this area due to competition in purchasing timber and the adverse weather conditions and logging terrain. When an operator purchases large quantities of standing timber, he makes himself susceptible to a great risk.
Forest fire!
To a sawmill operator a forest fire in a non-owned tract of timber means that his future raw material is being destroyed. When a fire occurs in a timber tract owned by the operator, it means a loss in raw material plus a disastrous financial loss.
With the rapid increase in population in this county, the land must be put to the best possible use.
Since forest products are very important in Pendleton county, the forest land should be properly managed. This cannot be done if fires continue to ravage our woodlands. Neither can the sawmills of Pendleton county be provided with timber if forest fires beat the logger to the woods.
Forest Protectors
Doing Great Job
In Fighting Fires
The following is a list of men who have realized a civic responsibility to their community and to their country and they have recognized a need for protection of our forest resources against devastation by fire.
Fire-fighting is everyone’s job, but there must be leaders to help shoulder the responsibility—to help direct the fire fighters in the most efficient means of suppressing the flames, and to care for the safety and well-being of their men.
The following men have accepted that responsibility and over the past years have helped to direct the fight against forest fires. These men have the authority to ask, or if necessary, to order any able-bodied man to assist in fire fighting.
Fire fighting is one of the hardest, hottest and dirtiest jobs there is, and one of the least paying. The only incentive there can be for accepting a local forest protector’s commission is the satisfaction of knowing that they are doing a needed job in protecting our forest for us and for our children. The Conservation Commission of West Virginia is indeed proud of these men:
Brandywine: Spencer Evick, Carl Nesselrodt and T. J. Clayton.
Cave: L. L. Mullenax.
Deer Run: D. J. Lambert.
Doe Hill: R. W. McQuain, Gordon Wimer and W. R. Propst.
Fame: Olin Adamson.
Ft. Seybert: Charles F. Nesselrodt and Guy Shaver.
Franklin: Whitney Mitchell, Curtis Cayton, Henry Cayton, Herman Hartman, Otto Cayton, Fred Evick, Tom Hartman, Odwith Lambert, Denver Pennington, Robert Hartman, Fred L. Propst, J. L. Rexrode, Kenneth Sponaugle, Elmer Propst, Ira Ruddle and Robert F. Raines.
Kline: Andrew Mitchell, David Mallow, Abraham Crites, Jesse J. Hevener and Carl Mitchell.
Moyers: Jesse Moyers and Roy E. Moyers.
Mozer: John R. Greenawalt and Fred Kesner.
Riverton: Fred G. Bennett, Roy Mallow and Charles Mallow.
Rough Run: S. L. Kesner.
Ruddle: Fred Vandevander.
Sugar Grove: Lester Wilfong, Elmer C. Bodkin, Martin Propst and Luther Simmons.
Teterton: F. M. Biby and Hurl Raines.
Upper Tract: Carson Waggy.
