In an ordinary biplane there are two beams for each lateral wing, eight beams to the plane. These form the basis of strength for the wings. Because of the heavy stresses put upon the airplanes by battle conditions, only the most perfect and straight-grained wood is suitable for these beams. All cross-grained or spiral-grained material, or material too coarse in its structure, is useless. Spruce is the best of all woods for wing beams. Our problem was to supply lumber enough for the wing beams, disregarding the other parts, as all other wood used in the manufacture of planes could be secured from cuttings from the wing-beam stock. At the beginning we built each beam out of one piece of wood; and this meant that the lumber must be extra long, thick, and perfect. Until we learned how to cut the spruce economically we found that only a small portion of the lumber actually logged was satisfactory for airplanes. An average sized biplane uses less than 500 feet of lumber. In the hands of skilled cutters this quantity can be worked out of 1,000 feet of rough lumber. But in the earlier days of the undertaking as high as 5,000 feet of spruce per plane were actually used because of imperfections in the lumber, lack of proper inspection at the mills, and faulty handling in transit and in the factories. We also used certain species of fir in building training planes. This wood is, like spruce, light, tough, and strong. The only great source of supply of these woods was in the Pacific Northwest, although there was a modest quantity of suitable timber in West Virginia, North Carolina, and New England. While at first we expected to rely upon the unaided efforts of the lumber producers, labor difficulties almost immediately arose in the Northwest to hinder the production of lumber. The effort, too, was beset with difficulties of a physical nature, since the large virgin stands of spruce occurred only at intervals and often at long distances from the existing railroads. By the middle of October, 1917, it became evident that the northwestern lumber industry unaided could not deliver the spruce and fir; and the Chief of Staff of the Army formed a military organization to handle the situation. On November 6, 1917, Col. Brice P. Disque took command of the Spruce Production Division of the Signal Corps, this organization later being transferred to the Bureau of Aircraft Production. When Col. Disque went into the Northwest he found the industry in chaotic condition. The I. W. W. was demoralizing the labor forces. The mills did not have the machinery to cut the straight-grained lumber needed and their timber experts were not sufficiently skilled in the selection and judging of logs to secure the maximum footage. The whole industry was organized along lines of quantity production and desired to avoid all high quality requirements insisted upon by the Government.