Like the furniture industry, the veneer mills lack adequate supplies of good timber.
No satisfactory substitutes for the hickory and ash used in the handle industry have yet been found.

About the only stocks of these timbers now left are in the Southern States.

Even in those parts the supplies are getting short and it is necessary to cut timber in the more remote sections distant from the railroad.

The ash shortage is even more serious than that of hickory timber.
The supplies of ash in the Middle West States north of the Ohio River are practically exhausted.

The demand for ash and hickory handles is larger even than before the World War.