Lumber company

“ The system of dealing with the lumber trust has been most liberal on the part of the government. A company wanting several million feet of timber makes a request to the district office to have the timber of a certain amount and on a certain tract offered for sale. The Forestry Service makes an estimate of the minimum value of the timber as it stands in the tree and the amount of timber requested within that tract is then offered for sale at a given time, the bids to be sent in by mail and accompanied by certified checks. ”

“ In the meanwhile its value has increased anywhere from ten to fifty fold, according to locality.3 Some large corporations, however, like the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Kirby Lumber Company, of Texas, and the International Paper Company, have entered upon a policy of conservative lumbering.
Of the actual practices which distinguish destructive lumbering, a few may be cited. Stumps are cut too high and tops too low. Good lumber is wasted on lumber roads and bridges, Fig. ”

“ When the demand for lumber is good and the prices are good, it is a strong temptation to the sawmill men to put night shifts at the mill and an extra logging crew in the woods and keep turning out lumber 24 hours in the day. The desire to cash in while the cashing is good is natural and easy to understand, but every sawmill man who contemplates putting on a night shift should stop long enough to reflect on the past history of the lumber business. ”

“ The hardwood lumber mills are widely scattered. The principal area of production is the Southern States. But there are mills in Minnesota, New York, New England, and the Middle States. Most plants are located near the sources of supply, isolated, remote from the larger cities and from the principal markets. No official, or other public, means have been established for collecting from these mills and from dealers data as to current production, stocks on hand, and market prices. ”

“ Logs that have lost their marks are called “scalawags,” and these are sold for the benefit of the log-driving company. Hollow-hearted pine logs are known by the curious term “concussy,” or “conquassy.” To show the immense change in the prices of lumber, the best pine lumber, which in 1870 was worth ten dollars a thousand feet, is now one hundred dollars a thousand.
Now and then a boy takes to the river so strongly that he makes his life work out of its teachings. The captains and engineers of most of our river and harbor steamers, 27 and of bigger craft, too, began life as riverbank boys. ”

“ Where a logging company operates, the rule is that it shall take all the timber on the tract where it works, and then the forest guards are to burn the brush and refuse. A cleaner sweep of the timber could not have been made under the old methods. The only difference in methods is that where the forest guards now do the fire protecting for the lumber trust, the homesteaders formerly did it for their own protection. ”

“ Sash and door factories have increased in number and capacity, their product finding a market on the sound and along the line of the Northern Pacific. Lumber is shipped from the mills direct to California, Chili, Peru, Central America, Sandwich islands, Australia, Japan and China, and ship timbers, spars and masts are sent to Europe and the Atlantic coast of the United States. Often a dozen ships are in port at one time loading lumber, and the scene along the docks is a busy one. By rail, lumber is sent as far east as Denver and Omaha. ”

“ Educating the lumbering industry away from extravagant practices is one of the important activities of the modern forestry experts. Operators who manufacture handles, spokes, chairs, furniture, toys and agricultural implements could, by scientific methods of wood using, produce just as good products by using 10 to 50 per cent. of the tree as they do by using all of it. The furniture industry not infrequently wastes from 40 to 60 per cent. of the raw lumber which it buys. Much of this waste could be saved by cutting the small sizes of material directly from the log instead of from lumber. ”

“ The bids must be at least as large as the minimum price set by the Forestry Service, and highest bidder is awarded the timber, on condition that he satisfies the Forestry Service that he is responsible and will conduct the logging according to rules and regulations. The system seems fair, and open to all, until the conditions are known.
But among the large lumber companies there has never been any real competition for the possession of any certain tract of timber that was listed for sale by request. ”

“ Our native supplies of hardwoods and softwoods are used for general building purposes, for farm repairs, for railroad ties, in the furniture and veneer industry, in the handle industry, and in the vehicle and agricultural implement industries. On the average each American farmer uses about 2,000 board feet of lumber each year. New farm building decreased in the several years following the World War, due to the high price of lumber and labor. As a result of this lack of necessary building, millions of dollars worth of farm machinery stood out in the weather. ”

“ Heaps of sawdust emit the odors of imprisoned flowers. Piles of logs lie on all sides stamped at the end U. S.—timber sold on the stump to any lumberman and scaled as inspected by the ranger and paid by the buyer. To be sure, the lumberman cannot have the lumber for nothing; and it was for nothing that the Forests were seized and cut under the old régime.
How was the spoliation effected? Two or three ways. The law of the public domain used to permit burn and windfall to be taken out free. Your lumberman, then, homesteaded 160 acres on a slope of forest affording good timber skids and chutes. ”

“ The usual policy of disposing of Federal and State timber for practically nothing has acted powerfully, particularly in the West, to keep the selling price of stumpage far below its legitimate value. It is not surprising that it has always been impossible for the bulk of the owners of timber to have a broad view of the lumber industry and close acquaintance with the lumber market, for most of the cost of producing lumber lies in logging and manufacture, and the margin of profit has varied widely. ”

“ Your father is very particular about his lumbering, and he doesn’t do as many of the other timber owners do, sweep clean through a tract of land, and make it worthless as timber land for years to come. His having certain trees marked for cutting means that every year there will be a growth suitable to cut and market and thus he is assured of a steady income from his tracts.”
“Perhaps if you are not too busy every day, you could show us something of the lumbering operations. Although as you say, I come from a ‘lumber family,’ I don’t know a great deal about timber cutting. ”

“ When that virgin forest has been cut off, there will be no new region to exploit; whereas, heretofore, when a region was exhausted, the lumbermen have always had a new one to which to move. At the annual 266 meeting of the Northern Pine Manufacturers' Association in Minneapolis, Minn., January 22, 1907, Secretary J. E. Rhodes made this striking statement:
Since 1895, 248 firms, representing an annual aggregate output of pine lumber of 41⁄4 billion feet, have retired from business, due to the exhaustion of their timber supply. ”

“ The lumber trade makes the first and greatest impression; landing among boards and sawdust, walking amid timber piles and over wooden sidewalks, with slabs, blocks and planks everywhere in endless profusion, the rushing waters filled with floating logs and sawdust, busy saws running, planing-machines screeching, the canals carrying lumber cargoes, the rivers lined with acres of board piles—an idea is got of what the lumber trade of the Ottawa valley is. ”

“ Such lands can thus be made the most productive, pecuniarily, of all our lands, while in those States and Territories which are comparatively destitute of forests no land is too good to be devoted to this purpose, and no labor of the husbandman promises so important and so profitable results as that of tree-planting on the large scale. The "Northwestern Lumberman," Chicago, in its review of the lumber product for the present year, says, "To own a saw-mill to-day, with ten years' supply of standing timber, is to have that which is far better and safer than a gold-mine in the Occident." ”

“ Two major trends are evident in the industry: the increase in numbers of small marginal operators employing 5 to 20 men—known as "gyppo outfits"—which usually offer little more than subsistence; and the growth of mammoth enterprises such as those of the Weyerhaeuser and Long-Bell Companies, often through absorption or elimination of moderate-sized plants. As the consolidation of timber holdings was effected, the advantage fell to the large corporation-owned mills, and, as depletion of timber resources advanced, these contributed the major part of the State's lumber output. ”

“ As the timber in that part of the country will but little more than pay for the work of clearing the land ready for the plow, but is very profitable where no clearing is required, it can be readily seen that the Forestry Service was being used as a means of dividing the fruit—the apples to the lumber trust, the cores to the landless homeseekers. ”

“ To prevent overtaxing their production, it is essential that part of the load be passed to the southern pine cut-over lands. By proper protection and renewal of our forests, we can increase our production of lumber and still have a permanent supply. The Forest Service estimates that by protecting our cut-over and waste lands from fire and practicing care to secure reproduction after logging on our remaining virgin forest land, we can produce annually at least 27,750,000,000 cubic feet of wood, including 70,000,000,000 board feet of sawtimber. ”

“ It is therefore seen that the useless waste in the manufacture of lumber can not always be attributed to the lack of a desire on the part of the lumber manufacturer to introduce economical practices. It remains for the ultimate consumer of our timber products to determine in what form these products shall be supplied to him, and therefore conservative lumbering and close manufacture are dependent as much upon the layman as upon the manufacturer. ”

“ Why should men who deal in lumber make no bid for larger trade? Why should they sit ’round and slumber, slumber sweetly in the shade? If an ad will bring new patrons to the gas works or the bank, if it sells new gowns to matrons, why won’t it sell a plank? If an ad will bring new buyers to the corner ginseng store, to the man who deals in plyers, why won’t it sell a door?
In our town there is a dealer, selling lumber all the year, and he is the boss appealer to the public’s grateful ear. ”

“ Experts say that the original, virgin forests of the United States covered approximately 822,000,000 acres. They are now shrunk to one-sixth of that area. At one time they were the richest forests in the world. Today there are millions of acres which contain neither timber nor young growth. Considerable can be restored if the essential measures are started on a national scale. Such measures would insure an adequate lumber supply for all time to come. ”

“ In the southern and Pacific states, on the other hand, there has been a steady increase in production. These facts show that in the two geographical divisions nearest to the great centers of population, the available supply of timber is rapidly nearing exhaustion. The southern and the Pacific states, therefore, already yielding nearly forty per cent, of the total lumber product, will soon become the chief sources of supply. ”

“ Wood-pulp and paper production have also developed rapidly, principally between 1921-9, when plants increased from 7 to 30, employment from 1,714 to 5,168, and the value of products from $10,233,000 to $47,093,000. A trend toward mechanization of existing plants rather than new construction caused the number of plants to remain stationary; while employment fell to 2,754, ar,d the value of products increased to $53,226,000 in 1936, when pulp manufacture amounted to 859,210 tons. Socially as well as economically, lumber has exerted important influences in the life of the State. ”

“ These mills belong to a Northern timber chief whose large holdings have made them turbulent. They have called him a timber-wolf, and other names that are smart rather than polite. As a matter of fact, any man who pays the government dues and converts the trees into lumber for the use of the settlers, deserves all the emoluments that can possibly accrue. On account of floods and fires, lumbering is a precarious industry, and the majority of operators fail thereat or carry a nerve-grinding overdraft at the bank. ”

“ Paul, own nearly nine million acres of timber; the Weyerhouser group by itself dominating altogether more than thirty million acres, or an area almost [Pg 19] equal to that of the state of Wisconsin. The timber owned by a relatively small group of individuals is sufficient to yield enough lumber to build a six-room house for every one of the twenty million families in the United States.
Why then should conservation, or the threat of it, disturb the serenity of the lumber trust? ”

“ Going through almost any one of the Eastern and Central States one will find thousands of old sheds and barns, travelling the road to ruin through age alone, though built of the best of pine and oak—materials of a quality which cannot be found in the best of modern homes in this year of 1909. For ten years past the price of lumber has been steadily climbing, and since 1900 the increase in the cost of building construction has brought lumber to a par with brick. ”