Lumber industry

“ The lumber industry is the fourth in value of products among the great manufacturing industries of the United States, being exceeded only by the iron and steel, the textile, and the meat industries. It turns out a finished product worth $567,000,000.00. And yet lumber constitutes only about one-half of the value of the total output of forest products. Its annual value is three-fourths of a billion dollars, ($666,641,367 in 1907,) while the annual value of wood fuel, is $350,000,000. More than two-thirds of the people burn wood for fuel. ”

“ The geographical movement of the lumber industry is significant of a rapidly waning supply of merchantable timber. Fifty years ago, the northeastern states contributed more than one half the total lumber product of the country. ”

“ No one realizes more keenly than does the lumberman that the time for forestry has fully arrived.
The influence of the general adoption of practical forestry upon the lumber industry will be felt gradually, but it will eventually accomplish fundamental changes. It will substitute for an enterprise at present aimed only at the utilization of existing resources one embracing also measures for the production of its own supply. There will be steady and fair returns from lumbering, but spectacular opportunities for the investment of capital will cease to exist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Logs belonging to various individuals and firms in the lumber industry of the North Western United States are identified and separated in a striking fashion. To illustrate this it will be necessary to outline briefly the routine of work connected with the great lumbering industry of the regions mentioned. Logging camps are established in the heart of a forest. ”

“ The completion of these dams, however, with their reservoirs of cheap /electrical power for industry and water for irrigation, is significant of the shift that is taking place in the State's economy. The traditionally dominant lumber industry, faced by receding forests, uncertain markets, and the necessity for conservation, is tending toward a policy of "sustained yield." ”

“ Enough has been said to show that because of its importance as a sustaining industry lumber manufacture is a prodigious factor in creating a market for farm products, also that the cost of all articles used by the farmer is cheapened by forest preservation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In not a few regions railroads were first constructed for the purpose of transporting lumber. If any thought were given to the future it was assumed that agriculture or some unforeseen industry would follow lumbering and would furnish business for the railroad. In many of these sections only a small portion of the soil is adapted for farming, and wood-using industries alone are possible in a community where lumber is the only natural resource. Is it then any wonder that many of these railroads to-day, after the timber has been removed, are on the verge of insolvency? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The growth in complexity of lumber manufacture has stabilized plant locations and led to the development of important cities. The mass-production methods of the great mills in these centers are extremely specialized and have required the training of a highly skilled personnel of a different order from the skilled men of the woods. Backwoods camps represent another phase of the industry. Hundreds of little communities remain, though the timber cutting may be 20 miles away; others survive as supply centers, and some have become mere ghost towns. ”

“ Yet the great lumber resources of the State continue to hold out the promise of prosperity, and steps are being taken to conserve and replenish them. Today the industry looks expectantly, not only to the older markets for wood, but to new uses in products, such as rayon, plastics, and cellulose, that are being created through chemical and other scientific processes. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor do the mills longer turn out rough lumber to be re-handled by trained specialists and highly skilled carpenters with large and costly kits of intricate hand tools. Relatively unskilled workers send forth the finished products, window sashes, doors, siding, etc., carpenters armed only with square, hammer and saw, and classed with unskilled labor, put these in place, and a complete house can be ordered by parcel post. ”

“ Such is the lumber business, which depends on many accidents, as the early freezing of the rivers, that the teams may get up in season, a sufficient freshet in the spring, to fetch the logs down, and many others. [4] I quote Michaux on Lumbering on the Kennebec, then the source of the best white pine lumber carried to England. “The persons engaged in this branch of industry are generally emigrants from New Hampshire.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Forest Service, influenced by powerful logging interests, has, however, paid only lip service to its multiple use mandate, and has auctioned away millions of timberland acres without considering environmental or conservational interests. The importance of national forests to the construction and logging industries results from the type of lumber grown therein which is well suited to builders' needs. ”

“ But that is one of the clever phrases which sounds well to the defenders of the nation's forests, and vet, because of the difficulty of enforcing it, has not prevented the purcnase of the land for the benefit of lumber companies.
It is commonly reported that large tracts of timber have been taken up at the instance of wealthy companies who have employed cruisers to locate people on the land with the understanding that sales were to be made to the company. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The timberlands must be protected against forest fires. Timber must be cut so as to aid natural reproduction of forest. Cut-over lands must be reforested. If such methods were practiced, and national, state and municipal forests were established and extended, our lumber problem would largely solve itself. We not only should produce a large permanent supply of timber for domestic use, but also should have great reserves available for export. Under such conditions, the United States would become the greatest supply source in the world for lumber. ”

“ Among these conditions in America are the highly developed and specialized methods and machinery of lumbering, the greater facilities for transportation and consequent greater mobility of the lumber trade, the vast number of small holdings of forest land, and the enormous supply of low-grade wood in the timbered regions. High taxes on forest properties, cut-over as well as virgin, notably in the north-western pineries, and the firmly established habits of lumbermen, are factors of great importance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Realizing that the lumbering methods in vogue in this country since its earliest settlement are most wasteful and are destructive of the future usefulness of the timbered regions the United States Government has set aside as forest reserves several hundred thousand square miles. A forest crop is like any other crop. It must grow from the seed and at maturity be harvested. Those trees that have reached the point in life where years do not add materially to the lumber content are marked for cutting. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The new policy firmly established, the productive capacity of our forests fully utilized, it is believed— and the statement is amply sustained by the record of other countries with a proportionately smaller wooded area and a proportionately equal consumption of forest products—that neither will the value of timber be excessive, nor its supply inadequate to meet the home demand. The establishment of lumbering as a sound and stable industry will be attained only when it reaps, as well as harvests, the crop upon which its existence depends. ”