Lumber merchant

“ The business connected with the production of shingles, laths, boards or planks, and staves, is called lumbering; and it is carried on, more or less extensively, in the regions near the sources of all the large rivers in the United States, and in the British possessions in North America.
11. The trade in lumber has also given rise to another class of men, called lumber merchants; these purchase the lumber from the original proprietors, who bring it down the rivers, and, in their turn, sell it to builders and others. ”

“ I hold that every business man should follow up the good old plan and know his stock in trade; the wise old grocer always knew just where his shredded codfish grew, and where his prunes were made. The wise old clothier knows that wool is never gathered from a bull, and tells his patrons so; that merchant wearies by his acts, who answers, when you ask for facts, “I’m sure I do not know.”
We have a lumber man named Chee; I asked him, “On what sort of tree do lath and shingles grow?” He said, “We [Pg 13] have the shingles there, and where they grew I do not care, and neither do I know.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They do not win me with their grins; such work is coarse, and seldom wins. If men would sell their laths and lime, they should be pleasant all the time, and not, like some cheap candidate, just when they think ’twill pay the freight.
I’ll buy the lumber for my shed, when I have got the coin ahead, from dealers who are pleasant lads e’en when they are not after scads. There are such dealers in our town, and no sane man would turn them down. I meet them nearly every day, and talk with them of hogs and hay, and bats and cats and curleycues, and ships and synagogues and shoes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our United States is a large country and consequently the industries are many, yet none is perhaps of greater importance than that of the lumber trade. Lumber gives us material for our buildings and our ships, our railroads and our telegraph lines, and furnishes the pulp from which millions of pounds of paper are made annually. We export lumber to Europe, to the West Indies, and even to the Orient, drawing on a forest treasure that covers thousands of square miles of territory. ”

“ There’s nothing in the lumber store superfluous or vain; you do not seek that dealer’s door fool doodads to obtain. And every time he sells a bill, improvements there will be; the coin he puts into his till helps the community. And when his goods are in demand, the better times have come, your town will flourish and expand, the wheels of commerce hum. ”

“ As a timber producing state becomes a timber importing state, (a condition existing in most of the eastern and middle states) we begin to pay a heavy toll in the loss of home industries dependent upon wood, and also in heavy freight charges on lumber that we must import from distant points to supply our needs. ”

“ In the North Middle Western states the wilderness land has been for the most part owned by the lumber companies. The lumber companies attempted to dispose of their cut-over and burnt-over land in the easiest way by selling to individuals. As a rule this retail selling was unsuccessful. They found that it was more profitable for them to stick to their lumber business and sell their land in large tracts to the land dealers and to land-development and colonization companies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, the price of lumber will be governed, as the price of every staple commodity is governed, by a cost of production including reasonable profit by those engaged in the several stages of the process. That it will include the growing of new timber on a sound, profitable basis is proved by the history of other countries which have undergone the same regulation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One hears above the singing rivers, the clucking of the donkey-engine or the rip of a mill still going in the midst of its self-created, sawdust desert. The glutting of the lumber region has been accomplished as wastefully, as violently, as the search for gold. All up the valley tall prophets of the rain have been butchered to make a lumberman's fat purse. ”

“ It cannot have escaped observation that one of the principal sources of our wealth has been the lumber trade. We have seen on the revival of the town in the early part of the last century, how intimately the progress of the town was connected with operations in timber. Before the revolution our commerce was sustained almost wholly by the large ships from England which loaded here with masts, spars, and boards for the mother country, and by ship building. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they’re sick and tired of chasing, when their souls with woe are filled, maybe they will do some bracing; maybe they’ll decide to build. Rents are higher now than ever, and the prices won’t slump back, and that man is really clever who will build himself a shack.
“But the cost!” I hear men yawping; and they put up thoughtless roars, for they never have been shopping at the modern lumber stores. Building goods today are cheaper than all other goods you buy; all commodities are steeper—ask the lumber dealer nigh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even if there should be an underproduction of timber, it is well to recall that it is much cheaper to import lumber for industry than to export people for pastime. The freight rate from Siberia is not nearly as high as the passenger rate to Switzerland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, when a small company requests that some certain tract shall be listed for sale, it very frequently happens that one of the large companies that is commonly understood to be affiliated with the lumber trust will have a bid in for that tract that is slightly above that of the non-trust company, and the timber is solemnly awarded to "the highest bidder." ”

“ The second reason for which forest reserves are created is to preserve the timber supply for various classes of wood users. Among the more important of these are settlers under the reclamation act and other acts, for whom a cheap and accessible supply of timber for domestic uses is absolutely necessary; miners and prospectors, who are in serious danger of losing their timber supply by fire or through export by lumber companies when timber lands adjacent to their mines pass into private ownership; [148] lumbermen, transportation companies, builders, and commercial interests in general. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are compelling those who come after us to pay an almost prohibitive price for lumber, and are likely to see an end of some of the most important wood-consuming industries of the State. As a source of wood supply our forests touch the interests of all. ”

“ In other words, they have a better grade of logs, they have a better market and more markets, they have a place to dispose of their refuse, and, what counts for more than anything else, and is absolutely necessary to the successful conduct of the lumber business, they can get rid of their output, while we cannot, up to date. ”