Lumber trust

“ 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. ”

“ No sooner had the larger battles among the lumber barons ended in the birth of the lumber trust than there arose a still greater contest for control of the industry. Lumberjack engaged lumber baron in a [Pg 10] struggle for industrial supremacy ”

“ If the government permits the cutting of public timber it increases the value of the trust holdings in multiplied ratio, and if the government withdraws from public entry any portion of the public lands, creating Forest Reserves, it adds marvelously to the value of the trust logs in the water booms. ”

“ Men had strayed into camp telling of the extraordinary reductions made by the trust in the price of manufactured lumber. Large sales had resulted to various parties, report said, thus preventing Bainbridge & Tweedy, as well as several other small independents, from disposing of a single plank. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Thoughtless lumbermen have pillaged millions of acres of our most productive forests. The early lumbermen wasted our woodland resources. They made the same mistakes as everyone else in the care and protection of our original forests. The greatest blame for the wasting of our lumber resources rests with the State and Federal authorities who permitted the depletion. Many of our lumbermen now appreciate the need of preserving and protecting our forests for future generations. Some of them have changed their policies and are now doing all in their power to aid forest conservation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A timber cruiser would come into the community, prospecting for a lumber company, and examine the standing timber. After he reported back to the company, a lawyer was sent to sound out the landowners—to see if they were willing to sell their surface rights. When the legal matters were attended to, the lumber company sometimes bought as much as seventy thousand acres of forest. Woodsmen were brought in to work along with the mountain men. Portable sawmills were set up and busy hands—sawyers, choppers—set to work leveling the giant trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great area thus denuded uselessly, with that which produced public wealth through lumber manufacture, together having been capable of affording a community resource of $165,000,000, are abandoned to lie idle and a menace to remaining timber. It is exactly as though the owner of a 165-acre orchard should destroy forty acres wantonly and also abandon the rest, unfenced, uncultivated and uncared for. ”

“ This system is the best way of keeping a forest dense and of preserving one which is difficult to start afresh, as on a mountain slope; it is practicable where the woods are small or under a high state of care, as in Europe, where this system has been in use for seven centuries. But the cost of road maintenance and of logging is high and it is therefore impracticable in most lumber regions in the United States, except for woods of especial value, like black walnut. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The fire question affects him in many ways beside the danger of direct loss. The sale value of timber in any region is increased by knowledge that progressive protective methods prevail among those operating there. Nothing more effectively removes public carelessness with fire, or lack of helpful sympathy with the lumber industry in general, than evidence that the lumberman himself is devoting every effort to safeguarding instead of wasting this great public resource.
Of operative methods reducing fire risk, one of the most important is disposal of logging debris. ”

“ And as the long, slow years go by, perchance that stately tree will die; there’s death for all, it seems, and men, to earn the needed plunk, will separate its mighty trunk, and fashion boards and beams.
And one who plans to build a shack, will to the lumber dealer track, and purchase beam and board; and carpenters will straightway go, and build as fine a bungalow as mister can afford. The walls and roof of my good tree, will shelter human grief and glee, for, maybe, untold years ”

“ The whole weight of the movement in favor of National forests is squarely against a reckless use of the timber resources, but it is emphatically in favor of the legitimate use of timber. The points of vital importance are that the remaining supply of timber must be used with the utmost economy and that in every case reproduction must be absolutely assured.
"Far beyond the present influence of the National forests upon the lumber supply will be their importance in the future. The United States is now facing a serious decrease in the available supply of timber. ”

“ FIG. 131.—EROSION UPON AN UNPROTECTED SLOPE The forests are cut away without any thought of the retribution which Nature is sure to bring upon us. They are of vast importance to the well-being of the country and are the natural possession of all its people. We ought not to permit them to be destroyed indiscriminately for the benefit of a few. We need lumber for many purposes; but a careful treatment of the forests with an eye to their continuance, the plan of cutting large trees, and preserving the small ones, is a very different thing from our present wasteful methods. ”

“ To prevent wanton destruction of timber, young and old, and to retain ownership in the Government, is the end to be accomplished by the forest reserve policy. At no time has the reserve policy contemplated the withholding of lands suited to settlement or the withholding of timber needed for the manufacture of lumber. ”

“ The concentration of timberland ownership [Pg 107] in the United States has put a few men in control of vast areas of forest. Many of them are anxious to prevent forest destruction, so far as that may be practicable without interfering with their profits, and for that purpose Foresters are beginning to be employed. Until now the principal tasks of Foresters employed by lumbermen have been the measurement of the amount of lumber in the standing crop of trees, and the protection of forest lands from fire. ”

“ The public must aid the private individuals in fighting forest fires, the greatest menace that modern forestry has to face. A national policy is needed which will permit the private owner to grow trees which will give him fair and reasonable profit when sold.
The farmers of this country use about one-half of all the lumber consumed annually. They own approximately 191,000,000 acres of timber in their farm woodlots. If farmers would devote a little time and labor to the permanent upkeep and improvement of their timber, they would aid in decreasing the danger of a future lumber famine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While, then, without fatal injury to the younger growths, the native forest will bear several "cuttings over" in a generation—for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected as unmarketable—a fire may render the declivity of a mountain unproductive for a century. ”

“ But there is a real reason why the price of lumber is so high, and that is the scarcity of timber."
"Scarcity!" cried Charley incredulously. "Why, the forests are full of timber."
"And what is it like?" demanded the lumber dealer. "Go out to the forests and look at it. There's nothing but little poles that will scarcely make six-inch boards. We don't produce one-fourth of the lumber we use in this state, and we are using wood ten times as fast as our forests are growing it."
"I thought Pennsylvania was a great lumbering state," protested Lew. ”

“ You are fortunate in having such climatic conditions, such conditions of soil, that here more than anywhere else the forest renews itself quickly, so as in a comparatively short number of years to be again a great mercantile and industrial asset. The preservation of our forests depends [428] chiefly upon the wisdom with which the practical lumberman, the practical expert in dealing with the lumber industry, works with the men who have studied forestry under all conditions. ”

“ The very theories you as Conservationists are advancing are uppermost in the minds of association workers. And the greatest development in forest Conservation and fire protection has its origin and support from these associations. We have something to conserve and are not mere theorists. With rising values of timber and utilization of lower grades of lumber, the product of the entire tree will be saved. ”

“ Some seasons lumber brought high prices; then he would select matured logs and haul them to the sawmill. But he would not cut a great deal, and he would use care in the selection. It was his aim to keep the land well covered with forest. He would sow as well as harvest.
“Now the Government policy is to preserve the National Forests for the use of the people. The soil must be kept productive. Agriculture would be impossible without water, and the forests hold water. The West wants people to come to stay. The lumberman who slashes off the timber may get rich himself, but he ruins the land.” ”