LUMBER INDUSTRY 



183 



for freeholders. In fact, they actually fur- 

 thered timber concentration in vast hold- 

 ings. The 1,802 largest holders of timber 

 now own 88,579,000 acres of land, as com- 

 pared with a vastly wider distribution of 

 public lands in non-timbered agricultural 

 sections. 



During this interval, and chiefly in the 

 latter half thereof, the value of standing 

 timber has increased tenfold, twentyfold, 

 and even fiftyfold, according to local con- 

 ditions. The present annual growth is 

 only about one-third of the present annual 

 cut. Replacement by new growth is very 

 slow. 



Examples of the increase during this in- 

 terval are: From ?5 to $30 an acre, $7 to 

 $40, $20 to $150, $1 to $13, $4 to $140, $1 to 

 $50. Specific tracts have been sold first 

 for $24,000, and later for $153,000; $10,000, 

 and later $1J4,000; $240,000, and later $2,- 

 500,000; $23,000, and later $50o,000; $19,000, 

 and later $1,125,000. These examples il- 

 lustrate the remarkable profit made by 

 certain individual holders. 



What did the government get for the 

 timber? Of the southern pine sold for 

 $1.25 an acre, much is now worth $60 an 

 acre. Large amounts of Douglas fir in 

 western Washington and Oregon, which the 

 government gave away, or sold at $2.50 

 an acre, now range from $100 to $200 per 

 acre. The great redwood belt in California 

 was alienated on similar terms, and some 

 of it is now worth hundreds of dollars an 

 acre. Practically none of the great forests 

 in the public-land states was sold by the 

 government for more than $2.50 an acre. 

 The great increase of value gives grave 

 importance to the concentration of owner- 

 ship. 



The former Chief of Field Service of the 

 General Land Office, H. H. Schwartz, stated 

 officially (1909) that the Timber and Stone 

 Act— 



"has resulted in the sale of over 12,000,000 

 acres of valuable timber lands, of which 

 fully 10,000,000 acres were transferred to 

 corporate or individual timber-land in- 

 vestors by the entrymen. These lands 

 brought to the people or general govern- 

 ment a gross sum of $30,000,000. At the 

 date of sale they were reasonably worth 

 $240,000,000. The profit of over $200,000,000 

 went not to the needy settler engaged in 

 subduing the wilderness, but to the wealthy 

 investors. Not over a fractional part of 1 

 per cent of the timber purchased from the 

 United States under this act is held, con- 

 sumed, or even cut by the men and women 

 who made the entries." 



An effective illustration of what has hap- 

 pened under our land laws appears in the 

 report of the United States Forester for 

 1910: 



"An investigation emphasizes the proba- 

 bility that heavily timbered lands, if 

 opened to entry, would pass into the hands 

 of large owners of timber. Of 705,000 acres 

 eliminated from the Olympic National 



Forest in 1900 and 1901 on the ground 

 that the land was chiefly valuable for agri- 

 culture and that the settlement of the 

 country was being retarded, 523,720 acres 

 passed ultimately into the hands of owners 

 who are holding it purely as a timber spec- 

 ulation. Three companies and two indi- 

 viduals own over 178,000 acres, in holdings 

 of from 15,000 to over 80,000 acres each. 

 Of timbered homestead claims on this elim- 

 inated area, held by 100 settlers, the total 

 area under actual cultivation Is only 570 

 acres, an average of but 5.7 acres to each 

 claim. It will be seen that the original 

 purpose of the elimination was defeated, 

 and the bona fide settlement was not ma- 

 terially advanced." 



CONTBOL OF THE Tl:\fBER CONTROLS THE 



WHOLE INDUSTRY.— Whatever power over 

 prices may arise from combinations in 

 manufacture and distribution (as distin- 

 guished from timber owning), such power 

 is insignificant and transitory compared to 

 the control of the standing timber itself 

 or a dominating part thereof. The Senate 

 and House resolutions, to which this in- 

 vestigation is responsive, ask for the causes 

 of the high prices of lumber and the effect 

 of combination upon such prices. The 

 resolutions, therefore, required determina- 

 tion of both the amount and the control 

 of standing timber. 



A:mouxt of st.vnding tuibeb. — There is 

 now left in continental United States about 

 2.200 billion board feet of privately owned 

 standing timber, of which 1,747 billion is 

 in the "investigation area," covered in 

 great detail by the Bureau. This area in- 

 cudes the Pacific-Northwest, the Southern 

 Pine Region, and the Lake States, and con- 

 tains SO per cent of all the private timber 

 in the country. In addition, there are 

 about 539 billion feet in the national forests 

 and about 90 billion feet on other non- 

 private lands. Thus, the total amount of 

 standing timber in continental United 

 States is about 2,800 billion board feet. 

 The present annual drain upon the supply 

 of saw timber is about 50 billion feet. At 

 this rate the timber now standing, without 

 allowance for growth or decay, would last 

 only about 55 years. 



The present commercial value of the pri- 

 vately owned standing timber in the coun- 

 try, not including the value of the land, 

 is estimated (though such an estimate 

 must be very rough) as at least $6,000,- 

 000.000. Ultimately the consuming public 

 will have to pay such prices for lumber as 

 will give this timber a far greater value. 



This is the first comprehensive and me- 

 thodical investigation of the amount and 

 ownership of our standing timber. It rests 

 on the best information obtainable from 

 records of timber owners or the knowledge 

 of men in the industry, information which 

 daily forms the basis of actual business 

 dealings. (A physical canvass of the for- 

 ests was out of the question.) The data, 

 collected by field work in about 900 coun- 



