THE FORESTS OF LOUISIANA' 



By FREDERICK J. GRACE 



Register of the Louisiana State Land Office and Commissioner of Forestry 



LOUISIANA in the last few years conditions. This lumber has been cut 

 has reached the second notch in into almost every imaginable shape, em- 

 the production of lumber. The ploying about 35,000 men per day, and 

 great state of Washington, along the at the average price of $2 per day would 

 Pacific coast, precedes us. Traveling mean about $70,000 paid out every day 

 through this wooded state of ours, the for labor alone. Total this for one yea- 

 train rushes by innumerable mills ; or, and it will be seen that Louisiana pays 

 in more leisurely journeying on some of out annually a good many millions of 

 our inland streams, such as the beauti- dollars in labor alone to her vast army 

 ful Teche and Bayou Plaquemine, made of employees for the lumber industry, 

 famous by Evangeline hunting for her There is no other business in the state 

 lover Gabriel, one finds them lined with paying out as nuich money for labor as 

 numerous band sawmills, heading and the lumber mills and this is spent prin- 

 shingle factories, and cypress cooperage cipally within the borders of our own 

 plants, cutting many million feet of lum- state. 



ber per day, which are fast eating up The principal part of the output of 

 our large bodies of timber. We have the lumber of Louisiana is sold in other 

 still standing in this state, according to states and foreign countries. Our pines 

 the last reports of the assessors and of and cypress and oak staves find their 

 the United States Forest Service, the way into luirope in large quantities, 

 following acreage in timber, which may Our cottonwood and other soft mate- 

 be of vast importance to the lumber fra- rial is shipped all over the globe for 

 ternity of this and other states : We barrel and packing purposes. A great 

 have in pine of various kinds, as nearly deal of our oak and pine has been 

 as we can figure, 4,269,928 acres ; and shipped into Panama to be used in the 

 we have in hardwood, such as oak, gum, construction of the Panama Canal. Ac- 

 cotton, ash, maple, tupelo gum, willow, cording to the best information obtain- 

 persimmon, hickory, magnolia, beech, able, forty-one per cent of the standing 

 elm, .sycamore, and poplar, 3.388,486 timber is still in the hands of the farm- 

 acres ; and, about as nearly as I can ers, merchants, and other land owners, 

 estimate (some parishes not reporting), but in a good many of the large par- 

 I find 900,000 acres of cypress. Our ishes in this state the larger bodies of 

 denuded or cut-over pine lands amount pine and cypress timber have been pur- 

 to about 2,472,000 acres ; our denuded chased by the mill owners, who buy 

 or cut-over cypress and hardwood lands ]irincipally the timber and leave the 

 amount to about 2,000,000 acres. farmer practically all the land. 



Lumber statistics and a statement is- The forests of Louisiana arc teeni- 



sued by the Census Bureau of last ing with timber of all kinds. Our pine 



June, show that in 1908 516 sawmill.^ trees are the finest grown in the world, 



in Louisiana cut 2,722,421,000 feet of They obtain their preeminence from 



lumber — a decrease approximately of a combination of qualities. They pos- 



250,000,000 from the cut of 1907, due sess such qualities of strength, of 



principally, of course, to unfavorable elasticity combined with comparative- 



^Address delivered by Mr. Grace before the Conservation Conference of the Southern 



States, held in New Orleans, November i, 1909, by invitation of Governor Sanders of 

 Louisiana. 



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