42 HISTORY OF LUMBER INDUSTRY IN NE w YORK. 



spruce stumpage. This has increa ed beyond the point warranted by 

 the market value of the sawed lumber. Spruce stumpage is now 

 worth so much for woodpulp that the sawmill men are unwilling- to 

 pay the price demanded for the standing timber, and unless there is 

 some change in market conditions this species will not enter so largely 

 hereafter into building operations, its place being taken to a great 

 axtent by Hemlock or cheap pine. 



VOLUME OF BUSINESS. 



The lumber industry of New York attained its maximum develop- 

 ment at some time prior to 1865, when there were, according to the 

 State census of that year, 3,963 sawmills. Perhaps three-fourths of 

 this number were mills equipped with one saw only, none of which cut 

 over 100,000 feet in a year. 



From the Tenth United States Census, 1880, it appears that there 

 were then 2,822 mills in New York, with an invested capital of $13,- 

 230,931, giving employment to 17,509 men, and paying out annually 

 $2,162,972 in wages. The combined lumber product of these mills 

 amounted in 1880 to 1.118,220,000 feet, board measure, not including 

 lath, shingles, and staves. 



Within the next twenty years there was a great, decrease in the pro- 

 duction, the timber supply having been exhausted in the Adirondack 

 and Catskill forests. There are not 150 mills in the State to-day with 

 an annual output of over 100,000 feet. The production is now con- 

 lined almost wholly to the Adirondack region, the mills which are 

 stocked from there having sawed in 1899 the following amounts: 



Spruce feet B. M. . 148, 203. 491 



Hemlock do 46, 545, 772 



Pine do 33, 132, 81 17 



Hardw< tod do 24, 296, 554 



Total do. . . . 252, 178, 624 



Shingles number. . 33, 619, 000 



Lath do 49, 329, 090 



To the amount of sawed lumber should be added 195,568,623 feet of 

 logs that went to the pulp mills, making the total forest output of 

 northern New York that year 117.717.217 feet. 



There are several small sawmills in the Catskill counties, with a few 

 others scattered throughout the western part of the State, their com- 

 bined product not exceeding 60,000,000 feet. The advocates of forest 

 preservation and the protection of our economic resources need no 

 better argument than is contained in the figures showing the great 

 decline in this industry within the last twenty years. 



Editor's xote. — The author, in his report as superintendent of for- 

 ests for the State of New York (contained in the Seventh Annual 

 Report of the New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, Jan- 



