369 

 THE DISAPPEARING WHITE PINE. 



The position which the United States has held as a himber-producing 

 nation has, perhaps, been due more to white pine than to any other wood. 

 The timber of this valuable tree which has played a most important part 

 in the material development of the nation is fast disappearing and now it 

 is as costly as the finest American hardwoods. 



Rev. Edward Everett Hale, the chaplain of the Senate, who has always 

 taken an interest in forestry, deplores the passing of white pine as our 

 foremost wood, and tells how in his own lifetime he has seen the day 

 when "the masts of every vessel that sailed the Seven Seas were made 

 from New England grown pine; while today very little white pine is cut 

 in New England big enough to furnish a good-sized spar." He tells also, 

 to illustrate the increasing cost of the wood, that he ordered a set of 

 book shelves on which the cabinet-maker made a price, and then asked 

 whether they should be of mahogany or white pine. 



The white pine production has shifted from New England to the Lake 

 States, and Michigan was the leading lumber-producing State for twenty 

 years, from 1870 to 1890, with a supremacy based on white pine. In 

 these two decades the cut was 160 billions of board feet, valued, at the 

 point of production, at not less than two billion of dollars, or nearly half 

 as much as the value derived from all the gold fields of California from 

 their discovery in the late forties until the present. The rich forests of 

 Michigan were once thought inexhaustible and lumbering continued in a 

 most reckless manner, for years. Suddenly the people awoke to the fact 

 that the thoughtless destruction of the trees had thrown 6,000,000 of acres 

 on the delinquent tax list. These white pine barrens point to the terrible 

 penalty of wasting the forest resources which should have been the 

 heritage of all future generations. 



An idea of the increasing scarcity of white pine timber is given by the 

 New York F. O. B. quotations, on a basis of carload lots. "Uppers" 

 of the best grade, cost $97 to $114 a thousand board feet, and the "selects" 

 or next lower grade cost $79.50 to $99.50. j\Ijen who are not yet middle- 

 aged remember the time when these grades could be purchased at $15 to 

 $25 a thousand feet. The present quotations on quartered white oak, 

 w^hich are $75 to $80, ofTer another basis of comparison which indicates 

 the condition of the market for white pine. 



The best stands of this timber now in this country are in scattered sec- 

 tions in Minnesota, New England, and parts of Idaho. The species in 

 Idaho is sometimes called silver pine. Some of the country's best white 

 pine is found on the Indian reservations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and 

 scattered stands are found in the States of Wyoming, Montana. Colo;-ado, 

 and one or two other States. At the present rate of cutting the tree will 

 soon be practically a thing of the past. The small stands in the National 

 forests are inconsiderable, but they will be managed with the greatest 

 conservatism by the Government through the Forest Service, and through 

 this method and practice of reforestation it may be hoped that the fine 

 old tree will furnish timber for other generations. 



ANOTHER NEW INDUSTRY. 



The installation of two modern lime kilns at Iwilei by the 

 Waianae Lime Company, affords another noteworthy example in 

 the movement which has been taking- place in Hawaii during- the 

 the last few years of making the islands independent of the out- 



