14 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



The Lumber Industry in the Vhilippines. 



The annual growth of the Philippine for- 

 ests is estimated to be 1,400,000,000 cubic 

 feet, or nearly three times the amount of the 

 cut for 1900 in the whole United States. In 

 the islands are not less than 40,000,000 acres 

 of line timber, uliidi may some day be used 



FELLIKG A LARGE TREE ABOVE DE- 

 FECTIVE BUTT. 



to replace the rapidly depleting stocks of the 

 world. At the present time fully ninety-nine 

 per cent of this annual growth is not utilized. 

 N'othing of importance is being done except 

 by one company to take advantage of the 

 situation. Government statistics show that in 

 the group of islands extending from Mindoro 

 to Paragua there are more than 4,000,000 

 acres of primeval forest extending from the 

 beach back to the mountain tops. The island 

 of Mindanao alone, with an area of 23,000,000 

 acres, is almost entirely covered with rich 

 forests, which have been allowed to stand un- 

 touched by the axe for centuries. The Forest 



Department, in a recent bulletin, says that the 

 island of Negros has been cut over ' ' rather 

 thoroughly" for many years, yet the Insular 

 Lumber Company has found a virgin forest 

 there of about eighty square miles, with lum- 

 ber sufficient to keep a mill going for fifty 

 years, cutting 125,000 feet every day in the 

 year ! Today the government has thousands of 

 acres of timber land on which franchises to 

 L'ut and manufacture can readily be obtained. 

 In Kegros alone reputable authorities describe 

 a magnificent forest of mammoth trees, fre- 

 i|uently ten feet in diameter and a hundred 

 and twenty-five to the first limb. In the same 

 forest, which covers nearly sixty square miles, 

 no acre averages less than 40,000 feet board 

 measure, and some even as high as 240,000 

 feet, vrhile in the United States a forest that 

 will average 5,000 feet to the acre consti- 

 tutes a fortune. The Negros forests consist 

 for the most part of lauan, a wood which is 

 considered the most valuable in the islands. 

 It is neither very hard nor very soft, easily 

 worked and handsomely grained, suitable for 

 inside finish and for furniture. 



Along the first military road cut through 

 Mindanao are decaying millions of feet of 

 mahogany, ebony and all sorts of precious 

 woods, which formed a dense forest, and until 

 cut away for fifty feet on each side of the 

 road made it almost impassable, because of 

 the moisture they conserved. 



Chas. E. Wheeler, in writing for the Manila 

 Bulletin, says: "All the genius of the Yan- 

 kee has been directed to accomplishing in the 

 forest what today is specially applicable to 

 the Philippines, a modus operandi which shall 

 call for a maximum of machinery and a mini- 

 mum of labor. The American sawmill, with 

 its auxiliaries — its loggers, its cables, its 

 railroads — fulfills every requirement, and yet 

 today we are laboriously plodding on our 

 way, hitching up a dozen carabao to a log. 



dragging it through trails three or four miles, 

 landing it at the sea shore, and thus proceed- 

 ing until a fair number at great expense and 

 time have been collected. Then comes the 

 chartering of some ' hooker, ' the dragging of 

 the logs to the boat, the bringing of them to 



FINE 



.'XANO TOP LOG LEFT IN WOODS 

 TO ROT. 



Manila, the discharge, the lightering, the 

 liauling of them up esteros. and then appears 

 the wiseacre, omnipresent, omniscient, who 

 solemnly wags his head, and calls attention 

 to the fact that no lumbering concern in the 

 islands has ever proved a commercial suc- 

 cess. ' ' 



The great reason for this is the absence of 

 anything modern in methods of operation. 

 Everything done by the natives is primitive 

 in the extreme. Outside of Manila there is 

 but one mill which may be said to employ up- 

 to-date ideas in the manufacture of lumber, 

 and that mill is insignificant indeed when 

 compared with those operating in the great 



FOUR CARABAOS SKIDDING LOG 12x12 30 FEET. 



l'l!i:i'.\inN(! SMALL RAFTS OF HEWN 11 Ml!i;i( IN UI'l'BR RIVERS. 



