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Transportation of Lumber 



FIRST ARTICLE 



CHANGING CONDITIONS 



Editor's Note 



This is tbe first of a series of four articles on the transportation of liimlwr 

 the shipping items, costs, and possible permanency. 



Succeeding articles will cover some of 



The traji.sportation of lumber in the United States has been 

 different from the transportation of nearly all other important 

 < ommodities. The conditions have changed oftener and to a 

 greater extent. From the standpoint of the carriers the business 

 has been more unstable and has required more frequent read,just- 

 ment of transportation facilities than is the case of any other 

 large business. This has had much to do in keeping freight rates 

 in an unsatisfactory condition, because carriers have never been 

 able to figure on long-time business in a particular district. As 

 the forests of one region have been cut out, the lumberman has 

 moved on to another. This has not been particularly difficult for 

 the lumberman to do, for he was not necessitated to leave much 

 equipment behind, but it was a more serious matter with trans- 

 portation companies, particularly those engaged in land carriage. 

 Eailroads cannot move from one region to another, as sawmills 

 can. The road which was built to carry the lumber of a certain 

 region to market is left with no lumber to carry when the mills 

 cut out and move on. 



The whole history of the lumber business in the United States 

 is a series of rejjotition of changes and exhaustion of old supply 

 and removals to new regions. The railroads have always been 

 obliged to face that condition. As far as carrying lumber is 

 concerned, they have never been able to calculate on anj'thing else. 

 This has not been the case with most other commodities which 

 furnish large amounts of freight. A brief survey of the field will 

 emphasize that fact. 



The railroad tonnage of this country may be grouped in seven 

 classes. The lines separating the classes cannot be sharply drawn, 

 for there are frequent overlappings; but the groups are fairly well 

 defined in a general way, and embrace all the freight carried by 

 railroads. The classification holds equally true for water trans- 

 portation, but unfortunately that kind of transportation does not 

 amount to a great deal in the country's inland commerce, though 

 it is large in some restricted localities. Freight commodities may 

 be grouped as agricultural, animal, mineral, forest products, manu- 

 factured products, merchandise, and miscellaneous. Some persons 

 may take exceptions to this classification, btit it is the one pre- 

 ferred by writers on economics, and it would be more difficult 

 to improve upon it than might be supposed at first glance. It 

 was the classification used by the United States census in 1890. 



The total freight carried by all the railroads in the United 

 States in 1009 amounted to 1,.5.56,.5.59,7-tl tons. The following list 

 shows the proportionate amount of each one of the seven groups, 

 for three decades: 



1909 

 Pet. of Whole. Pet. 



Mineral products 5r>.60 



Mnniifaotured products 13.1."> 



ror-'st pi-nducts ll.lo 



.Vsi'iriiltural products S.92 



Miiehnndise 4.11 



Miscellaneous .3.98 



Animal products 2.49 



The foregoing table shows the proportionate amount carried of 

 eacli group, not the regions where the freight originated. It is a 

 well-known fact that the source of lumber tonnage has changed 

 from region to region more than any other group of commodities. 

 This holds true of the period prior to 1890 as well as later; it 

 goes back, in fact, to the beginning of railroad traffic in this 

 country. Where coal and iron mines are developed, they remain — 

 not a few years or a few decades, as with logging operations and 

 sawmills, but for generations and centuries. The railroad that is 

 built to carry the product of mines can depend on that business 

 as far into the future as any man can see. The road constructed 

 to carry lumber out of a region sees the end of that great business 

 at no .distant date. New mines may open in other regions, though 



the old mines do not close; but it has been the history of the 

 lumber business in this country that no extensive new timber 

 regions have been developed until old ones have become depleted. 



Agriculture is permanent. Fields furnish year after year, and 

 generation after generation, the freight which transportation com- 

 panies must have. The apple orchards and wheat fields in the valley 

 of Virginia, which furnished freight to the Baltimore & Ohio railroad 

 in 1835 are furnishing the same kinds of freight to the same railroad 

 today, and in ever-increasing quantities; but the sawmills in that 

 region which furnished some freight then, disappeared, so long 

 ago that nobody remembers them. That has been the history in 

 all old farming regions. The supplj' of farm tonnage for the 

 transportation comjianies is as constant as the procession of the 

 equinoxes; but the forest tonnage, with rare exceptions, dwindles 

 to a vanishing point in a few decades. 



The freight supplied by manufacturers may change somewhat 

 as to items, but in quantity it is as permanent, or nearly as 

 permanent, as farm products. Local disturbances of economic 

 conditions may lessen the output of manufacturers of towns or 

 small districts; but this does not occur generally in large regions. 

 The carrying company can always look confidently ahead and feel 

 sure that it will have something to carry. The same holds true 

 with the transportation of the large class of commodities grouped 

 as merchandise. Demand is constant, supply is dependable, and 

 railroads can count on the business. 



It has been verj- different with the transportation of forest 

 products. The history of changes, of shifting centers of supply, 

 of depletion of resources, of rise and decline, grows monotonous 

 by repetition. It is the same story over and over, with the 

 change of a few dates and localities. Three-quarters of a century 

 ago De Tocqueville wrote that American settlements were moving 

 west at an average rate of seventeen miles a year. That might 

 do as an average, but it is too exact to hold true in particular 

 cases. However, it is not far out of the way as a statement of 

 the average rate at which the lumber business changed centers. 

 In 1885, Cattaraugus County, New York, was rafting white pine 

 lumber to New Orleans and selling it at $40 a thousand. In 

 1905, Louisiana was shipping longleaf pine lumber by rail to 

 northeastern states, and Cattaraugus County was getting its share, 

 and the price was not far from $40. Here, as an individual 

 instance, is seen a complete reversal of lumber shipments in a 

 hundred years. It is a good example of what may be described 

 as back-tracking lumber — shipping it out of a region at one time, 

 and replacing it later by other himber shipped in.. That has been 

 a very common practice in this country, and it is going on as 

 industriously today as ever in the past; and it is not necessary 

 to go back a hundred years to find concrete examples. 



It has been the rule pretty generally in the lumber businesa 

 that a region with an abundance of timber cuts and ships it 

 to the four quarters of the compass, and keeps on cutting and 

 shipping as long as it has any. A few years later the region 

 becomes a buyer instead of a seller. These instances have been 

 many, on scales both small and large, and they are precisely 

 similar to the business foresight of the West Virginia farmer 

 who, in the fall of the year when he had plenty of corn, hauled 

 it twenty-five miles and sold it at fifty cents a bushel, and a few 

 months later bought corn at a dollar a bushel and hauled it 

 twenty-five miles back home to take the place of what he had sold. 



In Michigan . the custom of shipping lumber on the back-track 

 is illustrated with as much point as can be found anywhere in 

 the country, though nearly all the older settled regions are now 

 importing luml er from other states to take the place of what was 



