538 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITflSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



for the past 30 years they have been the mainstay of the eastern and 

 central himber markets of the United States. But the process of 

 timber depiction is running its course in the South as it has pre- 

 viously been run in the Lake States and the Alleghenies, The pro- 

 duction of southern ])ine Inmber passed its peak in 191(3, and the 

 last great migration of American sawmills is under way — across the 

 Great Plains to the virgin forests of the Pacific coast. In 1920 over 

 000,000,000 board feet of w^estern lumber was shipped to New Eng- 

 land and over 1,200,000,000 feet was marketed in Illinois, Michigan, 

 Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In 1922, 33i^ per cent of our entire 

 lumber cut was manufactured on the Pacific coast as compared Avith 

 40 per cent in the Southern States. Western lumber is now moving 

 in a steadily increasing volume 2,000 or 2,300 miles by rail to the 



Middle West at a freight cost of $17 or $18 per thousand board feet, 

 and 7,000 miles by sea and the Panama Canal to northern Atlantic 

 ports at a charter rate of $16 or $17 per thousand feet. Lumber 

 manufactured on Puget Sound is now, indeed, moved by steamer 

 to Chesapeake Ba}' and reshipped inland, past the old sawmill towns 

 of the Alleghenies, as far as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. 



Every year the cost of transportation enters more largely into the 

 lumber bills paid by the American home builder or the American 

 factory. Two-thirds of the lumber which we use is consum.ed in tlie 

 Central and Eastern States. The lumber traffic in 1920 exceeded 

 1,660,000 carloads and cost, in freight and cliarters, over $250,000,000. 

 The average carload was hauled 485 miles. Between 1014 and 1920 

 the average rail haul on lumber was lengthened by more than 30 per 

 cent, and the total j'carly freight paid on lumber shii)ments ad- 

 vanced $100,000,000. 



