TIMBER SUPPLY — GREELEY 



539 



These mounting costs for transportation underlie the rise in lum- 

 ber prices. Costs and profits in retail distribution tend to pyramid 

 upon every increase in freight. And as the sawmills become more 

 largely concentrated in distant and restricted regions, the competi- 

 tive movement of lumber into consuming markets" is curtailed. 

 Retail prices seldom fail to advance in response to such opportuni- 

 ties. The story of lumber prices in a group of Minnesota towns is 

 illuminating. In 1905, 91 per cent of their supply came from the 

 Lake States. The average freight cost was $3.25 per thousand feet 

 and the average selling price was $26. In 1921 over 92 per cent of 

 the lumber handled in these towns came from the Pacific coast. The 

 average freight bill was $18.12 per thousand feet and the average 

 selling price $53.58. Transportation cost had increased from 121/2 



per cent to 34 per cent of the retail price, but the actual cost to the 

 consumer, it will be noted, had more than doubled. 



In fact, the prices paid by the average user of every-day con- 

 struction lumber the country over have more than doubled within 

 the last 12 years. The very freight paid on lumber is now often 

 more than its delivered price 30 years ago. Hence it is not difficult 

 to understand why lumber prices have advanced during the last 80 

 years three and a half times as rapidly as the index price based 

 upon all staple commodities. It took $510 in 1921 to buy as much 

 lumber — and poorer lumber at that — as $100 bought in 1840. 



The story of the American paper industry is somewhat different 

 but reflects no less clearly the extent to which our virgin forests 

 have been depleted. Paper manufacture requires exceptionally heavy 

 plant investments. Hence it has not followed the retreating frontier 

 of virgin forests to nearly the same extent as have tlie sawmills, but 



