PROBABLE EVOLUTION IN THE SAWMILL IN. 

 DUSTRY. 



Bv Burt P. Kirkland. 



Volume V^I, Number 4, of the Forestry Quarterly contains an 

 article by Mr. E. A. Sherman entitled ''The Sawmill of the 

 Future." Inasmuch as the conclusions reached in that article and 

 in similar forecasts of the future of the industry have both 

 theoretical and practical bearings, a further discussion of the sub- 

 ject may be of interest. Such conclusions have practical bearmgs 

 because of the more or less influence the Forest Service is able to 

 bring to bear on the size of the mill in which National Forest 

 timber shall be manufactured. The question of whether the large 

 or small mill should be encouraged must frequently be met. 



The main conclusion reached in Mr. Sherman's article is that 

 in the future the big sawmill will be superseded by small mills. 

 It is the purpose of this discussion to consider whether the con- 

 ditions in the lumber industry are such as to bring about a result 

 such as he predicts — an evolution, it may be said, entirely con- 

 trary to that in any other well known industry. 



It is well known that the tendency in other industries such as 

 the packing industry, for example, has constantly been toward 

 large scale production. The reasons for this are chiefly the pro- 

 fits from saving of wastes too small in amount in the small plant 

 to be utilized and the economy of effort due to the more specialized 

 use of machinery in the large plant. There are also economies 

 of organization, transportation, etc., available to the latter. I do 

 not refer here to the great aggregations of capital often brought 

 together nowadays, which, though they may represent some ad- 

 ditional economies over the moderately large plant, often have 

 their chief reason for being in the desire for promoters' profits 

 coupled with the facility they afford for concentration of enor- 

 mous power in the hands of a few men. Leaving these out of 

 consideration, let us examine the evidence and conclude whether 

 in the lumber industry alone the savings of large scale production 

 will not be sufficient to induce a continuation of the concen- 

 tration which has already taken place or at least prevent a retro- 



