Sale Costs 201 



Cost of road work in woods in one year $37.00 



Making lath per M laths 5.75 



Making shingles per M shingles 3.00 



No. feet hauled to market on average load per wagon. . .1,100 feet 



No. men employed in woods 3 



No. men employed at mill • 6 



No. men hauling in woods 1 



No. men hauling to market 2 



This operation is the only one making lath and shingles as a 

 by-product. The unusually high cost of surfacing is due to the 

 small amounts planed and the time consumed in changing and 

 adjusting the knives. Only special orders of small amounts are 

 planed and a greater part of the cost is made up in the time con- 

 sumed in changing and adjusting the knives preparatory to the 

 actual planing operation. Lath making, like surfacing, is a minor 

 operation. Only very small quantities are manufactured at one 

 time, so that much of the cost is for time spent in putting the 

 machinery into running shape. 



In considering the above figures it must be borne in mind that 

 the quality of the labor available to small isolated mills is no 

 small factor in fixing production costs. Employment is unsteady 

 and leads to the hiring of transient and inexperienced hands. 

 With small orders there is a continual changing of jobs, so that 

 no opportunity is presented for specializing or for the develop- 

 ment of skill and efficiency in handling one kind of work, as is pos- 

 sible in the large mills. Often the entire mill crew is made up of 

 neighboring ranchmen and farmers who, by working in the mill 

 during seasons when ranch work is slack, are able to turn their 

 labor toward lumber for the improvement of their ranches. 

 Under such conditions the quality of the product is bound to 

 suffer as well as the production costs so that a comparison of 

 these figures with those of large operations is drawn with 

 difficulty. 



Cost of administration figures were collected over a period of 

 nearly two years by means of monthly time reports submitted by 

 each officer handling the sales and are given below. In all cases 

 the sales were handled by district rangers along with other ranger 

 district administrative work and careful division of the time spent 

 on sales administration was made each day. Costs were kept 

 on five saw mills, one shingle mill and eight cordwood operations 

 in thirty different sales. 



