Cost of Mountain Logging. 263 



use the steam loader, it is cheaper than loading by hand, even 

 after allowing the same cost per thousand for building the short 

 railroad switches, as for building the skidways used in hand 

 loading. But larger loads may be put on with careful hand load- 

 ing, and for most of the time this is the method used. 



Scaling. — Logs sawed during the bark peeling season, are scaled 

 in the woods by the jobber's clerk, and a deduction of from 5 to 

 10% is made for hidden defects. All logs are scaled by the com- 

 pany's scaler after being loaded on the cars, this scale being fre- 

 quently checked by the jobber's clerk. The Doyle rule is used. 

 No deduction is made for any defects in spruce, and but little is 

 necessary in hemlock and other logs grown in the virgin forest 

 where fire has not entered. 



The mill scale overruns the log scale by from 10% to 15%, be- 

 tween eight and nine hundred feet as scaled on the cars cutting 

 about 1,000 board feet at the mill. An experienced scaler and 

 millman says that in using the Doyle rule in this region, the mill 

 scale will overrun the log scale up to about twenty inches diameter 

 at the small end. 



The spruce and hemlock logs average very close to 4.5 to the 

 thousand board feet. The fifty-foot bridge sticks average nearly 

 one thousand board feet each. They are scaled as two sixteens 

 and an eighteen-foot length. 



Bark. — Bark is loaded at any time that suits best with the num- 

 ber of men available at the time. For this reason, and because the 

 bark operations last only a short time, it is here treated as a 

 separate operation, except that the items of office, blacksmith, etc., 

 are entered under timber, and the cost of handling the bark is 

 calculated without these items of expense. 



The peeling season is from May 1st to August 1st, when 

 contracts are let to from twenty to thirty men. 



Two men work together, peeling about three cords for the two. 

 A cord is 128 cubic feet or 2,000 pounds, and is produced in pro- 

 portion to about 2,500 feet of lumber. 



The contractor pays $2 per cord for bark peeled and $1 per 

 thousand feet for timber cut. Two good men working together 

 and cutting three cords between them may thus clear $6.75 per 

 day apiece. But this is more than most of them do. 



One man and two horses haul eight to ten cords per day, de- 



17 



