Lumbering in the Philippines. 6il 



logs for sale under the most advantageous conditions. He will 

 often take a contract to deliver logs at a certain place and time, 

 but as he does not concern himself with the rate at which the 

 logging is carried on in the woods he rarely finds himself in a 

 position to complete his contract. The loggers themselves take 

 time to select the most desirable trees and never make an attempt 

 at clear cutting. Using animal power entirely for hauling, and 

 that unassisted by any mechanical device other than the logging 

 sled, they cannot cut the largest trees and usually limit themselves 

 to straight sound timber under 36" in diameter. 



Naturally the effect of this system of logging on the forest is to 

 remove the most active part of the forest capital leaving the old 

 timber, which is the natural crop, to go back and become a drag 

 on the productive capacity. However, it has one advantage, as 

 the old trees counteract the effect of the highly selective cutting 

 and insure natural reproduction of the desirable species. In 

 general it may be said that the native method of logging, while 

 not an economical one, is not one to endanger the existence of the 

 forest or even of the most desirable species. In the more in- 

 accessible regions of the Islands and where the timber does not 

 occur in large uninterrupted tracts it is practically the only pos- 

 sible method and the one naturally suited to conditions. 



However, as American capital became interested in logging, 

 there developed an abrupt change wherever it took hold, from the 

 primitive methods which heretofore obtained, to the most up-to- 

 date western methods. This change took place with hardly any 

 transition stage other than that necessary to the establishment of 

 an industry among a people acquainted with only the rudiments 

 of the new method. Considering the difficulties which the first 

 American logging enterprise encountered in the Islands, steam 

 milling and logging has been astonishingly successful and has even 

 greater success in store for it. 



There are at present some 60 or more steam sawmills operating 

 in the Islands, the equipment of which varies from the single 

 crude circular saw to full equipped band mills cutting 50,000 or 

 more feet a day. At least four of these mills do their logging by 

 steam, following the system in vogue in the northwestern part of 

 the United States, namely the "slack rope" with yarding and 

 hauling donkeys. Native labor under high grade American super- 



