358 B. E. FERNOW 



of the evil consequences of forest destruction propose to stop 

 the lumberman from cutting any more trees. Look around 

 you and learn how much we depend on wood in our daily life ; 

 you will then understand that we shall always need lumber- 

 men to cut and make useful the trees of the forest, albeit we 

 may get the lumberman to adopt somewhat different methods 

 from those he pursues now, or to associate him with the for- 

 ester who knows how to cut trees so that they will produce a 

 good new crop, or, where needed, plants them. 



Not only has the lumberman furnished the most essential 

 materials for the building up of our civilization in all parts of 

 the country, but he has often carried the first germs of civiliza- 

 tion into the deepest wilderness of our vast forests. 



The lumber business of to-day, which employs, together 

 with the planing mills, nearly 550,000 people and pays an- 

 nually nearly $150,000,000 in wages, is indeed a very different 

 affair from what it was a hundred years, nay, fifty years ago, 

 when logging was confined to the eastern coast and river 

 courses, which furnished the means of transportation for the 

 bulky material. 



It is the development of the railroad system that has 

 changed the methods of lumbering, just as it has changed all 

 other kinds of business. 



Before the era of railroad building the lumbering went 

 on in a hand-to-mouth fashion and most of the sawing was 

 done in connection with gristmills, charging their toll just 

 as they did for flour, the lumber being mainly for home con- 

 sumption or else going to the mouth of the river to be carried 

 by vessel to home and foreign markets. That this petty 

 method of doing business lasted until the middle of the century 

 is attested by the census of 1840, where the lumber industry 

 is credited with a product of only $400 per establishment; 

 this figure rose to $8,136 in 1870, $9,704 in 1880, more 

 than doubled in the next decade, namely to $19,212 in 1890, 

 and in the subsequent ten years slightly declined, namely to 

 $17,159 in 1900; showing how the character of the business 

 has changed. 



In 1860, although pine lumbering in the northwest had 

 already begun to be a leading industry, the great logging 



