40 



AMERICAN LUMBER IN FOREIGN MARKETS. 



which throw upon the market monthly millions of "breadths and lengths" (Pierrit* 

 y cabazales) bedsteads, knees, square knees, and various other products of the algor- 

 roba and other hard-wood trees. The Province of Santa Fe, not only in the neigh- 

 borhood of its cities, but in its various colonies, has a large number of sawmills and 

 carpenters; and especially in that portion of its territory which adjoins the Gran 

 Chaco, there is a large population whose principal occupation is working the red 

 quebracho forests, as it is from this province that the greater part of the quebracho 

 chip, used in Europe for dye woods, are obtained. In the province of Entre Rios, 

 likewise, there is a considerable number of well established mills, besides a still 

 larger number of moving circular sawmills, which are now penetrating to the very 

 center of the immense forests of that part of the Republic, turning out all kinds 

 of lumber and hard wood. And the same is the case in the Province of Corrientes, 

 where there are extensive forests of quebracho and other choice timber. But in the 

 territories of the Chaco, Formosa, and Misioue, the lumbermen and the sawmills are 

 especially to be found. The amount of capital invested in the lumber trade, in those 

 parts of the Republic, reaches to millions of dollars ; and the establishments there are 

 commensurate with the vast wealth of timber of the most valuable varieties, which 

 are to be found there. The lumber business of the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Rioja, 

 Catamarca, San Louis, Mendoza, and San Juan, though of much less importance, 

 owing to their distance from a marketable outlet, is yet very considerable, as all the 

 lumber of every kind and description which they use is furnished by their own 

 forests. Here in the city of Buenos Ayres, though the lumber and woods must all be 

 transported here, there are thirty-nine sawmills and seven hundred and forty-three 

 carpenter shops. Besides there are numerous similar establishments in the cities of 

 La Plata, Chirilcoy, Tigre, San Fernando, Bahia Blanca, San Nicolas, Campana, and 

 other places. 



THE LUMBER INDUSTRY. 



I am not able to state for no census Las ever been taken the total 

 number of workmen and laborers engaged in the lumber industry of 

 the Argentine Republic; but the following table, which has been pre- 

 pared with considerable care, gives an approximation of the number of 

 persons thus employed for the year 1892 : 



ANNUAL LUMBER OUTPUT. 



In regard to the output of the lumber industry in the interior prov- 

 inces, it is not possible to give any figures. That there is an exchange 

 of trade between the sawmills and the provincial centers of population, 

 which in the course of the year amounts to several millions of dollars, 

 is evident from the fact that all the houses, habitations, galpones, barns, 



