310 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



American locomotive. From "whip .sawing," in which the boards 

 were sawed out by hand, to the modern steam sawmill, with its rail- 

 road (PI. XXX), its planing mill, and its cut of nearly half a million 

 board feet per day, is a long step but it has not taken much over 

 fifty years to accomplish it. In effective methods for the harvesting 

 and manufacture of lumber the American lumberman has no superior, 

 nor is he equaled in his disregard for the future of the forest which 

 he cuts. 



SOME RESULTS TO BE SECURED BY CONSERVATIVE LUMBERING. 



It is natural that the lumberman should not turn eagerly from a 

 system whose only aim is to secure the highest possible present profit 

 from the forest to one which includes provisions for the production 

 of a second crop upon the lumbered area. Under conservative methods 

 lumbering becomes a legitimate industry for the production as well as 

 for the consumption of its staple. It no longer offers, however, the 

 short cut to fortune which it proved to be so long as an abundance of 

 timber rendered the old methods of lumbering possible. It is difficult 

 for lumbermen generally to realize that the time for practical forestry 

 has fully arrived. But signs more significant than any existing statis- 

 tics point to the imminent failure in the supply of certain timbers 

 in the United States. From the data available, there is no way to 

 foretell accurately the time necessary to exhaust this supply of mer- 

 chantable timber at the present rate of consumption. A good many 

 estimates of the merchantable timber standing have been made, some 

 of which have already proved fallacious. To predict accurately how 

 long it will be before the United States is confronted by a timber 

 famine would require first of all a knowledge of the composition, 

 qualit} 7 , and condition of the forests, which it would take many 

 years to obtain. At present such an estimate is of little practical 

 value. We do know that the supply of timber of many kinds is fail- 

 ing, of other kinds is almost exhausted, and of others is practically 

 gone; that Black Walnut is no more to be had except in small quan- 

 tities and at enormous expense; that first-growth W T hite Pine is grow- 

 ing rapidly to be a rarity on the market; that where the supply of 

 spruce for pulpwood and for lumber for the next ten years is to be 

 found is a grave question before the lumbermen to-da} T . The list of 

 woods accepted as merchantable lengthens from year to year, species 

 hitherto considered valueless being harvested more and more willingly 

 as the result of the exhaustion of more valuable kinds. In spite of 

 steady improvement in tools, logging outfit*, and mill machinery, all 

 tending to cheapen the cost of lumbering, the price of lumber inciva>e- 

 steadily and rapidly. These are facts more significant than predic- 

 tions in terms of years of the life of the lumber industry. The exact 

 period for which the existing supplies are sufficient is a matter of 



