INFLUENCE OF FORESTRY UPON LUMBER INDUSTRY. 311 



detail. The vital point lies in the crisis which the lumber industry is 

 approaching in the exhaustion of the material on which its existence 

 depends. (See Pis. XXXI and XXXII.) 



ELIMINATION OF THE LARGE SAWMILL. 



The general application of forestry to forest lands owned by lumber- 

 men will probably result in the gradual elimination of the large saw- 

 mill and the substitution of those of moderate size. The mammoth 

 milling plant will be rare when only second growth is left to supply 

 it, for the area of timber land sufficient to produce the logs necessary 

 to run such a plant is enormous. It is reasonable to expect that the 

 mill of moderate size, supplied by a forest whose production is equal 

 to the mill's annual capacity, both under the same management, will 

 become more and more the rule. The very existence of the enor- 

 mous mill is the result of an abundance of timber resources, which 

 exist no longer except in a very few sections. In Europe the long- 

 continued application of conservative measures in lumbering has 

 resulted in a distribution and type of sawmill little known in this 

 country. Sawmills of large size do not exist, but in their stead small 

 sawmills, for which water generally supplies the power, are distributed 

 throughout the country wherever the local demand is sufficient to keep 

 them running. Their annual cut is for the most part exceedingly 

 small, according to our standards, and sufficient only to supply the 

 wants of the immediately adjacent country. The mills saw largely on 

 order, and the fact that their construction is permanent and their mo- 

 tive power cheap enables them to run intermittently without loss. 

 The results are upon the whole exceedingly satisfactory. The man 

 who wants lumber gets it promptly, and without pa} T ing an added cost 

 for long transportation. The antiquated construction of European 

 sawmills is often such that the American lumberman would find in 

 them but a proof of his superior ingenuity; but the European distri- 

 bution of milling plants has its strong advantages in several ways. 



DEVELOPMENT OF A TRAINED CLASS OF FOREST WORKERS. 



The general application of conservative methods in lumbering will 

 inevitably result, as has been the case in Europe, in the development 

 of a permanent class of men trained to forest work. Under present 

 methods this result can never be attained to the same degree. The 

 lumbering in one community is generally so short-lived that there is 

 neither time nor necessity to train up a body of men on the ground to 

 carry out the work. The result is that Maine and Michigan woodsmen 

 are found working in the hardwoods of the Southern Appalachians; 

 loggers from Wisconsin and Minnesota are helping to cut the redwood 

 on the Pacific coast; and in each of the great timber regions there is a 

 mingling of lumbermen from several of the others. The effect has 

 been to develop, by constant labor at their trade under widely varying 



