OTHER RESOURCES OF MICHIGAN 77 



white pine lumber, Michigan-grown, is now quite 

 impossible to secure. This is not strictly true, but 

 so nearly so that one is justified in treating the 

 wood as a negligible factor in the local lumber 

 market. 



Magnificent oaks stood in the primeval Michigan 

 forest. They were sought for ship timber and for 

 general construction purposes, and occasionally a 

 house was mainly built of it from sill to roof- 

 boards. The 1918 report of the Forest Service 

 ignored the Michigan cut, undoubtedly for the rea- 

 son that it w^as insignificant. In 1910, the manu- 

 facture of furniture consumed 1,856,795 feet of 

 white oak grown within the State, and similarly 

 1,000,000 feet of red oak; and 100,000 of burr oak. 

 The manufacture of agricultural implements in that 

 year took 322,000 feet of white oak, and 50,000 of 

 red oak. Car construction utilized 90,000 feet of red 

 oak grown in Michigan, while 1,430,059 feet con- 

 sumed were grown outside the State. Of the 520,000 

 feet of white and red oak employed in the making 

 of caskets, none grew in Michigan. While 1,020,000 

 feet of white oak was imported for the construction 

 of boats and ships, only 185,000 feet was home- 

 grown. 



Hemlock, once despised by the carpenter and 

 joiner, constituted one of Michigan's most impor- 

 tant timber species in 1918, with its cut of 266,000,- 

 000 feet. This was 15.7 per cent of the country's 

 total output, only Washington and Wisconsin ex- 

 ceeding Michigan in hemlock production. 



