CHAPTER 12 

 WOOD GREATEST GIFT OF THE FOREST 



We had better be without gold than without timber. JOHN EVELYN. 



THE first settler in America was the first lumberman. 

 Probably the first board was split laboriously with the help of 

 axe and wedge. From these small far-off beginnings, our for- 

 ests have come to support an industry whose development is 

 unequaled in the history of our country. The rise and expan- 

 sion of American lumbering is a very colorful epic, perhaps the 

 most colorful that has ever attended modern industry. Its 

 methods and tools have been evolved out of conditions hitherto 

 unmet. The giant sawmills of today are the most representative 

 of American institutions. They have come about out of our 

 immediate need to cope with the new and difficult conditions 

 that confronted the American pioneer in his task of building 

 a nation. 



To our earliest settlers wood was as great and immediate a 

 necessity as food or clothing. Quite early in our colonial history 

 we hear of small sawmills springing up about the growing 

 centers of settlement mills of small capacity, entirely depend- 

 ent for their existence on the lumber demands of the country- 

 side close about them. They were designed to furnish local 

 needs, for at this time the transportation of timber over great 

 distances was a thing unknown. These earlier mills were run 



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