WOOD-GREATEST GIFT OF THE FOREST 137 



now fell the main burden of supplying a wood-hungry nation. 

 Carload after carload of straight-grained lumber went north 

 and west. Ships, heavy with cargoes of yellow pine followed 

 one another to Europe and Asia. Then once again, as before, 

 all went well until the impossible happened. The "inexhaust- 

 ible" forests of the South were playing out. Yellow pine was 

 getting scarce. Before high-powered machinery and keen de- 

 mand, the Southern forests were melting like snow in a 

 summer sun. 



So as region after region became deforested, saw and axe 

 went further and further from the centers of population. From 

 Maine to New York, west to Pennsylvania and the Lake States, 

 then south to the great stretches of pine. Only a few years ago 

 the peak of production passed over that region and today the 

 mills of the lumber industry are beginning to make their last 

 migration of all their long, final trek to the Douglas fir for- 

 ests of the Northwest. For out there is the ultimate great stand 

 of timber in America and there the mills are mobilizing in 

 their last attack on the wild natural forest. 



In its pursuit of the retreating forests the lumber industry 

 has resembled those bands of early people who spent their days 

 following about the great herds of wild caribou. It is to this 

 era of primitive exploitation that our lumber industry has be- 

 longed. Lumbering has been essentially a migratory industry 

 remaining in a region only so long as the forest remained, 

 pushing on into new virgin forests when the exhaustion of 

 the old make it necessary. Almost invariably each forest region 

 has repeated the same history. First come the small mills that 

 cut only for local use and cut only the trees immediately about 

 them. Then follow the great high speed mills of enormous 



