HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 71 



mill men. I found lots of little mills scattered 

 around free lances in the great lumber world. 

 The men who owned these mills made a living 

 by buying a scrap of timber too small for the 

 big fellows to bother with and selling their cut 

 to the larger companies. It was precarious 

 business, for they had to squeak through on the 

 narrowest margin of profit that would let them 

 keep a-going. 



With one of these men I spent some time, 

 camping with him, figuring with him. He 

 agreed to cut my logs and timbers and rough 

 lumber at the price the big mills were paying 

 him nine dollars a thousand feet, delivered at 

 the nearest railway station. A small free- 

 lance planing mill at that station would sur- 

 face my stuff and load it on cars for one dollar 

 a thousand feet. Pine lumber could be shipped 

 from there to Fayetteville on a fifteen-cent 

 rate. The surfacing, by reducing weight, 

 would save more than its cost in freight. I 

 would get what the lumbermen called "mill- 

 run" stuff, taking it just as it came from 

 the saw, with the culls and "shakes" thrown 

 out. That is to say, I would get about forty 

 per cent, of what the trade knows as Number 



