8 



Pine Inventory 



IN THE PINE WOODS of the South the silence is 

 punctured and ripped by new noises, the staccato put- 

 put-put of a laboring gasoline engine and the snarly 

 whine of a circular saw chewing through soft wood. 

 Like trumpets of the heralds proclaiming a new royal 

 decree throughout the length and breadth of some 

 ancient domain, these strange clarion calls announce 

 a new regime: machines have gone to work in the 

 woods. Southern lumbering operations are being rapidly 

 mechanized, and whenever man applies power to any 

 job, important and often quite unforeseen things are 

 bound to happen. 



The war created an acute labor shortage throughout 

 the pine woods from southern Virginia to East Texas. 

 Being primarily a labor-saving device, the machine was 

 brought in to keep up the supply of lumber and pulp- 

 wood that was essential to the war effort. This com- 

 pulsory innovation will have effects upon the South 

 that reach far beyond the sawmills and the paper 

 plants. 



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