Illustrated Canadian Forestry Magazine. December, iq2o 



581 



Hitching Science to Forest Management 



By Ellwood Wilson 

 Chief Forester the Laurentide Company, Ltd. 



Pulp and paper industries must 



maintain their woodlands on 



''sustained yield'' basis 



The whole question of the improve- 

 ment of logging operations is more or 

 less psychological ; that is, it is a question 

 of men's minds and men's way of think- 

 ing about things rather than any practical 

 question of method or operations. 



For instance, the men who have been 

 operating in the woods in the past are 

 men who have, to a great extent, grown 

 up in the woods and they have been more 

 or less supposed to have some sort of 

 occult faculty, some sort of super sense 

 which particularly fitted them for the 

 work in tlie woods. In my experience, 

 that has not proved to be true, and the 

 time has come when the operations in the 

 wools must be placed on the same basis 

 as operations in the mill. Nobody would 

 think today of running a big paper mill 

 without trained chemists, without trained 

 engineers, without trained cost account- 

 ants, etc., but up to this time we have not 

 had this class of men in the woods. We 

 are only just beginning to realize that 

 logging, after all, is a branch of engin- 

 eering, tiiat it requires a certain amount 

 of technical education, a certain amount 

 of technical training without which no- 

 body can be a successful logging oper- 

 ator. We have got to realize that fact, 

 and with all due honor to the men who 

 have kcj)! our mills supplicil with raw 

 material, the day has come when we must 

 change our methods and get more men 

 with technical training in the woods. 



Cheap r^o^s! Cheap Lo:j;s.' 



In the i)ast the question has been to get 

 out raw material at the lowest cost pos- 

 sible, regardless of anvthing else. The 

 managers of the mills have said, ■"Wc 

 want so many thousanii cords of wood a 

 year," and if logging costs weiU up th.e 



least bit, there was immediately a 'holler,' 

 and the man responsible for getting the 

 timber out of the woods and into the mill 

 was hauled over the coals if his costs 

 were a little more than in the past. Con- 

 ditions under which labor has worked in 

 the woods have been very difficult and we 

 have come to realize today that the men 

 who work in the woods must have the 

 same comforts and the same decent liv- 

 ing conditions that the men who work in 

 the mill have. 



We have come to face a good many 

 difficult problems and in the solving of 

 these problems, we want the very best 

 trained minds that we can get, but we 

 have to do away with old-fashioned ideas, 

 with old superstitions and with old 

 fetishes ; we have got to face these pro- 

 blems in the same way that we have faced 

 engineering and operating problems in 

 our mills. 



JJliat Progress In the J foods. 



In ilie woods operations we have maile 

 al)solulely no progress so far as I know 

 since we first began logging in the old 

 days. We are using the same methods 

 of hauling and almost the same methods 

 of cutting. We have to some extent, of 

 course, substituted the saw for the axe. 

 I here has been some effort in the East 

 lo use tractors in logging. Of course wc 

 have to leave out of this discussion the 

 large timber operations in the West in 

 which machinery of all sorts has been 

 Used and where they are costing more 

 auil uu)re to do away with hand labor. 



In the previous years our labor costs 

 h.ive been so low that we have been able 

 to use man power and horses to a very 

 large extent, but the day of that practice 

 is almost past antl what we need now in 



