NOTES. 479 



If we compare this distribution with that given on p. 350 

 for the census year 1890, allowing for the non-enumerated 

 materials at the same proportion in all districts, it would 

 appear that the cut in the first group of states has probably 

 slightly increased, but that the cut in the Central and Lake 

 states has very materially decreased, unquestionably owing to 

 decrease in supplies ; while the Southern states have increased 

 their output to meet this deficiency, and the increase in the 

 Western states is but slight. Although regionally the white 

 pine district is now in its total production outstripped by the 

 Southern states, yet the three states of Wisconsin, Michigan, 

 and Minnesota are still by far the three largest lumber-pro- 

 ducers, in the order named, with Pennsylvania a close fourth, 

 these four states furnishing nearly one-quarter of the value and 

 one-third of the product. The white pine product of the three 

 Lake states has been reduced nearly 40 per cent since 1890, 

 the year of maximum production. At that time it was 8.6 bil- 

 lion feet (not including shingles) ; gradually decreasing, it has 

 fallen now (1901) to 5.4 billion. 



The American Lumberman, which furnishes these data 

 most acceptably, formerly ridiculing the idea of waning sup- 

 plies, comments on this decline significantly : 



"We may say that if former methods of collecting statistics 

 had been followed there would have been a heavier decline. 

 That is to say, the report for 1901 is more nearly complete 

 than that for any previous year. It means simply that the 

 timber is disappearing, that the still increasing wants of the 

 country must be and are supplied to an increasing extent from 

 other sources. In that decline we see the chief stimulus to 

 the growth of the lumber industry in the South and on the 

 Pacific coast." And further accentuating the change of stand- 

 ards, which made earlier estimates of standing timber wrong : 

 "But what a change in quality! If all the remaining white 

 pine could be manufactured into lumber and put on the mar- 

 ket at once, it is doubtful if there would be as much good lum- 

 ber, to say nothing about uppers, as there was in 1882 alone." 



