THE PASSING OF AN INDUSTRY 



329 



THE WHITE PINE FORESTS OF MINNESOTA OFFERED 

 A LURE TO THE LUMBERMEN NOT TO BE RESISTED. 

 AND PRODUCTION INCREASED BY LEAPS AND 

 BOUNDS. 



cheap but splendid homes the American standard of living 

 rose till her people could never again be content to 

 return to those old cave-like dwellings of their ancestors. 

 Education has played no small part, but it is really 

 cheap wood which has placed the American standard of 

 living where it is today. 



Sawmills sprang up in New England like mushrooms 

 after a rain, but they were little mills. The land was in 

 small tracts and there were many owners. The markets 

 were mostly small and close at hand except those of the 

 export trade. They had to be, for outside of the rivers 

 WJiich carried the logs to the sea there was no means 

 of long distance transportation. The topography was 

 difficult, the product more or less of a drug on the market, 

 the winters uncertain, and the population was yet com- 

 paratively small. Important as the timber had been to 

 early New England, great as the industry had grown, 

 it has always been more or less of a household industry 

 inextricably entangled with the enforced clearing of 

 land. The logs were at first the by-products of the 

 land clearing, it was only later that the industry asserted 

 its independence and the cleared land became a secondary 

 product of little or no importance. 



The core of the snowball was found in New England, 

 but the snowball had not started to roll and gather the 

 tremendous bulk which it later attained. 



So it was that the white pine forests of New England 

 the only species of any commercial value at that time 

 were gradually wiped out by the attrition of the settler 

 and the exploitation of the lumberman till the crown 



passed and New York State claimed the lead in the pro- 

 duction of lumber. The change was gradual, but by 

 1840 the change was complete and New York with her 

 great pine and hardwood forests, her many rivers, her 

 Erie Canal (and her budding railroads) was definitely 

 acknowledged to be the new center of the lumber industry. 

 This change in leadership was not due to any sudden or 

 abnormal growth of the industry in New York. She 

 had already passed the peak of her production a decade 

 or two before, made her bid for supremacy and failed, 

 and it was only the more rapid decline in New England 

 that had overtaken her on the downward grade, and 



RED AND WHITE PINE IN MINNESOTA THE TYPE 

 OF TIMBER RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MATURITY OF 

 THE LUMBER INDUSTRY TO "MAN'S ESTATE" DURING 

 THE SUPREMACY OF THE LAKE STATES. 



