THE PASSING OF AN INDUSTRY 



331 



WHITE OAK IN KENTUCKY PART OF THE SOUTH'S 

 MATCHLESS TIMBER RESOURCES 



products, the mines absorbed timber like a long famished 

 sponge, the ever growing fences called for millions of 

 posts and rails, and lumber was used for everything. 



In the meanwhile a mighty struggle, almost the coun- 

 terpart of the earlier struggle, was taking place across the 

 Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains in the fertile val- 

 leys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Cut off from the 

 markets and budding civilization of the Atlantic Coast by 

 what was then an almost insurmountable barrier, thrown 

 entirely on their own resources, the few straggling 

 settlers who had pushed their way across the steep 

 passes of the Cumberland were putting up a brave and 

 well-nigh desperate fight to carve their homes from the 

 most magnificent hardwood forests the world had ever 

 seen and defend them against the savage attacks of the 

 ShawTiees and the Miamis. 



They it was who built their barns of walnut and their 

 hog pens of the choicest oak, who hacked away at these 

 lordly monarchs till they could hack no more, and then 

 called all of the neighbors in from miles around to a 

 Ic^ rolling bee where they would eat their feast of nut 

 brown roasting ears beside a mountainous bonfire of the 

 choicest hardwood logs that ever grew, logs for which 

 the lumbermen of today would sell their very souls. 



A wanton waste! Who was there to buy? Where 

 could they sell? 



Let the forest stay there? Who had ever seen such 

 fertile land as that on which it grew? 



They needed the land, there was no market for the 

 timber; they used what they could and destroyed the 

 rest. It was on the mere remnants of this wonderful 

 hardwood forest that there later grew up the famous 



wood-using industries of Cincinnati, Louisville, Colum- 

 bus, Grand Forks, Saginaw and Oiicago. 



When Thomas Jefferson stood on the edge of the 

 prairies and looked out across that boundless sea of grass 

 he had gravely predicted that those vast plains would 

 not be settled for a thousand years. Thomas Jefferson 

 was a wise and cautious man and he thought he knew, 

 but he had not counted on the invention and phenomenal 

 development of the railroads, a development made pos- 

 sible very largely by the unlimited supply of cheap white 

 oak ties and glistening steel rails dug from woodlined 

 mines. 



Clementine's father and the other intrepid souls who, 

 lured by the gleam of virgin gold, fought their way 



YELLOW PINE IN GEORGIA THE SOUTH HAD 

 AWAKENED WITH A VENGEANCE AND PROCEEDED 

 TO PUMP A SOLID YELLOW STREAM TO EVERY QUAR- 

 TER OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD 



