THE PASSING OF AN INDUSTRY 



335 



hemlock of the Lake States barred her from a portion 

 of the field ; the second-growth pine of the East restricted 

 her activities there ; the Inland Empire of Eastern Wash- 

 ington, Idaho and Western Montana was doing what it 

 could against her. But all these were puny little competi- 

 tors whom she held in supreme contempt. She looked 

 at her thousands of acres of swaying pines and laughed 

 in her confidence. Full well she knew that they could 

 not successfully compete with her. 



But hark ! There is a certain rumbling in the West 

 that gives her pause. A dark foreboding of a giant 

 stirring there. A giant of enormous stature and of un- 

 told strength. Afar off he is, but of tremendous reach, 

 and already he is snatching covetously at the supremacy 

 which the South has so long confidently held. For the 

 first time the South feels a tremor of fear, an inkling of 

 doubt in her one time strength. Like a blooded race 

 horse, she will hold that killing pace to the very end, 

 and already the end is in sight for her. The giant is 

 thrusting his products under her very nose, wresting 

 her trade from her at every turn, and she feels her 

 crown tottering. 



Within another decade the glory of the lumber in- 

 dustry in the South will be a thing of the past. Thou- 

 sands of her sawmills will be dead, and her arteries of 

 foreign trade will be dried up. The industry itself will 

 not die, any more than it was dead in all of the other 

 regions through which supremacy has so quickly passed, 

 but it will be a weak and shrunken thing compared with 

 which one time it was, and it will struggle ineffectually 



TIMBER F.^LLERS AT WORK ON A BIG SUGAR PINE 

 IN A CALIFORNIA FOREST AND IT IS THE BEGIN- 

 NING OF THE END OF THIS MAGNIFICENT TIMBER 

 TREE FOR THE CROSS-CUT SAW WILL FINALLY 

 BRING IT TO EARTH. 



THE WONDERFUL FIR AND HEMLOCK TIMBER OF 

 WASHINGTON. THE PRODUCTS OF THESE FORESTS 

 THREATEN THE SUPREMACY OF THE SOUTH ONLY 

 THEIR DISTANT LOCATION SAVES HER TOTTERING 

 THRONE. 



to supply even local demands from the remnants of its 

 once "inexhaustible" forests. 



Then, indeed, will this giant of the Pacific Coast, this 

 overgrown child of a restless race, be the last of the 

 generation to wear the crown of the great American 

 lumber industry. He would have been crowned years 

 ago had he not been born before his time and shackled 

 in various and subtle ways. As it is, his honor is assured, 

 if a bit delayed for he has the strength which all the 

 rest of the nation one time had and spent. 



The story of this great giant is pathetic, even though 

 many of its troubles have been of its own making, and 



