THE FORESTS OF LOUISIANA' 



By FREDERICK J. GRACE 

 Register of the Louisiana State Land Office and Commissioner of Forestry 



LOIMSIANA in the last few years 

 has reached the second notch in 

 the production of lumber. The 

 great state of Washington, along tlvj 

 Pacific coast, precedes us. Traveling 

 through this wooded state of ours, the 

 train rushes by innumerable mills ; or, 

 in more leisurely journeying on some of 

 our inland streams, such as the beauti- 

 ful Teche and Bayou Plaquemine, made 

 famous by Evangeline hunting for her 

 lover Gabriel, one finds them lined with 

 numerous band sawmills, heading and 

 shingle factories, and cypress cooperage 

 plants, cutting many million feet of lum- 

 ber per day, which are fast eating up 

 our large bodies of timber. We have 

 still standing in this state, according to 

 the last reports of the assessors and of 

 the United States Forest Service, the 

 following acreage in timber, which may 

 be of vast importance to the lumber fra- 

 ternity of this and other states : We 

 have in pine of various kinds, as nearly 

 as we can figure, 4,269,928 acres ; and 

 we have in hardwood, such as oak, gum, 

 cotton, ash, maple, tupelo gum, willow, 

 persimmon, hickory, magnolia, beech, 

 elm, sycamore, and poplar, 3,388,486 

 acres ; and, about as nearly as I can 

 estimate (some parishes not reporting), 

 1 find 900,000 acres of cypress. Our 

 denuded or cut-over pine lands amount 

 to about 2,472,000 acres ; our denuded 

 or cut-over cypress and hardwood lands 

 amount to about 2,000.000 acres. 



Lumber statistics and a statement i>- 

 sued by the Census Bureau of last 

 June, show that in 1908 516 sawmills 

 in Louisiana cut 2,722,421,000 feet of 

 lumber a decrease approximately of 

 250,000,000 from the cut of 1907, due 

 principally, of course, to unfavorable 



conditions. This lumber has been cut 

 into almost every imaginable shape, em- 

 ploying about 35,000 men per day, and 

 at the average price of $2 per day would 

 mean about $70,000 paid out every day 

 for labor alone. Total this for one year 

 and it will be seen that Louisiana pays 

 out annually a good many millions of 

 dollars in labor alone to her vast army 

 of employees for the lumber industry. 

 There is no other business in the state 

 paying out as much money for labor as 

 the lumber mills and this is spent prin- 

 cipally within the borders of our own 

 state. 



The principal part of the output of 

 the lumber of Louisiana is sold in other 

 states and foreign countries. Our pines 

 and cypress and oak staves find their 

 way into Europe in large quantities. 

 ( )ur cottonwood and other soft mate- 

 rial is shipped all over the globe for 

 barrel and packing purposes. A great 

 deal of our oak and pine has been 

 shipped into Panama to be used in the 

 construction of the Panama Canal. Ac- 

 cording to the best information obtain- 

 able, forty -one per cent of the standing 

 timber is still in the hands of the farm- 

 ers, merchants, and other land owners, 

 but in a good many of the large par- 

 ishes in this state the larger bodies of 

 pine and cypress timber have been pur- 

 chased by the mill owners, who buy 

 principally the timber and leave the 

 farmer practically all the land. 



The forests of Louisiana are teem- 

 ing with timber of all kinds. Our pine 

 trees are the finest grown in the world. 

 They obtain their preeminence from 

 a combination of qualities. They pos- 

 sess such qualities of strength, of 

 elasticity combined with comparative- 



'Address delivered by Mr. Grace before the Conservation Conference of the Southern 

 States, held in New Orleans. November J, 1909, by invitation of Governor Sanders nf 

 Louisiana. 



13 



