o 



THE RISE IN LUMBER PRICES* . 



BY 

 R. S. KELLOGG 



U. S. Forest Service 



URS is pre-eminently a wood-us- nation, and we have seized upon every 



ing civilization, and aside from available resource to aid in our growth, 



food and clothing, no material is so Though the forests have been destroy- 



essential to industrial progress as ed, they have yielded rich returns. Yet 



wood. Nature provided us with im- there is another drain upon them, 



mense areas of easily accessible, high- which has been wholly harmful. This 



ly valuable forests, and we have drawn is fire. As a single example : The 



upon them with so lavish a hand for Secretary of the Pacific Coast Associa- 



every conceivable purpose that we are tion recently stated that during the 



loath to believe that the time is rapidly last fifty years there has been 900,000 



approaching when our remaining for- acres more timber burned over than 



ests must be handled constructively cut over in Oregon, 



and not destructively ; or else wood of In the early days New England was 



the higher classes will be obtainable the great lumber region. Then came 



only in insufficient quantity. Accord- the Lake States with their supposedly 



ing to the Census of 1900, which was "inexhaustible supply" of timber. This 



admittedly incomplete, we were then was said 30 or 40 years ago. Now, 



using annually thirty-five billion feet Michigan is a practically negligible 



of lumber, and now the amount is factor in white pine. Wisconsin is on 



probably nearing fifty billion feet. Yet the wane, and it will not be many years 



how many of you ever stop to consider until Minneapolis and Cloquet cease 



that the lumber cut is much less than turning out a million and a half feet 



half of the total annual drain upon each daily during the sawing season, 



our forests? The pulp mills take some Southern yellow pine is at present fur- 



2,000,000 cords of wood yearly, the nishing in the neighborhood of 30 per 



tanneries 1,500,000 cords of hemlock cent of the total lumber supply, but it 



and oak bark, the cooperage industry in turn will yield to the Pacific Coast 



a vast amount of timber, the railroads woods ; and we have finally come to 



about 115,000,000 ties for renewals the realization that the so-caled "inex- 



alone, and then there are millions of haustible supply" is a pleasing, but 



posts and poles to be added to the to- most dangerous misconception. Ex- 



tal before we even come to the half of ploitation has been so easy, invention 



of our wood consumption. The Cen- has supplied so many ingenious meth- 



sus of 1880 showed that the wood ods of converting trees into lumber, 



used for fuel, at that time, amounted that the output from a given region is 



to 146,000,000 cords, and there is no maintained at a high level until the 



reason to suppose that, despite the supply is close to the point of exhaus- 



great increase in coal consumption, the tion. We are nearer a halting place 



8'5, 000,000 people of 1906 are burning than most of us realize. 



less wood than did the 50,000,000 of What is the condition confronting 



1880. the lumberman and the user of his 



All these items, huge though they products to-day? Dr. Fernow states 



be, belong to necessary demands upon that an "extravagant estimate" of our 



the forest We are a rapidly growing stumpage is not over two trillion feet, 



Paper read at the sixteenth annual meeting of the Southern Lumber Manufacturers' 

 Association at New Orleans, January 23, 1906. 



