UNLIMITED KAW MATERIAL FOK PAPER MAKING 121 



a guarantee that there can be no inordinate advance in the price of spruce 

 lumber without decreasing the demand and consequently the competition with 

 the pulp mill. Further than this all the lumber has formidable competition 

 in materials suitable for the same purposes, such as steel and especially con- 

 crete for building, artificial board made from waste wood, and coal for fuel 

 instead of fire- wood (the greatest single item of wood consumption). The 

 prevention of forest fires (said to destroy more than the axe) and conservative 

 methods of forest handling will also be important factors in safeguarding 

 the future supply of lumber and hence of pulp-wood. 



CONSERVATIVE LUMBERING BY PAPER MANUFACTURERS 



Paper manufacturers, owning timberlands, are almost without exception 

 conservative in handling them. As a concrete instance, the case of the In- 

 ternational Paper Company may be cited. In its fourteen years of existence 

 it has cut on all its lands in the United States less than two-tenths of a 

 cord per acre each year, which is not in excess of the natural growth. On 

 its lands in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York there is thus 

 standing today fully as much timber as in 1898. In addition to this limited 

 cutting it has established a nursery and has done considerable replanting of 

 previously denuded or burnt-over areas and abandoned farms. In general, 

 replanting is not necessary for reproduction, limited cutting being sufficient, 

 and this is the prevailing practice not only with paper manufacturers, but 

 others owning pulp-wood lands. 



GREAT DECREASE IN PRICES OF PAPER 



The real problem confronting the paper manufacturer is not whether there 

 is an ample supply of raw material, but whether he can continue to meet the 

 insatiate demands of the publisher for cheap paper if labor, pulp-wood, chem- 

 icals, machinery, and almost everything entering into the cost continue to 

 increase. For the past ten years he has succeeded by improving methods and 

 machinery in holding the price almost stationary. Some kinds of paper are 

 actually cheaper. Notwithstanding the false impression created by the news- 

 papers in their agitation for free paper, news print paper on the average is 

 not 10 per cent higher than ten years ago. Some of the great dailies used to 

 buy below the general market; prices are now more uniform,, and because 

 these publishers are treated like their weaker competitors they do not like it. 

 In 1885 the normal price of news print paper was $100 per ton, in 1890, $60 

 per ton, in 1900, $43 per ton, and in 1911 from $43 to $45 per ton. In this 

 last decade the cost of labor in the mills and of pulp-wood have advanced 

 at least 50 per cent and many other items only to a less degree. 



PUBLISHERS ASK SPECIAL PRIVILEGE 



In the endeavor to meet this ever-resounding clamor for cheap paper, our 

 manufacturers of newspaper have for the past ten years been importing 

 from Canada considerable pulp-wood. There are vast quantities over the 



