190 Proc^e:dings of th^ 



igan we begin to find mills on the St. Clair. They 

 throve in the '30s, increased and with the settlement 

 of the country the lumber industry of the State spread 

 until it covered the entire State. At about the same 

 time there were a few mills on the shore of Lake 

 Michigan in Wisconsin and on the Wisconsin River. 

 In 1830 the city of Chicago received its lumber by ox 

 team from the Alleghany Mountains. The consump- 

 tion of lumber in 1883 was 2,225,000,000 feet — a con- 

 trast with the load brought by the ox team in 1830. 

 In 1852 I went to Canada, returning from California, 

 and began the manufacture of lumber on the north 

 shore of Lake Erie. Here a strip from Port Hope on 

 the east to Port Stanley on the west represented the 

 area of lumber operations. In 1862 I went to Saginaw, 

 remaining there seventeen years. In those year, speak- 

 of values, I bought lumber which ran 75 per cent, 

 upper for $14 a thousand feet. Those uppers to-day, 

 were they still to be had, would be worth $85 to $100 

 in Chicago. This is the increase in value. In 

 1870 in connection with Henry S. Dow I became the 

 original lumber journalist of the country, and from 

 that time I have been greatly interested in statistics of 

 production. I have often found great difficulty in ob- 

 taining reports of statistics of manufacture, but we 

 have so perfected the system of statistics as to have 

 arrived at a fair knowledge of the production of the 

 country. In 1870 and thereabouts, after many experi- 

 ments confined wholly to pine — for in those days the 

 lumberman knew nothing about any lumber except 

 pine — it was determined that the consumption averaged 

 500 feet per capita. Some put it at 494 feet, some at 

 510, in the several years during which these figures 

 were compiled. The per capita consumption to-day 

 is not less than 750 feet, including all varieties of tim- 



