CHAPTER XII 



RESULTS OF OUR FOREST POLICY (continued): CONDI- 

 TIONS IN THE LUMBER INDUSTRY 



In order to bring out more clearly the unfortunate results of our 

 forest policy, it will be necessary to note the conditions in the lumber 

 industry, for it is in the lumber industry, rather than in the owner- 

 ship of standing timber, that the effect of our forest policy upon the 

 public is most clearly brought out. A discussion of conditions in the 

 lumber industry will involve some consideration, first, of price-fixing 

 activities among lumbermen; second, the depression in the industry 

 from 1905 to 1915; third, the wasteful methods of lumbering, and 

 fourth, the failure of lumbermen to reforest their lands. 



THE SO-CALLED LUMBER MONOPOLY 



The matter of price-fixing activities among lumbermen brings up 

 the question of the so-called "lumber monopoly"; and it should be 

 stated at once that in the lumber business there is no suggestion of 

 a single dominating monopoly, or anything approaching it, no single 

 organization occupying such a commanding position as the Inter- 

 national Harvester Company once did in its field, or the United States 

 Steel Corporation, or as the Standard Oil Company has long held in 

 the oil business. Such price-fixing activities as have been charged to 

 the lumbermen have not been attributed in general to the National 

 Lumber Manufacturers' Association, but to the various regional 

 associations.^ 



1 It is not the purpose of the writer to enter into any exhaustive discussion of 

 the lumber industry in this chapter. For more* elaborate treatment than is here 

 possible, see Part IV of the Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the 

 Lumber Industry: Compton, "Organization of the I.umber Industry": Some 

 Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber Industry, William B. Greeley, 

 Report No. 114, U. S. Dept. of Agr.: Brief on Behalf of the National Lumber 

 Manufacturers' Association, May, 1916: also articles by Professor George Stevens 



