RESULTS OF OUR FOREST POLICY 359 



price level is higher than it has ever been before in the history of the 

 industry.** 



WASTE OF TIMBER 



Waste of natural resources of every kind has always characterized 

 new countries and especially the frontier; and it was inevitable that 

 the lumber business should be carried on wastefully. That which has 

 only slight value is never used economically. This waste takes several 

 forms. First, timber is cut in advance ot any real economic demand, 

 timber which might better be left until the country needs it ; second, 

 the trees felled are but partially utilized, and large amounts of low- 

 grade material are destroyed in the woods or mills ; and third, inferior 

 species in the forests are wholly or partly left uncut. *^ 



The first element of waste results from cutting timber solely on 

 account of the financial difficulties of timber or mill owners, and then 

 forcing it upon the market at a sacrifice price, often less than the cost 

 of production. Such lumber often represents, not competition in 

 manufacture, but competition in unloading burdensome timber hold- 

 ings, a patent ill effect of the close connection between lumber manu- 

 facturing and speculation in timber lands. Hence results a surplus 

 of stock, to be disposed of like the "transit" cars of lumber shipped 

 into Chicago by the hundreds during 1914 and 1915 and sold on the 

 way or after arrival for whatever they might bring.** 



Sidelights on this situation illustrate the wastes of overproduction. 

 Some operators on the west coast with rafts of high-grade fir logs, 

 which in good times are manufactured largely into flooring, stepping, 

 silo stock, and other high-quality products worth probably $20 per 

 thousand feet, in 1914 and 1915 cut such timber into railroad ties 

 and other cheap products at $8 per thousand or less, because this 

 was the only business to be had at the time, and because of physical 

 and financial inability to carry large stocks of logs until a better 

 market was available. A yellow pine company in the South, during 



46 "Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber Industry," 24 et seq. : Pro- 

 ceedings, Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the National Lumber Manufacturers' 

 Assoc, 21, 167, 172: Am. Lumberman, Mar. 18, 1916, 44. 



47 "Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber Industry," 64 et seq.: Brief 

 before the Federal Trade Commission on Behalf of the National I^umber Manu- 

 facturers' Association, May, 1916, 33; Jan., 1916, 74. 



*8 "Public and Economic Aspects of the Lumber Industry," 64 et seq. 



