372 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



seems to have been inculcated in the early settlers. 

 Then came the period of railroad building and the 

 settling of the Western prairies and plains, after 

 i860, and then only the enormous lumber business, 

 as we know it to-day, came into existence. 



The difference in the volume and character of 

 the business of forest exploitation is most readily 

 seen by comparing the census figures at different 

 periods. In 1840, there were reported 31,560 

 lumber mills, with a total product valued at 

 $12,943,507, or a little over $400 per mill. Small 

 country mills, run like gristmills and often in con- 

 nection with such, sawed to order for home con- 

 sumption, or sent material to the mouth of the 

 river, to be carried by vessel to home and foreign 

 markets. By 1870, a change had already become 

 apparent, when the product per mill was $6500, 

 which in 1890 had grown to ^19,000, or about 

 three times the value of 1870 with only 21,011 

 mills reported. 



In 1865, the state of New York still furnished 

 more lumber than any other state ; it now is seven- 

 teenth in the list with less than one billion feet. 

 In 1868, the golden age of lumbering had arrived 

 in Michigan, and this state is still second with over 

 three bilHon feet; in 1871, rafts filled the Wisconsin 

 River, and the state of Wisconsin is now the largest 

 producer ; yet the 30 mills of Eau Claire, 20 mills 

 at Marathon, 20 mills at Fond du Lac, which in 

 1875 cut millions of feet, are now all gone. 



