LtfMBER CUT OF UKlTED STATES, 18'70-1020. 11 



Carolina pine sales being reported at 18 per cent of normal. In 

 December, 9 months after the peak, southern pine had declined to 

 $25.88. Its low postwar level of $20.36 was reached m April, 1921. 



Such is the story of the greatest lumber price wave ever recorded. 

 The commonly stated cause was the avalanche of demiand which 

 descended upon the lumber industry at a time when especially un- 

 favorable conditions in transportation and manufacture cut off con- 

 sumers from m.anuf acturers. This statement is true, but it is not the 

 whole truth. A contributing cause was the fact that eastern forests 

 were no longer plentiful and well distributed enough to relation in 

 the chief centers of consumption to make them a sure competitive 

 source of supply, when extraordinary difficulties arose. 



The price peak of 1920 was not the first, and it may not be the last. 

 It was a repetition on a larger scale of previous history. Following 

 the Civil War there was a price peak, definitely marked, but not 

 nearly as high. At that time bidding for existing lumber was not 

 so intense, because busmess was not transacted as rapidly, and ample 

 forests within reasonable reach of the consuming centers made it 

 obvious that there was plenty for all immediate needs. Yet at that 

 time the accumulated demand, increasing consumption, inflation of 

 currency, and lengthening lines of transportation to points in the 

 Lake States, caused lumber prices to settle at a new high level, with 

 softwoods about 33 per cent and hardwoods 100 per cent higher than 

 the averages before the Civil War. So, foUowmg the recession of 

 the price wave in 1920 a similar new higher level may be in process of 

 estabHshment. (See Fig. 4.) From January, 1921, to March, 1922. 

 southern pine varied but little from the average mill price of $21.18. 

 At this stage it is about 50 per cent higher than the average from 1905 

 to 1916, but whether this is a permanent new level it is still too early 

 to determine. A much smaller advance in prices would be ample to 

 cut down the per capita consumption of lumber. 



CENTER OF PRODUCTION SHIFTING TO THE PACIFIC COAST. 



For 100 years the lumber industry has been in the process of migra- 

 tion from one forested region to another. The first lumbering took 

 place along the Atlantic Coast, from Maine southward to the Royal 

 Colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas. But lumbering as we now 

 know it did not get under full headway until nearly the middle of the 

 last century, with the introduction of improved forms of machinery 

 and large merchant mills. As the first cut of pine in the more thickly 

 settled coast regions drew near its end the exploitation of the white 

 pine forests of the Lake States began and the hardwood regions of the 

 central Appalachians were opened to the market. As the cut of the 

 Lake States drew to its close many lumber manufacturers of that 

 region removed their operations to the South and began the attack 

 upon the great belt of long-leaf pine stretching from Virginia to Texas. 

 Each of these moves increased the distance between the centers of 

 production and the centers of consumption. Now four-fifths of the 

 original southern pine is gone, and there is in progress a marked 

 drift of lumbermen from the Southern States to the Pacific Coast, and 

 to the northern part of the Rocky Mountains, known as the Inland 

 Empire.^ 



s In this general statement it is not intended to overlook the fact that some important lumber manufac- 

 turing firms moved from New York directly to the South, and others from the Lake States to the West. 



