12 BULLETIN" 308, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



teams, and other logging appliances. With the retreat of the source 

 of timber farther back into the hills many roads which at the start 

 were purely railroad logging trams have been improved and organ- 

 ized as common carriers. Many mills in the Central South are hauling 

 logs from 50 to 80 miles over their own rails, and some over 100 miles. 

 As a rule the cost of handling prevents the separation of the rough 

 milling from the finishing operations, and practically all of the mills 

 in the Mississippi region manufacture large amounts of the stand- 

 ard forms of finished products. The larger mills commonly have 

 two band saws, and the largest ones employ gang saws in addition. 

 The capacities are mostly from 100 to 150 thousand feet in an ordi- 

 nary working day, while the largest mills can turn out about 300 

 thousand feet a day. 



COST. 



The straight stem, the small crown, the clear and straight-grained 

 character of the wood, and the gregarious habit of the tree make 

 the cost of lumbering shortleaf pine relatively low. Large yields 

 per acre afford opportunity for economy in method and equipment. 

 On the other hand, the occurrence of shortleaf over rolling or hilly 

 lands would tend to increase logging costs and the home of longleaf 

 and loblolly over the low coastal plain affords easier logging and 

 shorter hauls to seagoing transportation for the finished product. 



The cost of manufacture in three representative regions — New 

 Jersey, South Carolina, and Arkansas — is given below. A lumber- 

 ing operation on private land within the Lebanon State Reserve, 

 Burlington County, N. J., costs about 70 cents for cutting, $3.50 for 

 hauling logs 3 miles to the mill, and $4 for milling. With the addi- 

 tion of 60 cents for depreciation the total cost was $8.80 per thousand 

 feet of rough lumber. The timber was mostly 70 to 110 years old. 



In the uplands of South Carolina logging and sawing rough pine 

 lumber by portable mills in small tracts often cost not more than 

 from $5 to $7 per thousand feet. The mills are small and most of 

 the output is roughly manufactured. 



In the virgin shortleaf forest region from Alabama to Texas — for 

 the past 10 or 15 years the greatest yellow-pine lumbering region of 

 the United States — lumbering is on a comparatively permanent basis. 

 In general, the cost of logging may be placed at from $4 to $7 per 

 thousand feet and milling at $6 to $8, under average conditions and 

 good management in the upland shortleaf regions. In this connec- 

 tion the itemized manufacturing costs of 30 mills cutting shortleaf 

 timber in central and western Arkansas, shown in Table 7, will 

 be interesting. The average cost of logging was $5.47 and mill- 

 ing $7.22, or a total cost of the finished timber aboard the car of 



