Lumbering Development. 405 



million, representing a consumption of 20 million cubic 

 feet of forest-grown material. 



Especially after the Civil War, the settlements of the 

 West grew as if by magic; the railroad mileage more 

 than doubled in the decade from 1865 to 1875, and with 

 it, the lumber industry developed by rapid strides into 

 its modem methods and volume. How rapidly the 

 changes took place may be judged from the fact that, in 

 1865, the State of New York still furnished more lum- 

 ber than any other State; now it supplies only insignifi- 

 cant amounts, a little over two per cent, of the total 

 lumber cut. 



In 1868, the golden age of lumbering had arrived in 

 Michigan; in 1871, rafts filled the Wisconsia; ia 1875, 

 Eau Claire had 30, Marathan 30, and Fond du Lac 30 

 sawmills, now all gone; and mills at La Crosse, which 

 were cutting millions of feet annually, are now closed. 

 By 1882, the Saginaw Valley had reached the climax of 

 its production, and the lumber industry of the great 

 Northwest, with a cut of 8 billion feet of White Pine 

 alone, was in full blast. The White Pine production 

 reached its maximum in 1890, with 8.5 billion feet, then 

 to decrease gradually but steadily to less than half that 

 cut in 1908. Southern development began to assume 

 large proportions much later; at the present time, the 

 lumber product of the Southern States has grown to 

 amounts nearly double that of all the ISTorthem States 

 combined. 



But not only the unparalleled and ever increasing wood 

 consumption, which now has reached 250 cubic feet per 

 capita, five times that of Germany and ten times that of 

 Prance, threatened the exhaustion of the natural sup- 



