TRANSPORTATION AND YR 45 



The logging costs in the German states have increased in keep- 

 ing with better wages ; this increase is over fifty per cent since 1870 

 and the increase continues. Usually the costs vary but little from 

 year to year and so may be estimated very closely. Transportation 

 of logs to mill and of timber and lumber to markets affects Yr very 

 seriously everywhere. In the United States the transportation of 

 logs to mill formerly meant long drives, costly improvements, much 

 loss by "sinkers" and a great deal of risk. Today it involves costly 

 railway construction where the one cut must pay for all improve- 

 ment in this way subtracting heavily from the value of the standing 

 material. 



Transportation to market in the United States is normally long 

 distance haul. The average haul in the United States for cypress 

 and southern pine may be assumed to be over six hundred miles be- 

 tween mill and customer ; for western timber over fifteen hundred 

 miles, and even for Lake states' stuff over three hundred miles, and 

 this practically all by rail. 



In Europe too the influence of transportation costs on the price 

 of timber is evident in spite of shorter railway haul and more exten- 

 sive use of waterways. The same kind of timber in east Prussia 

 and Poland sells for fifty to one hundred per cent less than it does 

 in the industrial Rhine districts. 



The influence of a good system of roads is well illustrated in the 

 Black Forest, while the utter lack of roads in parts of the Alps pre- 

 vents many villages from having any material income from the for- 

 est properties. 



h. The volume, quality and value of the final cut depends on 

 the care and protection of the stand and the presence or absence of 

 injurious agencies like storm, fire, insects, fungi, drought, snow, 

 sleet, etc. 



On every large property some of these enemies are at work at 

 different times and it is the rare exception that a stand of timber 

 passes through its entire life of one hundred years or more without 

 suffering more, or less injury. Fungi and insects are always present 

 and need only suitable conditions to multiply into regular epidemics. 

 Often these enemies are assisted through the mistakes of the for- 

 ester in selecting the wrong species for the site in question, by keep- 

 ing too dense a stand, etc. It is due to these enemies and injurious 

 conditions that most stands of timber, especially intolerants, "break," 

 or open up long before the end of the rotation and often compel 

 earlier cutting or underplanting, and on poor sites, adoption of 

 shorter rotation. 



