daily capacities of 40 M board feet or more which 

 cut about two-thirds of the hardwood and cypress 

 lumber and nearly a fifth of the pine sawed in South 

 Carolina. In 1940 the number was reduced to 12, 

 and in 1942 to 9, but in that year band mills cut al- 

 most one-half of the hardwood and cypress and less 

 than one-tenth of the pine. 



The depletion of old-growth stands will eventually 

 force the remaining large mills to shut down or to 

 adjust their operations to the productive capacity 

 of tributary areas. Discontinuance of large mills, 

 however, does not necessarily mean a decrease in 

 lumber production. The 1,488 mills in the State 

 have sufficient capacity to double or treble produc- 

 tion if adequate labor is made available. Such in- 

 creased production, however, could be justified only 

 by urgent war needs: if continued for more than a 

 few years the present slightly favorable balance of 

 growth over drain in South Carolina would be re- 

 versed, with distinctly unfavorable consequences. 



The sawmill industry in South Carolina is based 

 largely on pine utilization; 76 percent of 1942 pro- 

 duction came from species known commercially as 

 yel-ow pine. Of the lumber produced by Class 3 

 and smaller mills, most of which are portable, 93 per- 

 cent was from softwood species, principally pine. 

 This heavy and continued pressure on pine stands, 

 together with the natural tendency for hardwood 

 components gradually to assume dominance, indi- 

 cates that future stands will have a greater propor- 

 tion of hardwoods, particularly on the poorer sites. 

 This undesirable trend can be retarded under inten- 

 sive forest management, and possibly with the judi- 

 cious use of fire. 



Distribution of Lumber 



The distribution of the lumber produced in South 

 Carolina in 1940 is shown in table 21. For the period 

 1924^0 about 30 percent of South Carolina's annual 

 lumber cut was consumed in the State, according to 

 biennial Census reports. The proportion was least 

 (18 percent) in 1928 and highest (54 percent) in 1949. 



In the four biennial-census years 1934, 1936, 1938, 

 and 1940, the average distribution of lumber was as 

 follows: 42 percent consumed in the State, 12 per- 

 cent shipped to North Carolina, 9 percent to Penn- 

 sylvania, 10 percent to New York, 6 percent to Vir- 

 ginia, 4 percent to New Jersey, 3 percent to Georgia, 

 2 percent to Maryland, 2 percent to Ohio, 6 percent 

 toother States, and 4 percent to foreign destinations. 



Table 21. — Distribution of lumber produced in South 

 Carolina, 1940 i 



Destination 



Distrib 



ution 



South Carolina 



M bd. ft. 



461.893 

 96.79S 

 68,708 

 63,492 

 44,142 

 24,778 

 19,512 

 15,004 

 12,680 

 11,764 

 10,416 

 5,690 

 15.809 



Percent 

 54 



North Carolina 



11 







New York 



g 



Virginia 



s 







Ohio 





New England States 





Maryland 



2 



Delaware 





West Virginia 



J 



Other States 2 



, 



Foreign 



2 







Total 



850,683 



100 







1 Preliminary statistics for 1940, Bureau of the Census and 

 Forest Service. 



^ Florida, District of Columbia, Georgia, Tennessee, and 



Michigan. 



The larger mills have their own sales organizations 

 and ship directly to their customers in or out of the 

 State. Some of the portable mills do custom sawing 

 for local timber owners, but most of them cooperate 

 with a concentration yard to which they sell their 

 entire putput on a green, mill-run basis. The con- 

 centration yards assemble the production of a num- 

 ber of mills, dry it if necessary, surface and grade 

 it, and either retail the finished lumber locally or 

 ship to other markets. 



Veneer 



In contrast with lumber, the manufacture of ve- 

 neer is an expanding industry which has been stimu- 

 lated by new developments in the use of the product, 

 such as plywood for prefabricated houses and a 

 great variety of other peacetime products, and more 

 recently aircraft construction for war use. In 1940 

 South Carolina's 30 veneer mills consumed 75 million 

 board feet of logs and bolts (table 17). Their pro- 

 duction was about equally divided between veneer 

 for furniture and for baskets and crates. Hard- 

 woods, largely sweetgum, blackgum, and yellow- 

 poplar, have been used in considerable quantity for 

 high-grade furniture veneer and plywood, for which 

 the South Carolina furniture factories and the 

 highly developed furniture industry of North Caro- 

 lina provide a market. Both hardwoods and second- 

 growth pine go into the manufacture of veneer 

 crates and baskets, consumed largely in South Caro- 

 lina and adjoining States. 



42 



