Timber Depletion and the Answer. 7 



lation and extravagance, played their part. But an " auction'' 

 lumber market would have resulted in any event from the competi- 

 tion of buyers to obtain the limited and inadequate stocks available. 

 The interregional competition which normally would have checked 

 such extreme price movements was weakened not only by scant 

 lumber stocks but by the restricted movement of lumber caused by 

 shortages of cars. 



Lumber prices indeed rose to unprecedented limits. In March, 

 1920, average mill prices in the South and West had advanced 300 

 per cent and more over those received in 1914. Average retail prices 

 in the Middle West showed increases ranging from 150 to 200 per cent. 

 The average advance on high-grade hardwoods in eastern wholesale 

 markets was from 200 to 250 per cent, and even at these levels the 

 demand was still unsatisfied. While the costs of manufacturing 

 lumber at least doubled as compared with 1916, lumber prices have 

 much more than doubled and have become wholly disproportionate 

 to operating costs. The best thought in the industry has recognized 

 that prices were too high; and some manufacturers have sought to 

 stabilize the market. Prices, indeed, were so excessive in the spring 

 of 1920 that buying was automatically checked. 



There can be no doubt that timber depletion has contributed in no 

 small measure to the high lumber prices of the past 18 months. 

 The curtailment of the cut of lumber in many regions due to the using 

 up of their forests has not merely made the consumer pay more freight 

 on his lumber. It has aggravated the effects of car shortages and of 

 climatic and other factors causing temporary curtailment of output 

 in the regions which still support a large lumber industry. And 

 it has restricted opportunity for competition and thereby increased 

 the opportunity of the manufacturer or dealer to auction his lumber 

 stocks for higher prices. The leveling influence of competition 

 between the forest regions east of the Great Plains is fast disappearing. 

 This is at least one reason why lumber consumers in the Ohio Valley 

 are in some instances paying 50 per cent more than consumers of 

 the same material in Oregon, over and above the intervening freight 

 charges. 



Our remaining timber is so localized that its availability to the 

 average user of wood, and therefore its national utility, is greatly 

 reduced. Particularly does such a restricted distribution of the re- 

 maining forests assume a serious national aspect in the face of such 

 transportation congestion and inadequate transport facilities as the 

 United States is now experiencing. Had the war been fought 40 

 years ago and brought the same aftermath, there can be no doubt 

 that the presence of extensive lumber manufacturing industries at 

 that time in half a dozen eastern forest regions would, by the very 

 extent of regional competition and the wide distribution of the trans- 



