8 BULLETIN 718, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
the demand. There is little to be gained in sawing out a lot of lum- 
ber and keeping it hidden away in the hills. For every man, woman, 
and child in the United States 375 feet of lumber is used annually; in 
new States three or four times as much. Montana, for example, uses 
1,234 feet per capita, and it is a moderate estimate that a community 
of 500 people will use up a quarter of a million feet annually. 
A small mill operator who opens a yard and keeps 100,000 feet of 
lumber in stock, along with a moderate amount of shingles, lath, 
and building material, can establish a remunerative business very 
easily. Be it understood that lumber in this sense means lumber 
that is properly sawed, surfaced (when necessary), edged, trimmed, 
graded, air dried, and properly piled. You can not run a successful 
lumber yard with rubbish anywhere. 
The heaviest demand in newly settled communities is for low- 
grade lumber, viz, No. 3 common and dimension, the very class of 
material which the portable mills can supply most readily. The 
upper grades will always find a remunerative market. A small 
mill, if properly handled, can successfully hold a competitive market 
for low-grade lumber and dimension against similar products pro- 
duced in a large mill and shipped into the local market. 
GRADING LUMBER. 
The necessity for grading the product of small mills can not be 
emphasized too strongly or too often. Every millman is able to dis- 
tinguish between good and bad, rotten and sound lumber, and what 
sort of a log is best adapted for inch lumber and what for plank, 
dimension, finish, and so on. But when it comes to being able to 
tell at a glance what defects in a board causes it to grade No. 1 
common instead of inch finish very few can make an intelligent dis- 
tinction, yet those men have been handling such lumber perhaps a 
lifetime. They have simply neglected to use their powers of 
observation. 
The Western Pine Manufacturers' Association of Spokane, Wash., 
issues free a little booklet containing the rules for the grading of pine, 
fir, and larch, which is distributed by their secretary to anyone in- 
terested. To a man handling lumber every day this little book will 
be invaluable. To have lumber to sell and no grading rule to sell it 
by is a condition that spells certain loss for the sawmill owner. If 
he doesn't study grading himself, his son will, with the result that the 
boy will learn more about the lumber business in a month than his 
father has been able to pick up in years. There is no " royal road " 
to a knowledge of lumber grading — you must learn it yourself. 
It sometimes happens that when an enterprising mill operator, who 
has adopted modern methods in milling and grading his output, is 
negotiating the sale of a bill of lumber with a prospective purchaser, 
