LUMBER CtfT OF UlS^lTED STATES, 1870-1920. 
11 
Carolina pine sales being reported at 18 per cent of normal. In 
December, 9 months after the peak, southern pine had decliaed to 
§25.88. Its low postwar level of §20.36 was reached in April, 1921. 
Such is the story of the greatest lumber price wave ever recorded. 
The commonly stated cause was the avalanche of demand which 
descended upon the lumber industry at a time when especially un- 
favorable conditions in transportation and manufacture cut on con- 
sumers from manufacturers. This statement is true, but it is not the 
whole truth. A contributm^ cause was the fact that eastern forests 
were no longer plentiful and well distributed enough to relation in 
the chief centers of consumption to make them a sure competitive 
source of supply, when extraordinary difficulties arose. 
The price peak of 1920 was not the first, and it may not be the last. 
It was a repetition on a larger scale of previous history. Following 
the Civil War there was a price peak, definitely marked, but not 
nearly as high. At that time bidding for existing limiber was not 
so intense, because business was not transacted as rapidly, and ample 
forests within reasonable reach of the consuming centers made it 
obvious that there was plenty for all immediate needs. Yet at that 
time the accumulated demand, increasing consmnption, inflation of 
ctu-rency, and lengthening lines of transportation to points in the 
Lake States, caused limiber prices to settle at a new high level, with 
softwoods about 33 per cent and hardwoods 100 per cent higher than 
the averages before the Civil War. So, followmg the recession of 
the price wave in 1920 a similar new higher level may be in process of 
estabhshment. (See Fig. 4.) From January, 192 1!^ to March, 1922. 
southern pine varied but little from the average mill price of 821.18. 
At this stage it is about 50 per cent higher than the average from 1905 
to 1916, but whether this is a permanent new level it is still too early 
to determine. A much smaller advance in prices would be ample to 
cut down the per capita consimaption of lumber. 
CENTER OF PRODUCTION SHIFTING TO THE PACIFIC COAST. 
For 100 years the Imnber industry has been in the process of migra- 
tion from one forested region to another. The first lumberin^took 
place along the Atlantic Coast, from Maine southward to the Royal 
Colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas. But lumbering as we now 
know it did not get under full headway until nearly the middle of the 
last century, with the introduction of improved forms of machinery 
and large merchant mills. As the first cut of pine in the more thickly 
settled coast regions drew near its end the exploitation of the white 
pine forests of the Lake States began and the hardwood regions of the 
central Appalachians were opened to the market. As the cut of the 
Lake States drew to its close many lumber manufactm'ers of that 
region removed their operations to the South and began the attack 
upon the great belt of long-leaf pine stretchuig from Virginia to Texas. 
Each of these moves increasea the distance between the centers of 
production and the centers of consimiption. Now four-fiifths of the 
ori^al southern pine is gone, and there is in progress a marked 
drift of lumbermen from the Southern States to the Pacific Coast, and 
to the northern part of the Rocky Momitains, kno\\Ti as the Inland 
Empire.^ 
» In this general statement it is not intended to overlook the fact that some important lumber manufac- 
turing firms moved from New York directly to the South, and others from the Lake States to the West. 
