LOGGING IX THE DOUGLAS FIE REGION. 37 
good ground and second-growth timber along the Columbia River, 
was 60 feet. 
Long logs can be cut into shorter lengths at the landing, boom, or 
mill with a power machine more economically than in the woods with 
a crosscut saw, and special orders for unusal lengths can more readily 
be filled. 
LONG BUTTING. 
Some trees are defective at the base, the defect consisting of rot, 
shake, and pitchy material extending 6 feet or more up the tree. 
These defective ends will make little lumber, so little or no scale is 
given them. To include them with the butt logs would be poor 
economy, since it costs practically as much to log and saw defective 
as sound material, particularly in the case of operators who haul 
over a common-carrier railroad. This has resulted in the practice 
of bucking off that portion of the tree which in the judgment of the 
log marker is defective. The practice is known as long butting. 
Old hemlock trees frequently need to be long butted, the defect 
at the base — rot, shakes, and checks — destroying the utility of the 
butt logs, though these defects are not so common or so injurious in 
western hemlock as in the eastern species. The operator can not 
afford to take any chances in the utilization of hemlock. Sound 
hemlock logs sold in 1916 from $5.50 to $6.50, in rare cases $7, per 
thousand feet, a price that about equals the price of the lowest grade 
of Douglas fir; so there is a comparatively small margin of profit, 
sometimes no margin. Then, too, if hemlock that has not been long 
butted is dumped into the water, driven, rafted, and towed some dis- 
tance, or stays in the water any length of time, a portion of the butt 
logs will be lost through sinking or straying. The loss because of 
hemlock " sinkers " will vary. If no preventive measures are taken, 
such as long butting, cutting long-butt logs, "swinging" the butt 
logs in the raft, etc., the loss may amount to 10 or 15 per cent. 
BREAKAGE. 
With the felling of the first tree the logger was confronted with a 
problem of breakage, which was to remain to a great extent unsolved 
to the present and reach its most aggravated form on the Pacific 
coast. 
No comprehensive study of breakage as it relates to this region has 
been made. Few companies have seen fit to study the losses that 
result. Different men have different ideas as to what the percentage 
is in the region as a whole or in a given camp. One head bucker puts 
the loss at 30 per cent of the timber felled, taking it straight through. 
60 per cent of this loss being due to carelessness. Others estimate 
the breakage at from 5 to 15 per cent of the total merchantable stand. 
