4 BULLETIN 506, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
METHOD OF COMPILATION. 
The collection of reports, mostly by mail, was continued until the 
last of April, 1916. At that time, with reports from 16,815 mills of 
an aggregate cut in 1915 of 31,241,734,000 board feet as a basis, the 
Forest Service computed the total cut of lumber in 1915 to be 37,011,- 
656,000 board feet by 29,951 mills assumed to have been active. Al- 
though these figures were arrived at by a process of computation 
based on known facts, it is possible that the results are too conserva- 
tive. In all, there may have been 33,000 or 34,000 mills active. If 
this was the case, practically all of the additional mills were of the 
smallest class, cutting on an average less than 200,000 board feet each. 
The total cut of these mills might have amounted to nearly a billion 
feet; and it is therefore possible that the grand total lumber cut in 
1915 was 38,000,000,000 feet. 
As reports from the big mills came in, the Forest Service issued a 
cumulative series of comparisons of the 1915 and 1914 production of 
identical mills cutting 5,000,000 board feet or over in either year, in- 
cluding mills idle one year but not mills cutting out. Since such 
mills cut 65 per cent of the total lumber production, data on their 
operations are significant in showing the trend of production. The 
final comparison resulted in the following figures representing per 
cents of increase or decrease in 1915 as compared with 1914 in re- 
spective States, in the cut of the largest mills : 
State. 
Arkansas 
Oklahoma -.. 
Texas... 
Louisiana 
Mississippi 
Alabama 
Georgia 
Florida 
South Carolina. 
North Carolina. 
Virginia 
Southern pine States. 
West Virginia. 
Kentucky 
Tennessee 
Missouri 
Minnesota 
Wisconsin 
Michigan 
Num- 
Increase 
ber of 
or de- 
mills. 
crease. 
Per cent. 
72 
- 4 

+ 21 
69 
+ 2 
168 
- 3 
102 
— 7 
49 
- 1 
37 
- 1 
65 
- 1 
37 
+17 
80 
- 1 
35 

719 
- 3 
65 
- 9 
19 
-10 
29 
-24 
12 
-28 
37 
-21 
75 
-13 
*' 
-20 
State. 
Pennsylvania 
New York 
New Hampshire and Massachu- 
setts 
Maine 
Central and Northern States. 
Washington 
Oregon 
California 
Idaho 
Montana 
Colorado and South Dakota. 
Arizona 
New Mexico 
Num- 
ber of 
mills. 
20 
40 
390 
149 
64 
51 
25 
12 
3 
4 
Western States. 
313 
All above States 1 . 422 
Increase 
or de- 
Per cent. 
+ 8 
- 3 
+29 
+ 1 
14 
+ o 
-10 
-10 
- 5 

- 4 
- 3 
+ 3 
Results were compiled according to the classes of mills indicated 
on page 7. Eight hundred and twenty-one class 5 mills reported a 
total cut of 20,225,449,000 feet. About 100 of these cut somewhat 
less than 10,000,000 feet in 1914, and so were class 4 that year. How- 
