File:Canadian forest industries 1884 (1884) (20528966171).jpg

Title: Canadian forest industries 1884
Identifier: canadianforest1884donm (find matches)
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors:
Subjects: Lumbering; Forests and forestry; Forest products; Wood-pulp industry; Wood-using industries
Publisher: Don Mills, Ont. : Southam Business Publications
Contributing Library: Fisher - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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PUBLISHED ) SEMI-MONTHLY. ) The only Newspaper devoted to the Lumber and Timber Industries published in Canada ( KITiSOJillTION "( $2.00 J'BK ANM.M VOL. 4. PETERBOROUGH, ONT., MAY 1, 1884. XO. 9. LUMBER DOWN IN MAINE. This winter's cut of lumber in Maine was very small in indeed. The few logs cut were secured at great expense, which will be increased before they reach the booms by the cost of drivirjg, which may also be unusually difficult. noU on acount of lack of water, as in many years, but because of an overplus. On the Penobscot not over 85.000,000 or 90,000,000 feet will be put into the water this spring. Thi amount added to the old logs on hand will bring the total available stock of lumber at Bangor this year up to 125,000,000 feet. 65,000,000 feet less than 1883. Many former years have seen a cut of 200,000,000 feet 'or more on the Penobscot, and less than a hundred million makes the old lumberman sigh and speak regretfully of the " palmy days " gone by. The principal cause of the falling off of the late years in lumber operations is that, while it costs as much now as ever it did to conduct that work, lumber has been falling in price steadily for some years, and the margin of profit is exceedingly simxll. Another reason is that new sources of supply are being developed. As regards this particular season, the meteoro- logical conditions were not favorable, there being no snow at all in the first of the season, and too much in the latter part. The teams which went in to save, if possible, some ef the timber blown down in the cyclone last fall, came out immediately, reporting that none of the lumber could be reclaimed, as it was found inextricably entangled, trees heaped up for miles like rows of fallen bricks, just as the storm had left them. It would be difficult to estimate the loss caused to the lumber interests of Maine by that gale, but it must have been $250,000. Lumbermen have to go further for the logs every year, and the axe is making such fearful inroads on the lands near wat.r courses as to cause apprehension among thinking men for the future, when, if things go on as at present, we shall have here on tho Penobscot plenty of , floods, but no trees. of a tree is a complicated subject to treat in the popular way. It requires a vast surface of leaves to do a litt'e work. By coimting the leaves on a seedling oak, and estimating the surface on both sides of each, we can see how many inches are needed to build up the roots and stem for the first year. After the first year the old stem of the oak bears no leaves. It is dependent on the leaves of the branches, or its children for support. A tree is a sort of com- munity, each part having its own duties to per- form. The root hairs take up most of the nourishment. The young roots take this to-the larger ones, and they in turn, like the branches of a river, pour the flood of crude sap into the trunk, which conveys it to the leaves. The assimilated or digested sap passes from the leaves to a'l growing parts of the i>lant, and a deposit is made where most needed. If a branch is much exposed to the winds, the base of it has a certain support or certain amount of nourishment. So with the trunk of a tree. If the base of a branch of the main trunk is much exposed to the winds and stormâ â , a much thicker deposit of food is made there. The winds give a tree exercise, which seems good to help make it strong. Our toughest wood comes from trees growing in exposed places. The limbs of a tree are all the time striving with each other to see which shall have the most room aud the most sunshine. While .some perish in the at tempt, or meet with only very indifferent success, the strongest of the strong buds sur- vive.âLumberman's Gazette. THE LEAVES OF A TREE In a recent lecture Prof. Beal talked about leaves. Among other good things he said : As lis well known, a tree cannot grow without leaves. These are put forth every year, and are a contrivance for vastly increasing the surface. An oak tree of good size exposes several acres I of surface to the air during the growing season »It has been estimated that the Washington elm at Cambridge, Mass., not a very large tree, ex- t poses about 5 acres of foliage, if we include I both sides of the leaves. Leaves are more I â â¢rfy comparable to stomachs than to lungs. 1 A leaf U a laboratory for assimilating or manu- THE LARGER PART. Under this title the Northwestern Lumberman speaks as follows :â The greater bulk of the lumber business is apt to be overlooked by the men who consider it from the white pine standpoint. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are emphatically lumber producing states, and these, in connec- tion with the lumber regions of Pennsylvania and Maine, are erroneously thought by many to include about all there is of the lumber busi- ness. When a man has been looking at a mill that turns out 200,000 feet of lumber a day, a small one on some cross roads that cuts 15,000 to 20,000 feet cuts no figure in his estimation. When a person visits the. leading lumber pro- ducing points in the Northwest and finds from a half dozen to a score, or more, of these large mills at every point, turning out daily enough lumber to build a small city, he is not in a con- dition to sit down and think seriously of the thousands of small mills scattered through the country. Take for instance the milJs of Ohio, New York and Indiana, they outrank in nVm- ber the mills of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, two to one, yet the first named states are never spoken of as huiibor producing states, North Carolina, has twice rs many mills taring r»w maftriaU into plant fabric. Tho â¢tawlur* of Uw loavw, wood aik! tarK . tm Wisconsin, ,wl font time* m many m Min- nesota. Kentucky has more than Wisconsin, and Illinois more than Minnesota. The Vir- ginias, in the number of their mills, are ahead of Michigan, and have a mill and a half where the other two northwestern states have but one. Pennsylvania has nearly as many mills as the entire lumber district of the Northwest, yet but few of them turn out pine lumber. Not to exceed one-third of the product of the mills of the United States is white pine lumber the remaining two-thirds being what is classed in this market as hardwood. Notwithstanding this fact we hear the question asked every day, What would the country do if we had no white pine ? It would be in a sorrowful plight indeed particularly if the supply were cut off at once ; still a more pertinent question, and one that has a broader significance, is, What would the country do if it had no hardwood ? It would be worse off than without pine, from the simple fact that where one foot of white pine lumber is used there are two feet of hardwood, and that while several kinds of hardwood would take the place of pine if necessary, pine for a thousand and one uses c mid not supplant hardwood. Houses constructed wholly of hardwood are not uncommon in several sections of 'the country, and might be built anywhere, but wagons, barrels, handles, and hundreds of other articles that might be named,--if made of pine, would be worthless. It is astonishing after seeing the fights bet- ween the bulls and bears in the Chicago market, and the hot competition betwe=n white pine dealers in other markets, to note the absence of fuss and feathers in the handling of the im- mense amount of lumber that represents two- thirds of the entire output. There are but few large hardwood markets in the whole country. Throw out less than half a'dozen and there are none left. In these markets there are no hurly burly, break-your-neck business; no public high kicking"matinees on the part of manufac- turers to see who can elevate prices highest, and no caucuses held by dealers for the purpose of breaking values. Everything moves on in the even tenor of its way. The lumber is usually received and shipped in small quantities. In Chicago, the largest hardwood market in the world, a cargo of about 200,000 feet is about all that any man wants at his yard in a week. If o dealer get out of stock he quietly slides down into Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, or some other state and picks up what he wants. One mill can stock a Chicago pine yard for a whole season, but the man who runs a hardwood yard must draw from hundreds of mills. Th-re are hardwood yards in this city, the lumber in which came from as many as half of the states in the Union aside from some of the ter- ritories. The methods of distributing hardwood are unlike thoso of pine. The handler of the latter osxlirtafily deal* either with the retail ueak'i', W contractor and builder. The hardwood dealer sells in every direction. His customers are builders, furniture manufacturers, agricultural implement and wagon makers, ship builders and a host of others. The pine dealer sells in large lots, and often on the track in his yard may be seen a whole train being loaded at once. The hardwood man can do business in no such way. A big wagon load is a good sale. The manufac- turing establishment draw on him as they re- quire a little stock to piece out. A car load is more than one in a dozen of the hardwood men sells at once, in a week. In the matter of long shipments the hard- wood men take the lead. It is not a rare occurrence for hardw. od lumber to be shipped from this city to California. A representative of this journal recently saw a pile of walnut in a west side yard that will soon be on the way to Utah, the owner of which will pay $70 jier thousand feet for freight charges. A tew hun- dred miles is the maximum distance that sup- plies for the pine yards of Chicago are brought, while supplies for the hardwood yards are not unfrequently brought a thousand miles. It is because the hardwood business is wideb/ and generally diffused that it attracts so little attention and makes so little show. Hardwood lumber is needed in every hamlet and city in the country. Brick and stone may crowd out pine, but every wood working shop makes its complement of hardwood. The farmer who goes to town for building material may be in- duced to buy poplar, hemlock, spruce or yellow pine instead of white pine, but if he w .nts a new wagon pole, or p'ov beam, the hardwood pile is the only resort. The proportion that the white pine output now bears to that of hardwoods will gradually decrease, for hardwood lumber is being used in building more and more every year, particularly in the older sections of the country, and the production of yellow pine lumber will increase rapidly. Falling off In Lumber Production Advices from Maine and New Brunswick indicate that the yield of lumber in those districts this year will be very much less than that of last year. This year the cut compared with last year, has fallen off as follows :' In the St. Croix River disrict, 20,000,000 feet; Penob- scot river and branches, 65,000.000 feet : Aroos- took and Upper St. John, north shore of New Brunswick and Baj- of Fundy shores, 183,000, 000 ; iu all a reduction of 268,000,000. Last year, owing to the dry season, a large portion of the lumber cut was not floated, but although this will be utilized this year it will not be sufficient to make up the deficiency.. Eddy Bros, have 4,000,000 feet of logs banked on the south branch of Pine river, and hftve not yet taken out ft \os-.

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