Even though lumbering is one of the simpler industries it involv a number of diverse operations as appears in the table on the follow' page.
How Sweden Tries to Raise the Standard of the Lumbering In almost no country are the problems of the lumber cam relatively more important than in Sweden. There lumbering is th most important industry aside from agriculture. The saw mills an planing mills alone employ about as many men as all the iron mine smelters, steel mills and machinery factories for which Sweden i famous. Accordingly the Swedes are doing their best to make .lum Bering as permanent an industry as possible. The many short parall rivers running southeast across Sweden to the Baltic Sea furnish tran portation for the lumber in such a way that if a company obtains i control of a considerable part of one of the relatively small watersheds? it can generally find a single convenient location for its saw mills, furni-i ture factories, and paper plants on the lower part of the stream, and thus give great permanence to all parts of the work except the actual cutting of the trees. In many cases the Swedish lumber crews are considered permanent labor, and some saw mill companies furnish houses and gardens for their men.
With this attempt to make lumbering a permanent occupation for the sake of labor, there goes a similar attempt for the sake of making the land yield a steady return. Good forestry practice in the United States as well as in Sweden and other European countries means that the trees are not all cut at once. Only mature trees fit for lumber are cut while young trees are allowed to grow. In the long run this is profit able, for it means that a steady supply of good trees is available year after year from a wide area instead of an equal number of trees partly good and partly bad from a smaller area. Moreover, it permits the most desirable kinds of trees to be raised almost everywhere. The present practice is bad because of what is known as the " succession " of vegetation. When a piece of forest is cut off, the trees that spring up are not necessarily of the same variety as those that were cut. For example, suppose a forest of white pine, which is one of the most valuable trees, has some admixture of hardwoods such as maple, beech, hemlock, and yellow birch. When it is cut the new forest is likely to contain
I relatively little white pine and much hardwood because hardwood seed lings, being relatively tolerant, as the botanists say, are more numer ous in the shady places of a well established forest than pine seed lings. If the hardwood forest is cut off and is burned over, as often happens, the next growth will contain a large percentage of such rela tIvely poor species as birch and aspen, because these can thrive in an impoverished soil better than can the hardwoods. Another cuttik and another fire will increase the percentage of birch and aspen. Thus as a general rule the second growth is not so good as the first, and the third and fourth are still less valuable. But with limper forest conser vation, there is nothing but growth of the desired type. Often where no conservation is practiced and big companies have swept away the most valuable trees of the virgin growth, s in a 11 companies have to be content, with t!le second growth, while the third is cut only for pulp wood for paper.
Transportation and the Lumber Industry.—Few in dustries depend upon transporta tion more closely than does lumber ing. In the first place the product is bulky and heavy in proportion to its value. In the sec ond place, lumber comes from rugged regions where the population is scanty and the roads poor, and third, practically none Df it finds a market where it is cut, for the consumers live chiefly in the lowlands and the cities.
Among the lumber camps the methods of transportation show 1 interesting differences according to climate. In snowy regions like New England, Wisconsin, Sweden, Canada, and Russia the commonest form of transportation is by sledges over the snow in winter and spring. This is cheap because the deep snow covers all the irregularities of the ground, even the stumps left in the rough wood roads. When packed by the runners of the two and four-horse sleds, and especially when watered to produce ice, the snow forms a glassy pavement over which enormous loads can be hauled with ease.