LUMBER TRADE, including, in its widest sense (in American usage), the commerce in timber for building houses, ships, etc., boards, planks, laths, scantling, shingles, clapboards, railroad ties, telegraph poles, etc., is one of the most extensive and impor tant industries of the United States, and, indeed, of the world. Norway, Russia, and Germany are largely engaged in this traffic, and France cuts a considerable amount of fine timber. Tropical countries furnish dye-woods, veneering, etc. From the West Indies come mahogany, lance-wood, snake-wood, green-heart, etc.; and India, Austra lia. and New Zealand furnish large supplies of ship-timber. British North America, including Canada, New Brunswick, and Columbia, furnishes lumber to an immense ext,ent. In the United States the most important lumber districts are in Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, 3Iithigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, the southern portions of Alabama and Mississippi, Texas, northern California, western Oregon, and the region around Puget sound.
Indeed, nearly all the states in the union produce lumber in considerable quantities. The most important centers of the trade are Bangor, 3fe. Boston, Chicago and the lake ports generally, Albany, N. Y., Savannah, Brunswick, 'Ga., and Pensacola. According to the census of 1870, the number of establishments produeinff lumber in some form was 26,945; number of men employed, 163,637; capital invested, $161,500,273; wages paid, $46,231,328; total value of products, $252,339,029. Indeed, so extensive is this traffic that many portions of the country are being denuded of trees with a rapidity which excites alarm for the meteorological effects likely to ensue.,