LUMBER INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES, The. The early history of lumbering in the United States is substantially the history of the country's settlement. Wood afforded the early settlers their building material and their fuel. Forest areas had to be cleared for cultivation and it was possible to use but a small part of the timber thus cut in the construction of pioneer homes. Trees were a hindrance to agriculture, of no value except as they afforded the bare necessities of life. Tremendous areas of tim ber were destroyed without thought of use for the product, until the progress of colonization had reached the point where there was a demand for logs, heavy timber and framing for buildings in the non-agricultural commu nities along the Atlantic Coast that later grew into towns and great cities. The early settlers had no tools more potent than the axe and the handsaw, but as the demand for building material grew the process of converting trees into a merchantable material passed through several evolutionary stages in which first water power and subsequently steam were applied.
The early sawmills ranged in capacity from 1,000 to 5,000 feet a day, board measure, and were operated principally in the white pine regions of the north Atlantic coast territory and in the Carolinas and Virginia. The prod uct was heavy material of the sort then used in building and involved little production of thin lumber, which was produced with diffi culty in these primitive establishments. With the development of cities along the seaboard, however, a new source of demand arose in the shipbuilding industry, for which wood was the most important raw material. The rise of shipping and the opening of many ports created a need for material for wharves and also af forded a means of developing a trade in timbers with the West Indies and Europe. Thus an industry gradually took form, its earliest tangi ble appearance in Maine and New Hampshire, with Vermont, New York and Pennsylvania following closely as producers of white pine, the one product of the forests of those States that was deemed valuable. These early lum bering operations were invariably located where streams were available for rafting logs to the mills. Unless the mill was situated on tide
water its function was limited to supplying local demand and the scope of the operation was necessarily small.
With the gradual opening up of the Central States, the lumbermen again assumed the role of pioneer, but the demand for lumber grew so rapidly that within a few years after the first commercial lumbering operation was estab lished in what was then the Far West, Michi gan and Wisconsin were producing great ouan tities of lumber needed in the prairie country. The first lumbermen to venture into the Lake States assumed that the supply of timber was inexhaustible and proceeded on that theory. Statistics covering production in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota show that in 1873 mills in these States manufactured slightly less than 4,000,000,000 feet, practically all of which was white pine. With some slight interrup tions the output increased steadily until 1890 when the maximum was reached with a total of 8,597,623,000 feet, after which pine produc tion began a steady decline.
With a rapidly increasing population, and a gradual lessening supply of white pine from the Lake States, it was natural that the industry should turn to the tremendous forest resources of the Southern States, where yellow pine of several varieties, cypress and many varieties of hardwoods were obtainable. Thus, as the saw mills of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota finished with their white pine supply, the oper ators, seeking other fields, found opportunities in the South and, in a few instances, on the Pacific Coast. Every timbered section, of the country rapidly became of interest to investors because timber values kept moving steadily upward. The transcontinental railroads opened great areas of the West and acquired extensive land grants which were rapidly thrown on the market and seized by lumbermen and timber speculators who subsequently sold to lumber men. And thus the industry spread wherever timber of merchantable character was obtain able, acquiring national scope and in a number of the States leading all other industries in capital investment, people employed and wages paid.