The lumber business ranks fourth in the great industries of the United
States. The Department of Forestry at Washington estimates that we
are using three times as much wood yearly as the annual growth of the
forest.
A grand total of 150,000,000,000 board feet of lumber for all purposes,
including firewood, is the estimated amount, a figure the mind can
hardly grasp.
The railroads of our country rest on 1,200,000,000 ties. The average
life of a tie is about ten years, so that we must replace one tenth, or
120,000,000, each year. As the average forest produces two hundred ties
to the acre, this item alone calls for half a million acres of woods
every year.
The tie is only one item in the great business of railroading, immense
quantities of lumber being required for trestles, platforms, stations,
bridges, etc., so that a full million of acres must be cut annually to
keep our railroads operating.
Place this item against the fifteen million burned, and the statement
may be made that we burn enough each year to supply the railroads for
fifteen years. To offset this loss several railroad companies are now
planting trees for a future supply, as the many attempts to supplant
the wooden tie with a manufactured one have not been very successful.
The six thousand mines of various kinds within our border use up
5,000,000,000 board feet every year, and so on through the list of
wood-consuming industries. As our population doubles, the consumption
of lumber quadruples. To-day, five hundred feet of wood is used
annually for every man, woman, and child, as compared with the sixty
feet used in Europe. Already our many industries are beginning to feel
the shortage, and prices constantly go up.
Turpentine, which is made from the Southern yellow pine, requires a new
"orchard" of 800,000 acres yearly to keep up the demand; and when we
realize that one third of the lumber cut is yellow pine, it is little
wonder that the price of turpentine and other naval stores keeps moving
upward.
Where and when will it stop? We read a great deal about the
transformation of water power into electrical energy, but the flow of
streams is dependent on forests, and the spring floods are followed
by drought. While the Ohio River rises forty feet in the spring, it
is possible to walk over the river bed almost dry shod the following
summer.
We hear much about irrigation, but irrigation is dependent largely on
mountain forests.
So a burning question has arisen in these United States, called
conservation, or the husbanding of the great resources that have made
our country what it is.
The forest resources are different from those of the mines. There is
a definite end to the supply of coal, iron, gold, and silver, but by
proper care the forest may be made to yield a continuous crop of lumber.
Forestry does not mean the fencing in of the woods, but the handling
of them in such a way that no more is cut than the annual growth.
This has been practised in Germany on scientific principles with such
success that the production has been increased 300 per cent., and where
seventy-five years ago they obtained twenty cubic feet from each acre a
year, they now cut sixty, and the forest continues to grow luxuriantly.
What Germany has done we can do, and millions of acres now useless can
be made to yield large quantities of wood while continually clothed
with growing forests.
The cutting of lumber is usually done when the sap is dormant,
preferably in the winter. The logs are gotten to the mill by the
cheapest method, which usually consists in floating them down a stream
or river; but now that most of the remaining forest is remote, it is
quite common to have portable mills transported into the woods where
the trees are cut and sawed into planks or the larger sizes of timber
and from there loaded on the cars.
The old-fashioned method was more picturesque, and the "drive" started
with the breaking up of the ice in the spring. Thousands and hundreds
of thousands of logs were guided down stream, pulled off shore when
they became stranded, and the jams were broken up until the smooth
water below made sorting possible.
As several companies might be driving down the same stream, each log
was marked by an axe with the private mark of the one to which it
belonged. After many vicissitudes, the drive would reach the sorting
boom, where the lumber of the various companies would be separated and
made up into rafts.
A boom is a chain of logs fastened together by iron chains, and
extending into the river. It may reach clear across, or one end can be
anchored in the stream to allow a passage for boats. In that case the
river end has to be anchored up stream to catch the logs.
One of the most serious things encountered on a drive is the log jam.
It may be caused in many ways but usually by some obstruction, as a
shoal, rocks, a narrowing of the river, etc.
The lumberman has a vocabulary of his own, and he recognizes several
kinds of jams, such as wing jams, solid jams, etc.
No matter how caused, it is the business of the lumber jack to break up
the jam, and sometimes before it can be done a late freeze will occur
and the whole mass become solid ice and logs. It is sometimes necessary
to use dynamite to break it up. The breaking up is a dangerous time for
the driver, who must sometimes run for his life across the moving mass
of logs to the shore.
After they are made into rafts, steamers are used to tow the logs
to the various mills. It is slow work, but when the destination is
reached, the real process of converting the tree into lumber begins.
Often the rafts stay in the water for months before being broken up,
and the logs guided to the endless chain which drags them up into the
mill.
From this time on the action is very rapid. The modern mill is a mass
of rapidly moving machinery, guided and controlled by comparatively
few men. Three distinct classes of saws are used--circular, band, and
gang saws, and different mills in the same neighborhood use different
methods.
Band saws are continuous bands of steel, often 48 feet long, and as
wide as 8 inches, which pass over two large wheels like a belt. Gang
saws are straight and move up and down rapidly. A number of them are
fastened to horizontal pieces, the distance apart being adjustable to
the thickness of timber desired.
Before passing through the gang saw, the logs are usually edged, _i.
e._, a slab is cut from two opposite sides. The log is then turned over
on one of these flat sides, so that as it passes through the gang saw
the planks are all the same width.
The slabs or edgings are passed through other saws and cut to the width
and length of a lath, all the waste possible being made into lath or
other by-products.
As we use four billions of lath a year, this is an important item.
The process varies with the kind of lumber and its future purpose, but
a great deal is wasted in many mills. The refuse is used for fuel,
and in some cases burned in stacks built specially for the purpose
of getting rid of it. This is one of the forms of waste which will
undoubtedly be done away with in the future, and already many lumbermen
are at work on the problem. The sawdust is conveyed directly to the
furnaces under the boiler and used in the generation of steam.