Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1899-09-15
SAVE OUR FORESTS.
THEY MUST NOT BE REGARDED
AS INExHAUSTIBLE.

AS INExHAUSTIBLE.
Sasainaw Valley No Longer Produces Pine
Saw Logs for the Great Mills That Once
Made the Lumber Kings - Waste Was a
Great Cause Of This Depletion - Joaquin
MiIler's Prediction With Regard to the
Washington Forests-Some Results Of For.
est Destruction.
For ten years past it has been the
proper thing to print in all Washing
ton papers and all lumber correspond
ence the statement that the forests OF
Western Washington were inexhausti-
BILE, and that more good timber was
now standing in this region than the
combined forests of Michigan, Wiscon-
sin and Minnesota.
The same sort of stories were popu-
lar in the Saginaw valley 20 or 80
years ago, but now the following, from
the american Lumberman, shows that
the forests are gone and the mills have
to look to the other side of Georgian
bay for logs:
"For the first time in the history of
numbering operations on the Saginaw
river there is no accumulation of stock
in the wholesale market. The cut of
every mill in operation is anticipated
and bought ahead. The other day
William Schuette & Co. bought 3,OO0,-
600 feet to he cut from Canada logs by
the Central Lumber company, the
buyer paying SIG for the logs and hav-
ing all there is in them, the same to
be cut up to suit the purchaser, and
the same firm has bought 100000
feet of logs of Colonel A. Il. Bliss and
they are being manufactured at his
mill at Carrollton. Manufacturers are
asking $14 for box lumber on the mill
docks; although $12 and $l3 have
been the figures for some time and
box makers have been squealing at
those figures. Dealers 60 out into
the bay on tugs, look over lot of logs
and contract for cutting the same in
order to to be sure OF the lumber.
Dealers are also visiting all interior
points aside from Lake Superior, where
they have taken everything in sight,
for lumber to bring here. The whole
sale market is bare OF stocks, although
there is q demand for every board be-
fore it gets to the mill. Prices are
hardening. Log run is being quoted
at any price above $15."
More lumber has been cut off from
the Saginaw valley than is produced
on any equal area of timber land OF
Western Washington, and the days
when the rivers were piled high with
logs and thousands of men employed
in the lumber camps are not yet out
of the memory of the majority of men
now in the lumber trade.
In those times, as in Western WASH
ington now, more timber was wasted
than was saved. Logs averaged about
two or three thousand feet, in sixteen
foot lengths, but now the last reports
of the Tittabawasse Boom company
showed the logs running as small as
IA to the thousand feet, not much
more than fence posts; and logs that
were thrown about in the mills much
as men "a feet high and weighing a
ton might throw about the logs in one
of the Western Washington mills.
joaquin Miller used to sit on the
piazza of the Hotel Tacoma and de.
plore the waste Of forests.
"The day will come, and long
while sooner than people expect" said
he, "when the forests will be as care
fully guarded as the fruit orchards.
When all this region between here and
the summit of the Cascades will be
cultivated as forest lands, and people
will not wantonly destroy the trees as
they do now."
The destruction of the forests goes
on, however, and no lesson of prudence
is taken from the experience of the
Middle West, where as result of the
cutting away of the forests drouth and
flood and cyclone devastate the land.