Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1903-01-01

places and the forest wealth not wasted
as in days gone by.
The pulp men have built dams and
made other costly improvements on the
driving streams, and are planning now
for the storage of vast volumes of wat
er which every spring run to the sea in
freshets, doing no one any good, but
frequently causing great damage to
property, and which, properly con-
trolled in the lakes that feed the riv-
ers, may be used in the dry season to
float in the logs and turn the mill
wheels.
Oxen were used to haul logging sleds
in the days of the big pine, but now the
big spruce, which has succeeded the
pine as the kind tree of the Maine for
ests, is hauled by horses. Soon, it ap-
pears, the horses are to be superseded
by steam and electric machines, which
already are in successful operation on
the upper waters of the Kennebec.
In the sawmills, too, progress Is the
order of the mills. The old-fashioned
saws have given way to band saws, re-
saws and all kinds of modern machin-
cry, by means Of which more lumber
is got out of the log and got out more
rapidly and with less expense than for
merly. There were 450,000,000 feet Of
saw logs cut last winter and floated
down to the sawmills this spring. The
modern Maine lumber manufacturer
makes use Of every part Of the log.
Years ago good big log was recklessly
smashed up to lumber of large size, and
| Tnt1oh nf thn ind fn H1oc
thrown overheard or burned in the
form of slabs and edgings.
At one time, not many years ago,
every large sawmill had large fur
mace, or some arrangement for the
burning of such waste and in the course
of years so much mill refuse was
thrown into the Penobscot. river and
sunk there that finally the channel Of
that noble stream became too shoal to
/ admit of the passage of vessels of deep
draft. Then the United States govern
ment was called upon to dredge out the
channel, and hundreds of thousands of
dollars were expended in digging out
the slabs and edgings that had been
thrown overheard at the mills.
Nowadays, the slabs that come from
the sawmills are few and thin, for be-
tween long lumber and the various
forms of short lumber that are turned
out there is very little left of the log
when finally the sawyers get done with
it, and what little goes to the dump is
sent away by tramways to adjacent
pulp mills to be ground up as paper.
Even the sawdust is used now in con-
junction with coal and coal dust and
OCCASIONAL with crude petroleum, as
fuel to feed the furnaces of the steam
mills-so that really there is nothing
left but the bark, and frequently that,
also, is burned when dry enough.
Much has been said of the pulp mills
crowding out the sawmills. There Is
undeniably a sharp competition be-
tween the lumber manufacturers and
the pulp men in the log market, and
for the control of the log supply, but
the sawmill still uses the greater part
of the log crop, and will continue to
use as much as it can afford to buy. 1t
is simply a question Of the survival Of
the fittest
Just at present prices of pulp and
paper are high, and as spruce log will
yield more value in pulp than in lum-
Der, the pulp men can afford to pay
more for logs than can the sawmill
men.
Lumber is also selling at high prices,
and it is thought that there will not
be enough spruce this year to supply
the demand. The pulp men are buying
great areas of timber lands, and by
some the prediction is made that in the
near future they will control all the
lands worth having.-St. Louis Re-
public.