New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-06-10

other. Employing more than 9O0,-
600 persons, paying in excess Of
1922, 764,S00 to them each year in
wages, maintaining 48,600 establish
ments, it makes up quite a budget
in the payroll and the workshop Of
the country. In brief, it is the lum-
Der and timber business, with all its
allied trades. There is no industry
so old TO the United States, for the
first settler was the original saw
mill man; there is none which has
been blamed so much for using up
the principal Of a partly non-restor-
able resource; none where the ac-
cusation fell truer; none, perhaps,
where the accused was less to blame.
The palliation of the mill men is and
was in part the economics of the
times, and their method throughout
has been an earmark Of all that was
most wasteful in the home story of
America.
The face Of coal and iron may be
nearly as black, but since these chill
dren of an industrial nation are not
as old, they have been unable in the
relatively shorter span allotted them
TO do as much. Men have been cut
ting down trees, splitting up trunks,
slicing out boards and trimming up
lumber for quite a while. Those who
have been there will tell you of the
great mills West that cut a hun
bred, two hundred, three hundred
thousand feet of lumber in a day; Of
newer plants in the virgin pine lands
of the South where the wheels of the
mills never pause and the saws
thereof in their day of twenty-four
hours whirl their dust-hecked way
through a million feet Of the sort of
stuff that built America. Beside
each mill, as working partner, has
stood a tall, black stack, the burner.
While the mill sawed up inside, that
great black stack, tall as a flagstaff
and thick as a house, was never slow
to do its part, and from the wire
topped mouth, dense of smoke and
red with many sparks, was whirled
I'D nearly as much, and sometimes
more, as the saws inside turned to
nearly finished product from the logs
within the mill. The saws shrilled
on. and the smoke went up, and
through them both fairsized for
est of the country's best was wiped
away forever every day.
It was a strong combination, but
it did not stop there. There was
waste in the mill that fed the burner,
more in the planners and ripsaws be-
fore the wood could reach the trade;
and back in the woods, where the
Iloggers in winter swung their arms
and blew out clouds of frozen breath,
there was more and more of this
waste in wood. So that, IN toto,
there was relatively little of the
growing tree that the public ever
saw. Waste in the woods took one
third Of the tree; the mill one-third
of the log; the factory one-ffth Of
the board. So that, all told, when
the customer got out his bills to pay
for the whole Of the tree, he was
/ handed some 35 per cent Of what had
been originally. Of course, that was
not all, for back in the wilds where
the forests grew there was Uttered
up land that every so often would
take and hold a fine, hot fire, leav'
inc at the end a crowd Of blackened
stubs, no second crop, and some in
fertile, well-eroded hills and fields.
Which, we may say, accounts in part
for an American per capita require
ment in wood per annum Of total
eleven times that of France, and
probably about three times that
which is replacing it through
growth. It is a sad, incredible tale,
with all the aftermath Of shrivelled
streams and floods and waste, aban-
doned lands.
Along the Road
To the Capital
Some dav. in travelling from Bal