The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1919-08-13
DANCER ! !: R OF #. WOOD !. !
!: famine IS seen
Trees in Forests Must Be Re-
placed or Great Scarcity
+, 7 Will Result.
SAW MILLS SMALL FACTOR

Pulp Mills Eat Up Many Millions Of
Spruce Every YEAR Scientific
Forestry Has Not Caught Up
/ 70 Tree Slaughter.
| Bangor, Me.-When the world gets
through with it's arguments about war,
peace, the (or AZ League Of Nations
and all that is expressed In the
short and ugly word rum" it should
turn its most serious and Intelligent
attention to tree farming. Positively,
there must be many more trees, or a
constant and liberal replenishment Of
the existing supply, or presently we
shall suffer great Inconvenience from
the scarcity of many useful and some
ornamental things.
In the simple and innocent old times
q tree was just SO much standing lum-
Der, and lumber was cheap. Within
the memory of men Of middle age
drst-class spruce logs sold In Bangor
at $11 to $14 per thousand feet. The
men who cut the logs were paid $18
TO $40 a month and board, the board
consisting chiefly Of bunk to sleep
In and "beans twenty-One times q
week.. The men who "drove" the
same logs, that is, personally con-
Quoted them down the roaring brooks
and raging rivers. received for their
labors and hair-raising risks. 1925 to
IS q day, according to their athletic
skill and their fame as white water
men," and of course all hands were
fed, although the menu was character
lied by monotonous simplicity and
the service subject to many irregu-
larities and postponements. These
same logs were sawed In mills that
ornamented the banks OF the Penob-
scot for fifty miles or more, chiefly
between Milford and Bangor, q dis
lance of about fifteen miles. The mill
hands went to work very early in the
morning and kept at it until long az
ter everyone else had quit for the
day, being rewarded to the extent of
about $50 month and all the corned
beef, cabbage, ETC., they could eat In
twenty to thirty minutes. three or
four times a day, according to sea-
son.
Profit to Manufacturer.
The :sweet-smelling spruce that was
sliced of by the saws was worth
.e14 to $21 per thousand feet, accord
Ing to quality and dimensions. This
would seem to allow of slight profit
to the manufacturer, but there are
various ways Of measuring logs and
lumber-woods scale, boom scale and
mill scale-and during the golden ere
Of Bangor's spruce trade the jugglefy
Of figures was such that 1000 feet of
logs, boom scale would "saw out"
anywhere from 1850 to 1,4OO feet Of
lumber. 1900 feet being fair aver
age. So, even in the gloomiest days.
when heavy spruce dimensions were
selling at $21 to $28 and the Bangor
mill men would sit In their, offices
chewing tobacco and cussing the hard
times, they were in fact making a
pretty good thing especially If they
happened to own the land the logs
were cut from.
Then, last Of all, the coasters who
carried the lumber to Boston, the
Sound and New York got SITS, 1925
and $3.50 per thousand feet for de-
livery at those several destinations
that is, the rates quoted prevailed
during fairly good times. In dull
times lumber was carried from Ban
ror to Boston as cheaply as $1.25 to
$3.50 per: thousand, to Long Island
sound ports at $1.75 to 81, and to New
York at 81 to 1925.
Now everything is changed. or
Maite's normal log cut Of 100000
600 feet, at least 60 per cent goes in
to pulp and paper. The native log
ger, who swung sharp az skillfully
at S1S to $40 month and was con.
tent to live on baked beans and
sailed fish, has been succeeded by a
polyglot mob that uses saws Ian
guidly at $50 to $50 month, de
mands hotel fare, frequent payments.
polite treatment and every few weeks
a vacation. The logs for the most
part, are cut into four-foot lengths,
and they go to the big pulp and paper
mills owned by corporations that long
ago bought up hundreds Of thousands
of acres of the best timber In Maine.
Logging used to begin in November
and end in March. Now it goes on at
all seasons.
Saw Mills Small Factor.
The saw mill Is a small factor In
the great game of turning Maine for
ests into money. The long log
ger, that is, he who cuts for sawmills,
is almost extinct. The big sawmill
drives are seen no more. This Is the
day Of the 'four-foot stdff'' which
makes up most Of the drives and gives
business to the railroads. The pulp
mills eat up so many millions Of feet
of spruce that speculative and statis-
teal persons wonder where it all
comes from and how long the supply
will last. So far as Maine is con-