The Benson signal., 1919-08-09
Trees in Forests Must Be Re-
placed or Great Scarcity
viii Result.
SAW MILLS SMALL FACTOR
Pulp Mills Eat Up Many Millions Of
Spruce Every Year Scientific
Forestry Has Not Caught Up
to Tree Slaughter.

Bangor, Me.-When the world gets
through with it's arguments about war,
peace, the Cor a. 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
a tree was just so much standing lum-
Der, and lumber was cheap. Within
the memory of men Of middle age
first-class spruce logs sold in Bangor
at $11 to $14 per thousand feet. The
men who cut the logs were paid $1S
to 500 a month and board, the board
consisting chiefly Of a bunk to sleep
in and "beans twenty-one times a
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
So 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
ized 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, dis
tance Of about fifteen miles. The mill
hands went to work very early in the
morning and kept at it until long af-
ter everyone else had quit for the
day, being rewarded to the extent Of
about $50 a 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 off by the saws was worth
ing to quality and dimensions. This
would seem to allow of slight profit
to the manufacturer, but there are
v0riOus ways Of measuring logs and
lumber-wOOds scale, boom scale and
mill scale-and during the golden era
of Bangor's spruce trade the jugglery
of figures was, such that 1000 feet of
logs, boom scale would "saw out"
anywhere from 1,15O to 1,4OO feet of
lumber, 1,20O feet being a fair aver
age. So, even in the gloomiest days,
when heavy spruce dimensions were
selling at $21 to $23 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 $1.75, 1925
md $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
gor 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 So to. 1925.
Now everything is changed. OF
Names 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 ak skillfully
at $18 to 500 a month and was con-
tent to live on baked beans and
salted fish, has been succeeded by a
polyglot mob that uses saws lam
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
400 houpht I'm hundreds of thousands