San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1924-03-23

Ask the "Flathead." or sawyer. in
the Southern woods how much timber
he can saw down in day and he'll
answer you in thousands of feet, says
the Manufacturers Record.
The team or skidder rates its capa-
city by the thousand feet. The mill
man will tell you his plant cuts so
many thousand feet a day. When you
buy from your retailer in quantity he
sells you by the thousand feet.
What is a thousand feet of lum-
Der and what is necessary to produce
it:
usually. you can imagine a bill
board running across the front of two
ordinary city lots. You can see them
daily. Ten feet high by a hundred
feet long Of surface. There's your
thousand feet of lumber.
But the process OF making it?
That. mates. in spite of the many
times a thousand feet OF lumber mod
ern mills turn out daily, is a long
tale.
There's financing and skilled intel
ligence and skilled hands and hard
work in every foot Of it.
Three Methods Of Logging.
There are three distinct types Of
logging methods in the United States.
There's the snow logging of the old
North. there where Paul Bunion
logged. with the men going ghost-like
over the miles OF trail to their work
before dawn of morning; where the
long haul to the river is made by
sleighs piled the height of two men
with logs and so delicately balanced
that a small man can rock the load
the sleighs running over roads of
sheer ice, ice made by sprinkling wa
ter on the roads at night when freez-
ing takes place quickly.
1t may not be a matter that you
studied in your school books. but this
necessity for water for the roads
played a big part in our northern topo-
grophy.
When Paul Bunion, the legendary
hero-logger. started working in that
country there were no Great Lakes.
Paul needed water for his roads. So
he dug the lakes TO supply it.
You can. of course. take that story
as you will. I have it direct from an
old lumberjack who says he knew
Paul.
II Took Real Man.
There were heroes in those days. |
II took a full-sized man TO spend |
winter in logging camp, and it took |
4 still harder one TO work the drives |
DOWN river in the spring when half |
billion or so of logs tried to tear the |
river banks down.
1t was ride 'em, Dickey Doyle" as !.
| two-hundred pound, cst-footed man |
spun half sunken log across a dan
,erous bit of water: and it was Jump |
n boys. there's no sun-dogs around to |
bite you" at the crack of day at the
river bank with the logs hung up mid
stream.
Such were the men who started the
Dig logging game in America, the pro-
yenitors of our timber men of today, |
and the stamp of their heroic blood is |
On the sawmill man OF the West and |
South, where they and their sons mi |
grated.
The second type of logging is the
donkey engine method of the West |
Coast. giant trees and giant power.
The third distinctive type is the
and skidder. or slip-tongue
art. method of the South.
The slip-tongue cart has been sue
'eeded in the big plants with the skid
Ter. and as the negroes say, them
kidders sure do make a pine log be-
lave itself"
Build Railroad.
The first step in the getting out OF
his timber, in the producing OF the
thousand feet of lumber, is to run the
abroad out through the timber.
About every 500 yards the spurs
'ush out from the main line, and as
'ach spur is cut clean it is taken up
md laid again further on.
Then comes the sawyers, the flat
reads" and they NOW a windrow of
rees along the cutting line.
After them the skidder moves its
'onderous self along the spur. anchors
With cables, and is ready for work.