The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1926-08-06
INDUSTRY TO RUN
ON ANNUAL COST
Yearly Growth of 100000 Acres
Will Sustain New Lumber
Center.

The new forest industry, using
everything that comes from the
woods, makes it possible to keep on
raising a crop of timber in Mime
sofa. Fair enough, seeing a crop OF
timber on a perpetual basis is the
only foundation on which the new in
dustry can be maintained.
See how it works. In tract of
second growth the trees must be
thinned out in about twenty years.
The fiber plants can probably use part
of the thinning. A second thinning
at forty years makes excellent stock
for paper mills and probably some
small timber. AS the trees grow
to maturity, they can be cut for lum-
Der while the tops and branches go
to the conversion plant for making
paper and sheathing and insulation
and kindred products.
Using everything in that way,
group of forest products industries
as large as any now in the state will
consume 100000 cords Of wood in
year, the equivalent of 100000 M feet
of lumber. Now it is reckoned that
forest growth in Minnesota will make
cord per acre per year, on the
average. That is center of the new
industry, like Cloquet, would con-
sumo every year the annual growth
of 100000 acres.
Heretofore Minnesota has been cut
ting off 100000 acres year-and
nothing left on the land. Under the
new methods, single center will
take the annual growth of 100000
acres-and always have as much left
as before for another year.
Taking 100000 acres as the basis,
there will be raw material to supply
such an industry in a circle with fif-
teen or twenty miles radius, wooded
country with farming settlements in
between, furnishing a perpetual sup
ply for sawmill, sash and door fac.
tory, paper mill and conversion plant.
In fact, settlement and forest in
dustry work together in the new
scheme of things. Formerly the set
tier often got his start by working in
lumber camps or getting out ties and
posts on his own account. But he
sold no logs to the big mills. The
small country mill might buy jag
Of logs from he farmer but the big
industry couldn't bother with any,
thing less than forty and if two or
three towns could be blocked up at
time that was more like it.
Now the farmer with load of logs
Is welcome as flowers in May, at the
mill. Eight or ten dollars load
makes good wages for cutting and
hauling. One of the biggest plants in
the state got 40 per cent of its sup
ply last year from the country and
another mill that had finished it's cut
ran all last winter on logs hauled in
by farmers and settlers.
In the lumber of the future, which
is largely the fiber industry, it is pre-
sumed large part of the supply will
come from farm woedlots. A farm in
the north country can well keep more
than a fourth of its land in timber,
uSlUS IL DIS d crop anu SeilluS the lid
ture timber and small stuff to the
mill. 1t has been proved profitable
in New England and it may work out
in Minnesota.
In the future there will be public
forests, larger or smaller. There may
be extensive holdings of timber lands
not taken for agriculture. The for
est industry will probably own more
or less timber land, at least enough
to be sure the supply won't fail. But
according to the present indications,
a considerable part of the supply will
come from farms in the wooded coun.
try. And wood will be one of the
principal sources of income to the sett-
Ter in the cutover country.
In at least two places in Mime
sofa, International Falls and Cloquet,
the new industry is well established
on the new lines.