$686,588. The exports of boards and scantling from Philadelphia in 1765 were 783,000 feet; in 1773, eight years later, they had increased to 4,075,000 feet.

"Before the War of Independence," says F. André Michaux, in his North American Sylva, published in 1810-13, "England is said to have furnished herself with masts [white pine] from the United States, and she still [about 1810] completes from America the demand which cannot be fully supplied from the North of Europe. The finest timber of this species is brought from Maine and particularly from the river Kennebeck." Continuing, Michaux says:

Soon after the establishment of the colonies England became sensible of the value of this resource and solicitous for its preservation. In 1711 and 1721 severe ordinances were enacted, prohibiting the cutting of any trees proper for masts on the possessions of the Crown. The order comprised the vast countries bounded on the south by New Jersey and on the north by the upper limit of Nova Scotia. I am unable to say with what degree of rigor it was enforced before the American Revolution, but for a space of 600 miles, from Philadelphia to a distance beyond Boston, I did not observe a single stock of the white pine large enough for the mast of a vessel of 600 tons.

. . In a table of importations from the United States presented to the Parliament of Great Britain, the timber introduced in 1807 is reckoned at $1,302,980, of which I suppose the white pine to have formed one-fifth. In 1808 it was sold at Liverpool at about sixty cents a cubic foot. Planks two inches thick and twelve inches wide were worth four cents a foot and common plank six cents.

In this statement the wood imported from New Brunswick is not included nor the vast quantities sent from the United States to the West Indies not dependent on Great Britain.

American wood products suffered less from restrictive legislation than perhaps any other commodity. The mother country welcomed the wealth of our forests, but she reserved to herself the privilege of manufacturing this raw material into the finished products. After the formation of the republic the increase in manufactured goods in proportion to raw material exported was marked.

Early in the Nineteenth Century immense quantities of hickory hoops were exported to the West Indies. Michaux says that, “Of the numerous trees of North America east of the Allegheny Mountains none but the hickory is perfectly adapted for the making of hoops for casks and barrels. For this purpose vast quantities of it are consumed at home and exported to the West Indies Islands. The hoops are made from young hickory from six to twelve feet high, without choice as to species. The largest hoop poles sold at Philadelphia and New York in

February, 1808, at $3 per hundred.

For hand spikes the hickory is in

particular esteem on account of its strength. It is accordingly employed in most American vessels, and is exported for the same purpose to England, where it sells from 50 to 100 percent higher than ash."

The following excerpts from Michaux's Sylva will prove interesting and instructive, as showing quantities and values of several commodities exported in the latter part of the Eighteenth and the early portion of the Nineteenth centuries. Mr. Michaux stated that vast quantities of white oak staves were exported to the West Indies, Great Britain and the islands of Madeira and Tenerife. He said:

White oak staves are exported from all ports of the northern and southern states and New Orleans. The quantities of oak staves exported to England and the West Indies appears by two official documents I have examined to be considerable. In 1808 the volume received by England amounted to more than 146,000, and the number of staves sent to the West Indies 53,000,000. I am unable to fix the proportion of the two species of the white and red oak, probably more of the first are sent to England and of the second to the colonies. The price of both has varied surprisingly within a hundred years. In 1720 staves for barrels were sold at Philadelphia at $3 per thousand; in 1798 at $18. In August, 1807, before the American embargo, they were advertised at $55 and in April, 1808, after that regulation became known, at $100.

The greater part of the immense quantity of white oak exported from the United States is sent to England. It is shipped from the north and middle states

in the form of boards and square timber. What goes to England from Quebec is brought from the shores of Lake Champlain, while Canada probably furnishes hardly enough for its own consumption. By an extract from the custom house books of St. John (on the Sorel River), which I have already quoted, 143,000 cubic feet of oak would appear to have entered by this port during the first six months of 1807.

The long-leaved pine is the only species exported from the southern states to the West Indies, and numerous fleets of small vessels are employed in this traffic, particularly from Wilmington, in North Carolina, and Savannah, in Georgia. The stuff destined for the colonial market is cut in every form for the construction of houses and vessels. What is sent to England is in planks from fifteen to thirty feet long and ten to twelve inches in diameter. They are called "ranging timbers." The vessels freighted with this timber repair chiefly to Liverpool, where it is said to be employed in the building of ships and wet docks. It is called Georgia pitch pine, and is sold 25 percent or 30 percent higher than any other pine imported from the United States.

The yellow pine boards from 1 inch to 21⁄2 inches thick form a considerable article of exportation to the West Indies and Great Britain. In the advertisements of Liverpool it is designated by the name of New York pine, and in those of Jamaica by that of yellow pine. In both places it is sold at a much lower price than the long-leaved pine of the southern states, but much higher than the white pine.

Referring to the turpentine business, Mr. Michaux said:

In November, 1807, the pure dipping (highest grade) was sold at Wilmington at $3 a barrel, and the scraping at a quarter less. In 1804 the exportations of the northern states and to the English possessions amounted to 77,827 barrels. During the peace it comes even to Paris, where it is called "Boston turpentine." Throughout the United States it is used to make yellow soap of a good quality. The consumption in England is great and in the official statements of value imported in 1807 is $465,828. In 1805 Liverpool alone received 40,294 barrels, and in 1807 18,924 barrels. It sold there in August, 1807, at $3 a hundred pounds and after the American embargo, 1808, at $8 and $9.

In

A great deal of spirits of turpentine is made in North Carolina. 1804, 19,526 gallons were exported from North Carolina. The residuum of the distillation is rosin, which sold at one-third of the price of turpentine. The exportation of this substance in 1804 was 4,675 barrels.

In 1807 tar and pitch were exported to England from the United States to the amount of $265,000. Tar was sold at Liverpool in August of the same year at $4.67 a barrel.

EFFECT OF EMBARGO ACT AND WAR of 1812.

From the earliest date contemplated in the tables subjoined to this article there has been a steady growth of our exports. But twice have American wood products suffered materially, and both were the result of our own initiative-the Embargo Act of 1808 and the war of 1812. As the result of the hostile actions of Great Britain and France against the United States, the Embargo Act became effective in 1808. The mischievous results of this act became evident in the decrease of the timber exportations from $48,699,572 in 1806-7 to $4,433,546 in 1807-8, and it was repealed in February, 1809, the Non-intercourse Act taking its place. This act excluded all public and private vessels of France and England from American waters, and gave the President authority to reopen by proclamation the trade with France and England in case either of these countries should cease to violate mutual rights. The year 1809 proved the Non-intercourse Act ineffective, however, and the folly of these acts was soon recognized and the experiment has never been repeated. The effects of the Embargo Act are told by H. Adams in his History of the United States. Though partisan and violent in its tone, it gives a vivid picture of the conditions. He says:

Personal liberties and rights of property were more directly curtailed in the United States by embargo than in Great Britain by centuries of almost continuous foreign war.. While the constitutional cost of the two systems was not altogether unlike, the economical cost was a point not easily settled. No one could say what might be the financial expense of embargo as compared with war. Yet Jefferson himself in the end admitted that the embargo had no claim to re

spect as an economical measure.

As the order was carried along the seacoast, every artisan dropped his tools, every merchant closed his doors, every ship was dismantled. American produce-wheat, timber, cotton, tobacco, rice-dropped in value or became unsalable; every imported article rose in price; wages stopped; swarms of debtors became bankrupt; thousands of sailors hung idle round the wharves trying to find employment on coasters, and escape to the West Indies or Nova Scotia. A reign of idleness began; and the men who were not already ruined felt that their ruin was only a matter of time. The British traveler, Lambert, who visited New York in 1808, described it as a place ravaged by pestilence: "The port indeed was full of shipping, but they were dismantled and laid up; their decks were cleared, their hatches fastened down, and scarcely a sailor was to be found on board. Not a box, bale, cask, barrel or package was to be seen upon the wharves." In New England where the struggle of existence was the keenest, the embargo struck like a thunderbolt, and society for a moment thought itself at an end. Foreign commerce and shipping were the life of the people, the ocean, as Pickering said, was their farm. The outcry of suffering interests became every day more violent, as the public learned that this paralysis was not a matter of weeks, but of months or years. The belief

that Jefferson, sold to France, wished to destroy American commerce and to strike a deadly blow at New and Old England at once, maddened the sensitive temper of the people. Immense losses, sweeping away their savings and spreading bankruptcy through every village, gave ample cause for their complaints. Yet in truth, New England was better able to defy the embargo than she was willing to suppose. She lost nothing except profits which the belligerents had in any case confiscated; her timber would not harm for keeping, and her fish were safe in the ocean. The embargo gave her almost a monopoly of the American market for domestic manufactures; no part of the country was so well situated or so well equipped for smuggling. The growers of wheat and live stock in the middle states were more hardly treated. Their wheat, reduced in value from two dollars to seventy-five cents a bushel, became practically unsalable. . The manufactures of Pennsylvania could not but feel the stimulus of the new demand; so violent a system of protection was never applied to them before or since. Probably for that reason the embargo was not so unpopular in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, and Jefferson had nothing to fear from political revolution in this calm and plodding community. The true burden of the embargo fell on the southern states, but most severely upon the great State of Virginia. Slowly decaying, but still half patriarchal, Virginia society could neither economize nor liquidate. Tobacco was worthless; but 400,000 negro slaves must be clothed and fed, great establishments must be kept up, the social scale of living could not be reduced, and even bankruptcy could not clear a large landed estate without creating new encumbrances in a country where land and negroes were the only forms of property on which money could be raised. Staylaws were tried, but served only to prolong the agony. With astonishing rapidity Virginia succumbed to ruin, while continuing to support the system that was draining her strength.

The high-handed manner in which England boarded American ships on the high seas, on the claim that she had the right to overhaul both

merchantmen and war vessels, and seize and force into the English service sailors who could not prove their nationality, was one of the causes which led up to the proclamation of war against that country by President Madison on June 18, 1812. The following table shows exports of wood products from 1807 to 1816 and the effect the Embargo and Non-intercourse acts and the War of 1812 had on the same: STATEMENT OF WOOD EXPORTS FOR TEN YEARS-1807-1816-SHOWING EFFECT OF EMBARGO ACT AND WAR OF 1812-14 ON SAME.

1807. 48,855 76,890,000 79,424,000 $ 21,084 3,621,000 $282,251 37,701,000 $113,571 $ 1808. 7,412 17,512,000 25,845,000 2,088 2,186,000 66,051 10,003,000 34.231 19,146 3,419,000 178,396 26,991,000 71,232 141,163 3,250,000 243,455 27,137,000 131,484) 108,020 2,240,000 315,965 30,284,000 148,758 190,635 10,971 2,392,000 224,338 18,285,000 43,248 109,635 6,979 7,179,000 2.230 61.137 2,673 2,671,000 2.526 49,462 77,647 16,743,000 52,278 150,660

1809. 29,342 34,047,000 64,725,000 1810. 103,294 43,122,000 63,042,000 1811. 116,428 69,097,000 85,340,000 1812. 42,442 30,327,000 56,565,000 1813. 1,671 10,750,000 20,699,000|| 1814. 127 4,196,000 11,646,000| 1815. 7,696 25,419,000 51,337,000 1816. 32,447 78,919,000 63,162,000 195,513 3,554,000 311,212 49,239,000 114,847 199,635

1,522 1,888,000| 435 1,064,000 17,389 3,373,000

Brief mention of the effects the reciprocal treaty of 1854 with Canada and the Civil War had on the exports of wood products will be of interest. The reciprocity treaty of 1854 with Canada took effect March 16, 1855, and continued in operation until March 17, 1866. Statistics of principal exports to Canada during the life of the treaty and for one year preceding and two years following the same are here given:

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPAL EXPORTS TO CANADA, 1853-1868, SHOWING EFFECTS OF RECIPROCITY TREATY WITH THAT COUNTRY.