sawed lumber product and are not reported separately to the census office by the manufacturers. Telegraph poles are usually of cedar, and, therefore, states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, in which cedar is plentiful are the leading producers in this line. Rived and shaved shingles have so nearly been displaced by sawed shingles that in 1899 but 41,433,000 were manufactured, against 12,102,017,000 sawed. Pennsylvania is preëminent in the production of tanning barks, especially hemlock, which has made it the seat of the greatest tanning industry. TIMBER CAMP PRODUCTS-BY STATES AND TERRITORIES, 1900-Continued. CHAPTER XXXI. UNITED STATES-FOREIGN TRADE. The magnificent forests of the United States have played an important part in its march toward the goal which has placed it in the van of the great powers as an exporting nation. It does not detract from the patriotism which inspired our forefathers in their rebellion against the mother country to note that it was not merely the injustice which they suffered that induced them to go to war, but also the belief that the colonies would never enjoy any just measure of prosperity so long as their exports and imports were regulated by a foreign power. That legislation which inspired rebellion dealt directly with the country's trade with other lands. That the necessity for independence actually existed was demonstrated by a tremendous increase in her exports soon after the new republic had been formed. The balance of the trade had been overwhelmingly against her, but with favorable legislation at home and recognition abroad it eventually shifted, and the region that had been a buying community became also a selling one. It is one of the simplest laws of commercial life that profit is dependent upon a condition in which receipts exceed expenditures. This constitutes the whole question of prosperity, whether of the individual or of the nation. EXPORTS IN EARLY DAYS. In the shifting of the current of trade and the increase of American exports, wood products played a conspicuous part. The peace with England in 1783 found the United States comprising a strip of territory on the Atlantic Ocean extending from Maine-then a district of Massachusetts-to Georgia, and bounded on the west by the Mississippi River. The total area in 1790 was 239,935 square miles, with a population of 3,929,214. Yet in this comparatively limited area the lumber product gave large and profitable returns from its exportation. British reports show that in 1731 the imports from the colonies of Virginia and Maryland already included a total of $15,000 worth of timber. The lumber exports from the colonies in 1770, still some years previous to the outbreak of the American Revolution, were valued at $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. |