LUMBERING.

Lumbering was the first industry of Washington Territory. Even food was imported for a time. Logging began on Puget Sound, and went up such streams as afforded transportation and water-power. Steam-power soon became the chief reliance for sawing, but water-power will be largely used when the railroads penetrate inland.

Logging and sawing are separate branches of business, which may or may not be carried on by the same parties. And so with transportation to the mill and to market. Large concerns carry on all the branches, even to the building and owning of ships.

Magnitude of the lumber business.Governor Semple gives the capacity of the Washington Territory saw-mills in 1887 as 645,500,000 feet of lumber per annum, of which the Puget Sound mills produce 344,500,000 feet. Of this, they (Puget Sound mills) sent 200,000,000 feet to California; 2,600,000 to Boston, Mass.; 500,000 feet to other Atlantic ports, and over 100,000,000 feet to foreign ports. Among foreign ports, London received 551,500 feet, and the rest went to Mexico, South America, China, Australia, and other Pacific Islands.

Mr. Cyrus Walker, of the Puget Mill Company, Port Ludlow, in a letter which I have from him, says:

Vast extent of the lumber market."It is safe to say that the lumber market of the Sound may be considered all countries and ports on the Pacific Ocean."

But it may make a more vivid impression of the Pacific market for me to give a list of the ports to which shipments have been actually made in the last year by the lumber dealers of Puget Sound. This list I get not only from public documents, but directly from the millers and port officials:

This is not a complete list of all the ports visited by the lumber ships of Puget Sound, and by no means represents the business of the future, which will increase as fast as the mills can be built to furnish the lumber.

No one without seeing it can have an adequate idea of the magnitude of the operations of one of the great saw-mills of Puget Sound.The great saw-mills. The Puget Mill Company, for the first ten months of last year, sawed on an average 290,000 feet every day of ten working hours. I visited the Port Blakely Mills, just across the Sound from Seattle. There I found a fleet of ships in the harbor, owned chiefly by the company; also, ships building on the stocks; railroads going out to the logging camps; a basin for receiving the logs, and a mill, with four separate tracks, bringing the logs in at one end, and carrying out the lumber at the other. A high iron trestle carried off the slabs to an enormous fire which never ceased to burn, where all this waste was consumed.

Around the mill was quite a town, in which a large number of races and nationalities were represented. This mill cut about 59,000,000 feet in 1887. Up to the 10th of November it had shipped as follows: To California, 32,464,763 feet; to South America, 6,847,427 feet; to Sandwich Islands, 1,799,891 feet; to Australia, 6,681,668 feet; to Feejee Islands, 511,815 feet; and used at home for ship-building, railroads, etc., 2,312,000 feet.

The Tacoma Mill Company and the Washington Mill Company produced the following lumber, etc., during 1886 and the first ten months of 1887:

LUMBER.
FEET.		LATH.
NO.		PILES.
LINEAR FT.
Tacoma Mill103,448,35028,815,095642,385
Washington Mill42,195,4788,772,800266,403

There were other large mills whose statistics I was not able to get in time. Mr. Walker thinks that the cut of all the mills on Puget Sound averages 1,200,000 feet per day; all of which finds ready sale.

I was not able to ascertain the profits of these mills,Profits and prices. but there can be no doubt that, with proper management, the profits are very good. The Seattle wholesale prices were as follows:

Lumber, common, per thousand feet$12 00
"sized,"""14 00
"Flooring$15 00 to 20 00
Dressed lumber, per thousand feet14 00 to 30 00
Laths2 00 to 2 25
Shingles1 50 to 2 00