The timber-land of Linn, occupying half its area, is comprised in three belts of dense forest, half of which is red fir. Within the last twenty-four years thousands of acres of woodland have grown up from seed, and are now covered with trees from forty to eighty feet high, with a diameter of from ten inches to two feet. There have been made from one acre of fir-timber six thousand rails ten feet long by at least four inches thick.
Multnomah has a large area of timber-land, mostly yellow and red fir.
Three fourths of the area of Tillamook is in timber, and half of this is fir and hemlock. The forests of Umatilla are confined to the mountains, where they are very dense, and to the belts along the streams. Wasco has immense forests in the mountains, many of them as yet inaccessible. The general result is, that Oregon has in all 15,407,528 acres of woodlands out of a total area of 60,975,360 acres. The timber on the average is worth now about four dollars per thousand cubic feet at the saw-mill in the log, and costs when sawed into inch lumber about eight dollars the thousand feet of such lumber. The price of the lumber to the consumer varies from nine to fourteen dollars per thousand feet, according to the demand. Much of the fir and spruce timber will cut into six or seven logs of sixteen feet in length, the tree being six feet in diameter two feet from the ground.
From one cut out of a fallen fir on my own land we split one hundred and thirty-two rails of fully four inches diameter, and from several trees over six hundred rails each have been split.
A good deal of unauthorized timber-cutting goes on upon the Government land not yet taken up. When the logger is honest, he buys the right to cut from the owner of the land, paying "stumpage" of about fifty cents a tree. I have known many acres to provide over fifty of these big trees, thus returning a good price for the timber, and leaving rich and partly cleared land for pasturing purposes in the hands of the owner.
One of the industries that needs to be established in many parts of the State is tanning. Hides are plentiful, and of excellent quality; bark, both of oak and of hemlock, is easily procurable, and the water-power is abundant almost everywhere. At present the leather used is chiefly imported from California; it has been hastily tanned, and is of poor quality. The drawback to this business is that it absorbs capital before it begins to yield profit; but, the machine once having begun to revolve, the returns are steady, the risks few, the results permanent, and the profits very considerable.
WOOLEN-MILLS.The woolen manufacture in Oregon has already taken good hold. Oregon goods are well known in California, and in Philadelphia and New York also. They received well-deserved praise at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. There are three woolen-factories in the State: one at Oregon City, one at Brownsville, and one at Ashland, in the south of the State. Their blankets and tweeds are admirable for thickness, solidity, and softness of texture. The Oregon City mills employ a good many Chinamen; they work well and economically. There is every probability of a fourth factory being at once established in or near Albany; and the more the better, considering the ample water-power, and the abundance and excellence of fleeces.
Taking into account the quality of the flax grown in the State and the indefinite power of expansion of the product, seeing that the very edge of the flax-land has hardly yet been touched, while many thousand acres are specially fit for the crop, and considering, also, that linen in its various forms is unnaturally dear on the Pacific coast, it seems a pity that one or more linen-factories should not be established. The present disturbed state of Ireland has, we know, prepared many of its inhabitants for emigration, and among them are many trained in the growth, the preparation, and the manufacture of flax. Any persons familiar with this industry could not do better than transfer themselves, their capital, their machinery, and their staff of workers, to this free land; here they will find a hearty welcome, a fine climate, the very best of raw material, a market at their doors, unlimited opening for expansion of their business, and a habitation free alike from turbulence, riot, and oppression.
No book attempting to deal, in however general terms, with the industrial development of Oregon, can pass the business in canned salmon without notice.
The growth of the business has been marvelous. The following table shows the canning of the Columbia River salmon during the ten years ending with 1880: