Pacific States include: Washington, Oregon and California.
North Atlantic States include: New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.
Lake States include: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Central States include: Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.
Rocky Mountain States include: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.
One striking evidence of the decrease of the timber supply is the shifting of its sources. Once the northeastern States produced over half of the lumber product. They reached their relative maximum in 1870 when they produced 36 per cent. At that time the Lake States produced about 24 per cent. By 1890 the Lake States came to their maximum of 36 per cent. Today the southern States are near their maximum with 41 per cent., but the center will soon shift to the Pacific States. Their product rose from less than 10 per cent. of the whole in 1900 to 17 per cent. in 1908, Figs. 115 and 116. When that virgin forest has been cut off, there will be no new region to exploit; whereas, heretofore, when a region was exhausted, the lumbermen have always had a new one to which to move. At the annual meeting of the Northern Pine Manufacturers' Association in Minneapolis, Minn., January 22, 1907, Secretary J. E. Rhodes made this striking statement:
Since 1895, 248 firms, representing an annual aggregate output of pine lumber of 4¼ billion feet, have retired from business, due to the exhaustion of their timber supply. Plants representing approximately 500 million feet capacity, which sawed in 1906, will not be operated in 1907.
The shifting of the chief sources of supply has, of course, been accompanied by a change in the kinds of lumber produced. There was a time when white pine alone constituted one-half of the total quantity. In 1900 this species furnished but 21.5 per cent., in 1904 only 15 per cent., of the lumber cut.[6] We do not use less pine because we have found something better, but because we have to put up with something worse.
Fig. 116. (Lumber Production by States).
The present annual cut of southern yellow pine is about 13¼ million M feet, or a little less than one-third of the total cut of all the species. At the present rate of consumption, it is evident that within ten or fifteen years, there will be a most serious shortage of it. Meanwhile the cut of Douglas fir on the Pacific coast has increased from 5 per cent. of the total lumber cut in 1900 to 12 per cent. in 1905. This increase is in spite of the fact, already noted ([p. 262]) that the great timber owning companies of the northwest are holding their stumpage for an expected great increase in value.