about 6,700,000 M, of which Washington was producing 4,592,oooM, and Oregon 2,098,oooM.
It was about 1900 that the larger Uimber manufacturers and capitaHsts of the Middle West began spying out new forest land in which to operate when supplies of timber on hand should fail. Some were attracted to the Southern States, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, also North Carolina and Texas. All of those states in consequence show stupendous increases in their lumber outputs, which totalled in 1913 15,300,oooM, as against less than 4,ooo,oooM, for the Lake group. Others began to acquire holdings in the Pacific states, notably Oregon and Washington, where vast tracts were brought under the control of a few wealthy operators.
Timber land; how secured. The land laws of the United States were drawn with reference to the individual cultivator or homesteader, and were ill adapted to the requirements of lumbering, which calls for such large investments in machinery as are justified only on the assurance that raw materials of manufacture—in this case timber—will be available for a reasonable number of years. Being unable to purchase such supplies of timber from the government, which sold only to individuals and in lots not to exceed 160 acres, operators felt themselves under the necessity of buying the lands entered by private holders. Since, moreover, every operator, on contemplating a new business, based his calculations upon the exploitation of a given body of timber which must be secured
