Lumber Industry
Lumber Industry names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Lumber Industry the production of and trade in sawn timber for building purposes
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the production of and trade in sawn timber for building purposes. The chief countries engaged in this industry are the United States, Canada, Russia, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, and France, to which may be added Brazil, British Guiana, Mexico, and other tropical countries as the producers of the hardwoods, such as mahogany, cyprus, etc. In France, Sweden, and especially Germany, the industry differs from that in the United States in that it includes the cultivation of the trees from which the timber is cut, the natural forests having long ago been depleted. The unlimited license hitherto given the cutting of timber in the United States has of recent years brought appreciably nearer the need of a similar organization of the production. The first step in this direction has already been taken in the establishment of the Forestry Service, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, whose function it is to guard the national forests against fire, destructive insects and diseases and otherwise to encourage the growth of marketable timber, a certain amount of which is cut and sold each year under the supervision of the Bureau of Forestry. Because of this service the depletion of the timber lands of the country has been considerably checked. The resources of the United States in marketable timber were estimated as follows in 1913: the total area of forests still uncut amounted to 545,000,000 acres; about 1,013 billion board feet of timber was available in the Pacific Northwest; 634 billion board feet in the South, mostly white pine; about 100 billion board feet in the Lake States, and 450 billion board feet scattered elsewhere throughout the country. Aside from this there was 600 billion board feet under the control of the Federal Government, on the national reservations, including Alaska, with another 90 billion on State government reservations. The production of ordinary building timber during THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, PARLIAMENT BUILDING, LONDON Enc. Vol. 6-p. 36 PRESS THE BUTTON THE PRESS批取 Kadel & Herbert, N. Y. A LONDON DEVICE FOR GIVING INFORMATION ABOUT TRANSIT TOOTING & MENTON WESTMINSTER Photo, Colonial Press Service A LONDON FOG. THE PHOTOGRAPH WAS MADE AT 2 P. M. Erwing Galloway A VIEW ACROSS CENTRAL PARK, LOS ANGELES, CAL. Publishers' Photo Service
Lumber Industry TASMANIA LUSITANIA Opposite page 132
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
TASMANIA LUSITANIA Opposite page 132, Vol. VI MADEIRA
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 it drew a sharp line between Europe, where "the industry includes the cultivation of the trees from which the timber is cut," and the United States, where cutting was under "unlimited license" on natural forest. That line has vanished: most American lumber now comes from planted and managed stands, above all the pine plantations of the South, and annual growth on US timberland has exceeded annual harvest for decades, with total forest area roughly stable since the 1920s. The Forestry Service the entry credits with checking depletion is today's US Forest Service, and federal timber sales, once its routine business, collapsed after the 1980s amid litigation over old growth and species such as the northern spotted owl. The product changed too: plywood, oriented strand board and glue-laminated and cross-laminated timber now do work that sawn boards once did, and Russia, Canada, Brazil and China sit alongside the United States among the largest producers.
Written for this edition, 2026.