DOUGLAS FIR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2443, 6 March 1909, Page 7

DOUGLAS FIR.

OREGON PINE LUMBER. AN AMERICAN EXPERT. “Why, no,” said Mr C. W. Cropp, 0 f Tacoma,. TJ.S.A., wlion a N.Z. “Times” reporter asked him if the Puget Sound people were going to dump Douglas fir (Oregon pine) in Xew Zealand until there would bo u 0 room for anything else. “Maybe tho people in this Dominion don’t U’Procmte tho extent of the lumber in fibreo icoast districts— Briyhysh Columbia, Washington, and Ordgoit —I 'tell you those States cut nine billion feet of fir every year, and any small amount of trade that Is to be done with New Zealand will bo just a drop in a bucket or a chip j u a forest. The lumber people are cutting too fast right enough, but there is still about forty years i supply in sight. When you calculate that one Tacoma mill whirls out 300,000 feet a day, another- 200,000 and so down you’ll gather that the v trees are thick thereaway. They are fSf n fact 'closer together, straig)hto!r and nearer the sky than any other timber in the world. There can’t be any comparison between Oregon pine and any other timber simply because our timber runs to bigger sticks than anybody else’s. If any place wants an extraordinary big stock it simply has to take Douglas fir, and that’s all there is to it. If the fir in the Sound country was kauri it couldn’t be handled and sawn with the. plant wo use. It is because it is easily milled \ \Mtrsucb. enormous quantities are ' cue. Don’t wander away - with the idea, that our fir lumber business is worked with cheap Asiatic labour or anything of the kind. It’s a white trade clear through. Forest and mill workers are frequently of Scandinavian origin,, but they are not imported for the trade. They are born American mostly.- - Seattle, land Tacoma are biggish towns. They were not big towns away back in 1860, when they just began to feel they were being born. Tacoma niffT years ago had 40,000 people.. it has 100,000. At that time Seattle had 26,000 and now it has 225,000 people hustling around, and doing pretty well. It has grown from a collection of shacks to an ornate city with the usual twelve and fourteen floor warehouses. Talking about 'the wages of lumbermen, I figure that they are not greatly inferior to the wages paid in New Zealand. Both in the forest and the mill from the lower grades of ‘unskilled’ work to the higher grades of mechanics, the v»,uge is from 7s a day 'to £l—but •'Jyu’ll find that in most American 'business enterprises the man who can do the better work gets the better money, and there is keen classification. There is no Arbitration Court, as you know, but the unions and the bosses arbitrate considerably, and the law of supply and demand seems to take the place of a Court. No, perhaps the worker doesn’t have to support his landlord quite to the same extent as a Wellington

man seems to have to do. A man

may in either Tacoma or Seattle get the use of a six-roomed weatherbopJ|fhouse for 18s a week. It would be' frhm one to- two miles away from the centre of the city, on .a, car-linc, and would be built of good,, sound lumber,, A well-finished, well-built, and house of six rooms within' six blocks of the centre of Tacoxna city would cost 2os a week. 1 believe the prices of necessities of life are. very muoli the same as here —except that Tacoma, which sent 40,000 tons of wheat away last year, pays 5d for a two-pound loaf,, -and Seattle, which sent away 1.20,000 tons,, pays ten cents, also. Carpenters ted other skilled tradesmen ‘earn from 14s to 16s .a day. You’re wrong ,about the Yukon

goldfields being played out. Just because there is no wild rush on it musn’tbe believed that nothing is doing. More gold is being found in that territory than ever, -and the two cities named are headquarters for an immense trade with the goldfields. All the public services in the Puget Sound cities are run. by private con-

cerns, with the exception of the watersupplies, which are owned and controlled by the municipalities. Railtelegraphs, and , telephones asiwefi'as street cars are privately owned and well run. The universal car fare is twopence half-penny. Same for one block as all round the city. They have inter-urban car services too. You may travel from Seattle to Tacoma, eighteen miles, on the. car. The return journey (36 miles) costs one - dollar. Outside the cities the third rail (live) is used. No one has been 'killed in my eighteen years’ recollection with the live rail. Of osurs2.;'rtlie car-road is fenced, and t’heTO are numerous crossings the live rail does not traverse., The towns of Seattle and Tacoma have recruited their population /lirom the eastern States, and considering everything the community is law-abiding.”