LUMBER AND SHINGLES.

The white pine lumber product of the Northwest last year was according to latest returns, 7,624,789,786 feet against 3,993,780,000 in 1873, and more than double what it was in 1874. In 1882 the production was nearly 100,000,000 feet less than last year. The smallest product of the decade was in 1877—3,595,333,496 feet. What is termed the Chicago District, including the points of Green Bay, Cheboygan, Manistee, Ludington, White Lake, Muskegon, Grand Haven, and Spring Lake, and a few scattering mills gave a product in 1883 of 2,111,070,076 feet. At Ludington and Grand Haven there has been a decline in the product since 1873; at all the other points the increase has been considerable, amounting to a total of nearly 800,000,000 feet. The largest cut is on the Mississippi river in what is known as the West of Chicago District. Here in 1873 the product amounted to 650,000,000 feet; last year it reached 1,290,062,690 feet. The Saginaw Valley gives the next greatest yield 961,781,164 feet. The total Saginaw district gave last year 1,439,852,067 feet against 792,358,000 ten years ago. The total of the West of Chicago District was 3,134,331,793 against 1,353,000,000 in 1873. The Railroad and Interior Mills District has increased something over 200,000,000 feet in this period.

In shingles we have the grand product in all the Northwest of 3,964,736,639 against 2,277,433,550 in 1873. The greatest increase was in the Chicago District as given above, and here Ludington and Grand Haven come in for an increase at the former place of over 33,000,000, and the latter of more than 100,000,000. The total production of shingles in 1882 was larger than last year by about 130,000,000, but with that exception was the largest ever known.

The census of 1880 placed the annual lumber product of the United States at 18,000,000,000 feet. The Northwest then produced 5,651,295,000 feet or nearly one-third the entire product of the country. If this ratio has been uniform since we must now have a yield of over 20,000,000,000 feet. These are figures of enormous magnitude and of varied import. They mean employment to an army of men, a large shipping interest, vast investments in mills and machinery, and vast incomes to owners of pine lands; they mean houses and barns and fences to a new and populous empire; they mean numberless farms and millions of live stock. They also signify a rapid destruction of our immense forests from the face of the earth, enormous prices for lumber to future generations, and possible floods to devastate our river bottoms, and drouths to scourge the highlands. They should impress us all with the necessity and the profitableness of timber planting on the unsettled and newly settled prairies and in thousands of places in all the older States.