Mr. COLEMAN. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. How long will the supply last, probably? Mr. COLEMAN. I could not say; it is guess-work. I think probably for ten to fifteen years. Mr. MCCORMICK. Perhaps I have the figures on that better than Mr. Coleman has. I have investigated that matter. By careful estimates, in northern Pennsylvania the standing hemlock is 10,000,000,000 feet, which would allow for an average cutting of 500,000,000 feet a year for twenty years. Mr. PAYNE. I was going to say fifteen years. The CHAIRMAN. That is rather encouraging. I was afraid you would cut it off sooner. Senator ALDRICH. In the mean time there is a growth. How long does it take a hemlock to grow? Mr. COLEMAN. It depends very much on circumstances. We cat our timber freely. We can not leave anything on our ground with any certainty of ever finding it again. Our system of lumbering there is different from that in the Adirondacks. We cut poles and put them down, and make grooves and slides, and skid our logs to the slides, and haul them in that way for a mile and a half to 5 miles. In the Adirondacks they haul their logs on sleds in the winter time, and that can be done at very little expense; but in our case it is rather expensive work to get our timber out. To build a slide is almost equivalent to building a cheap railroad. The CHAIRMAN. What would be the aggregate of wages paid annually for the production of this 500,000,000 feet? Mr. COLEMAN. It would cost on an average $4.50 a thousand to start with, and over half of that is labor; the other half is provisions. The CHAIRMAN. That is near enough. Mr. COLEMAN. It would cost $3 a thousand in labor alone, without subsistence, to put in that 10,000,000,000 feet, 500,000,000 a year. The CHAIRMAN (to Mr. Payne). Do you want to add anything? Mr. PAYNE. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moffitt, do you want to add anything on this question? Mr. MOFFITT. I believe not. In northern New York we have about 8,000,000,000 feet of hemlock and spruce. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. McCormick, have you anything that you wish to add in respect to hemlock? Mr. MCCORMICK. By the tariff act of 1842 on "boards, planks, etc., not planed or wrought into shape for use," a duty of 20 per cent. ad valorem was imposed. This duty remained from 1842 down to 1872, except that under the act of March 3, 1857, the duty was made 15 per cent. and continued until the act of March 3, 1861, restored the duty to 20 per cent. In 1872 the duty was changed from a 20 per cent. ad valorem to the present existing duty, namely, $1 per 1,000 feet board measure on "sawed boards, planks, deals, and other lumber of hemlock, sycamore, whitewood, and basswood," and $2 per 1,000 put on "all other sawed lumber." The lumber imported during the years 1886 and 1887 paying the specific duty of $1 per 1,000 feet, when reduced to the ad valorem standard, paid a duty of only 11.73 per cent., and that paying a duty of $2 per 1,000 feet an ad valorem duty of 16.18 per cent. (See annual report of Bureau of Statistics, page 84.) So that it appears that the duty on hemlock and other low-priced lumber was reduced by the act of 1872 more than 8 per cent. ad valorem, and pine and the higherpriced lumber was reduced about 4 per cent. ad valorem. The average monthly wages paid the laborer in the woods is about the sum of $30 and board, and the average daily pay of the laborer upon the saw-mills is about the sum of $2, he boarding himself. In Canada, including New Brunswick and Novia Scotia, our competitors in the lumber trade, the wages paid for the same work average as nearly as may be one-half to two-thirds the sums paid in this country. The cost, therefore, of producing 1,000 feet of lumber in Canada would be about $3 to $4, or one-half to two-thirds the cost in the United States. Allowing that the Canadian laborer is paid two-thirds as much as the laborer here, the labor cost in Canada is $4 per 1,000 feet; and the fact remains that the American laborer receives for the same work $2 per 1,000 feet more than the Canadian. Now the duty on pine, the highestpriced lumber, in which there can be great competition between Canada and the United States, is $2 per 1,000 feet. It appears to be clear, then, that the difference in labor cost alone is as great as the duty, and the laborer gets it. I respectfully submit that under the testimony that has been given here to-day, and more of which might be given with readiness, these rates, 11.73 in the one case and 16.18 in the other, are less than the difference between the wages paid in the United States and Canada. The CHAIRMAN. According to that statement the duty now is lower than it has been at any time since 1842? Mr. MCCORMICK. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Lower than under the tariff of 1846 and of 1857? Mr. MCCORMICK. Yes; that is the fact. If lumber is to be protected at all, it strikes me that an ad valorem duty or its equivalent of 11.73 per cent. and 16.18 per cent. is exceedingly low. STATEMENT OF MR. J. H. STOUT. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Stout, do you wish to make any statement respecting lumber? Mr. STOUT. I wish to give some figures: In the year 1880 the value of the sawed lumber manufactured in this country in nearly every State was $233,268,000; the whole number of men employed was 147,966; wages paid, $31,840,000; value of materials used, $146,155,000. Now, I think it is fair to say that about three-fourths of the value of the lumber is created by labor. It is about $4 a thousand for stumpage and the figures for the lumber are $15.50 to $16 per 1,000 feet in the tree. This is for white pine. It costs on the upper tributaries of the Mississippi about $4.25 per thousand to log and drive to the mills; it costs $2.75 to manufacture and raft; and it costs $1.50 for transportation, and about $2.75 to take the lumber from the water and prepare it for shipment. Lumber on the Mississippi is shipped by weight, and it is necessary to dry it and carry it for some length of time. Land that was worth in 1860, $2.50 an acre, after having been carried up to the present time, is worth $29.09 per acre; and land worth $16 an acre in 1882 is now worth $28.32 an acre. The last census, for 1880, shows that in Michigan they had 32,000,000,000; Wisconsin, 45,000,000,000; Minnesota, 11,000,000,000; making a total of 88,000,000,000 feet. The Southern States (estimated) had 500,000,000,000 feet, and the Pacific coast about the same amount. In connection with the value of stumpage, I notice that Mr. Ware houser, who testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Traderships a few days ago, says that his company paid the Indians for pine $2.50 to $3 per thousand. The CHAIRMAN. That is for stumpage? Mr. STOUT. That is for stumpage. The transportation of the logs from the Indian reservation down the Chippewa to the Mississippi costs 85 cents; the cost of labor in preparing it for milling was from $3.50 to $4 per thousand; the price of all lumber was from $14 to $15. I think the price ranges from $5 to $40 per thousand. There is always 10 to 15 per cent. of loss on logs between the reservation and the place of manu facture, caused by decay. Now compare that with the stumpage in Canada. In December, 1887, 450 miles of timber limits were sold for $1,330,699, an average of $2,957 per square mile. This shows an average cost of $4.62 per acre for the privilege of cutting this timber and of paying the further stumpage duty to the government of $1 per 1,900 feet for all that may be cut, and in addition a yearly tax of $2 per square mile. If we average the cut of 10,000 feet to the acre, we find the cost of stumpage to be: License cost, $4.62 per acre, per thousand. Yearly taxes, allowing but one year Total paid to government .462 $1,000 1.602 Canadian limit holders know how, and have just as selfish an interest to hold stumpage at all it will bring as holders of United States timber; and the American buyers of Canadian logs to be towed to American mills do not find themselves able to buy these logs in Canada at a cost delivered in mill boom enough below what they would pay for the same grade of American logs to get very rich from the difference. But if the customs duty of $2 be removed, would not the lumber be sold that much cheaper? Yes, provided the limit-holders in Canada exhibit a trait in human nature so vastly in variance with all our experience. Mr. Oliver Hill, of Saginaw, a large manufacturer of lumber in Michigan, and also an extensive owner of timber limits in Canada, says: I am informed that Mr. Hotchkiss believes that if the Canadian export duty is abrogated, Canadian logs will naturally come in to supply Saginaw mills with stock, but I think it is a plain mathematical proposition that if the Canadian export duty on logs of $2 per thousand, and the American import duty on lumber of $2 per thonsand are removed at the same time, that the Saginaw mills will stand in the relative condition as to securing logs to saw from Canada as to-day. The cost of towing and delivering of logs to the Saginaw mills from the Georgian Bay is $2 per thousand. The cost of sawing at Saginaw is about $2 per thousand. and, while Canadian labor costs less than ours, we will call the cost of sawing in Canada the same as here. The freight from Georgian Bay to Buffalo and the eastern market is, by water, substantially the same as from Saginaw. By rail it is less. If you call the freight from both points to Buffalo $2.50 per thousand, you will have these results, which please put down: These figures show that under present conditions as to duties, the Saginaw mills are at a disadvantage of $2 per thousand in handling Canadian logs, and since the imposition of $2 export duty on logs it is well known that they have ceased to come in. Now, let us suppose that both the duties are removed, as Mr. Hotchkiss proposes, and we have: Canadian sawed logs on the Saginaw River: Cost of delivering logs to mills Cost of sawing.... Cost of freight to Buffalo. Lumber costs in Buffalo above cost of logs... Canadian logs sawed in Canada: Cost of sawing.... Cost of freight to Buffalo.... Lumber costs in Buffalo above cost of logs.... Per M. $2.00 2.00 2.60 6.50 2.00 2.50 4.50 Under the new conditions the advantage of Canadian mill-owners over Saginaw mill-owners of $2 per thousand would still remain, and the logs would therefore then, as now, be manufactured into lumber in Canada. In that connection I would like to submit the petition of the Board of Trade of Saginaw to Congress in regard to the removal of the duty on lumber : To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: Your memorialists, citizens of that State which stands first in the Union in the production of salt and lumber, respectfully but earnestly protest against the tariff legislation now pending in Congress, which threatens with disaster those industries upon which, in a great measure, the prosperity of the entire State depends. The annual surplus of $120,000,000 flowing into the national Treasury is made the pretext for abolishing the duties on salt and lumber, upon which there is annually realized less than $2,000,000, while the main schedule of customs duties is to remain comparatively unchanged. If the surplus is to be arrested by cutting down customs dues, wise statesmanship would say that those taxes should be first removed which bear most heavily upon the people. We here present a partial list of the duties paid in 1885, according to the official tables of the Treasury Department, compiled under the supervision of the late Secretary Manning: An inspection of the revenue table quickly shows whence much of the surplus comes and what taxes in fact burden the people, and it further shows that the duties which now serve to slightly protect from foreign rivalry the dealers and workers in lumber and salt should be among the last to be swept away, because they contribute appreciably neither to the surplus nor the burden. But there are other reasons why Congress should not lay its hands heavily on these industries. Salt is an article of prime necessity. It is, therefore, contrary to the spirit of national safety and independence to invite England and her dependencies to make our country a dumping ground for surplus salt, breaking down the home manufacturer and causing us to look abroad for our main supply. The men of the South, who, during the late war, dug up the dirt floors of smokehouses to extract the salt therefrom, know what it is to have depended on this same foreign supply, yet, to-day, one-third of the salt consumed in this country is of foreign manufacture. Liverpool salt is mined under a scale of wages not quite onehalf that paid in the salt works of Michigan. It is shipped to this country mainly as ballast, and distributed from the sea-board into the interior to points where the increasing freight rates compel it to yield the field to American product. While England has ceased to be a fighting nation, in a military sense, she still fights the war of commercial domination with vigor peculiarly her own. Let the 12 cents per hundred pounds now paid as duty be expended in paying additional freight, and foreign salt will flood the markets of Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago, Saint Louis, and Kansas City. She will press the products of Liverpool, Turk's Island, and Canada upon our markets, and will not rest until the ruin she has worked with the salt makers of Louisiana and West Virginia she brings to those of New York, Ohio, and Michigan, and they find themselves, like their brothers near the seaboard, victims of the need and greed of England. There is no better salt made in the world than in Michigan, and we challenge the world to the test. It is to-day sold in bulk in Saginaw for less than Englishmen pay for salt in Liverpool. Two hundred and eighty pounds of standard salt packed in a barrel costing 20 cents may be bought for 60 cents, or at the rate of seven pounds for a cent. On this basis the entire cost to the American people for the salt they annually consume is but 8 cents per capita, or less than one eleventh of the tariff tax alone which they pay on sugar, of 89 cents, and before the repeal of the present protective tariff on either lumber or salt we would invite your consideration to the magnitude of the interests involved, of the investments to be impaired, and the labor to be thrown out of employment, and we would respectfully ask you, charged as you are with the welfare of all the people, how these investments are to be made good, and in what new field this labor is to be employed? And it should not be overlooked that the duties on lumber and salt are not prohibitory, for one-third of the salt used in this country is imported, while onehalf of the entire lumber product of Canada comes in to compete with the home supply. The duty collected on Canadian lumber is less than 16 per cent. This percentage does not to-day equal the difference in the cost of labor in the two countries, and while great armies of men are employed in the lumber business, at least $120,000,000 worth of dutiable commodities are used annually in the production of American lum ber. Yet it is proposed that the lumberman shall sell his lumber in the open market, competing with the world, and yet be compelled to buy his rails and locomotives for his logging railroad, his engines, boilers, and machinery for his saw-mills, his axes, saws, chains, and like equipments for his lumber camps, not in the world's market, but from the more favored sons of Pennsylvania, sheltered behind the tariff wall of 30 per cent. against foreign competition. But a cry which originated in Montreal, with men who sought free access to our lumber markets, has been echoing through the East that the Government should protect the forests of the country from destruction. To this we answer, that when the lumberman buys his timber from the Government or its grantee and converts it into lumber to give shelter to man, that he has not destroyed it, but rather converted it to its highest use, the one for which it was ordained. The forest resources are ample for to-day and for all time. It is the history of nations that as they grow in age and riches the use of lumber gives way to that of material more costly, but more durable, and to-day with a pinery of 235,000,000,000 feet standing in the Southern States alone awaiting the demand which is just beginning to be felt, the man who would invite Canada, with her 50,000,000,000 feet of pine, into our market, to save our forests from destruction by making it unprofitable for the owners to cut them, would, in our judgment, be wanting both in good sense and honest patriotism. We believe in the principle of protection against foreign industrial invasions in every form, but, whatever revenue system is to prevail, we ask under it an even place for the interests we represent. If there is to be free trade in lumber and salt, and we are compelled to sell our products cheaper, then the free trader should give us free sugar, free iron and steel, and free woolens; for, if the system be beneficent, we too are entitled to share its benefits. But if the theory of protection to American enterprise and American labor is still to prevail, then the protectionist should continue to give to our great industries that just measure of protection which they deserve, and we, therefore, from protectionists and free traders alike, ask simple justice, and for that your memoralists will ever pray. The CHAIRMAN. That statement you have just read is based on the cost at Buffalo ? Mr. STOUT. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Does that affect in any way the price of lumber on the Mississippi River, that is, whether the duty is removed or not! |