Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • G4 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. afforded them by their farms. These men are often hampered by lack of capital, are generally wanting in the knowledge requisite to good lumbering, and have had always to contend with the difficulty of obtaining expert loggers to carry out the work. Nevertheless, the nearness of large bodies of merchantable timber, among which are valuable kinds, such as Cherry, Black Walnut, Hickory, and Yellow Poplar, has usually made a fair profit possible under even the most thriftless logging methods. This desultory cutting has been going on for years, and although the individual efforts have been small, they have removed the merchantable timber from the larger portion of the accessible forests. RECENT LUMBERING METHODS MORE PROFITABLE, BUT ALSO DESTRUCTIVE. When the waning supplies of timber in the North and East some fifteen years ago forced the loggers of those regions to the South, the application of skillful and systematic methods of lumbering began in the Southern Appalachians. The newcomers, through the investment of commensurate capital in logging outfits, the thorough repair and extension of logging roads, and the generally businesslike mode of attack characteristic of the trained lumberman, have reaped a profit from their operations entirely impossible under the slipshod, desultory lumbering methods of the settler. Nature of the The harm done to the forest in both cases is very great in proportion to the quantity of lumber cut. This is due largely to the size of the trees and the fact that little care .is taken in the fellings. The damage to young growth is increased by the absence of snow and by the fact that trees are often cut when they are in full leaf. The breaking down and wounding of seedlings and young trees by the snaking of logs to the roadside or the river is in some degree unavoidable; but the damage is often much in excess of what is necessary. (See PI. LI1I.) There are often, however, many more snakewa}rs, or skid ways, than are necessary, and the application of a little system in kvying them out would save time and young growth on a lumber job. On the higher and steeper slopes it is often the habit— and one which can not be criticized too strongly, except in those rare cases where it is absolutely necessary on account of the gradient—to roll the logs from top to damages.
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