AMERICAN LUMBER METHODS

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 62, 7 December 1926, Page 9

AMERICAN LUMBER METHODS

4 ADOPTION BY DOMINION IMPOSSIBLE Dominion Special. Auckland, December 6. Some of the reasons why the New Zealand timber miller cannot compete with the American miller in the matter of production costs were given by Mr. G. Bartholomew, of Feilding, who returned by the Niagara after a six months’ trip t othe West Coast of America. Mr. Bartholomew described some of the huge mills he had seen, and spoke of one in the Redwood Country ,and California which had an area of 50,000 acres of splendid standing timber to work on. One tree had a height of 412 feet, and was estimated to contain 200,000 feet (a good month’s cutting for the average Main Trunk mill). The company owning this forest had been working on it for ■ thirty years, and would be catting growing timber for the next fifty years. It was cutting out about 1000 acres a year, the bush averaging about 100,000 'feet per acre, while over the flat land the bush produced from 300,000 to 400,000 feet per acre. In New Zealand 25,000 feet to the acre was considered very good. The huge mill plant handling this output employed 1900 men, who worked nine hours a clay for six days a week, with a minimum wage of four dollars a dav. Mr. Bartholomew pointed out that, with the small areas available in New Zealand, the nature of the country, and the amount of unavoidable waste due to the nature of the timber, the New Zealand millers could not put in the plants used by the American millers, and could not hope to get the return per acre. There was much lie learned from the methods of the American millers, but, unfortunately, not much that could be applied here. , Even with thoeir vast organisations the American millers were not making money; their domestic market was not taking the full output. The mills were so highly organised that they could not stop. Much of the surplus came to overseas markets, including New Zealand, and the rougher sorts Went mainly to Japan. In the mill which he had instanced there was very b'ttole waste, as it was possible to 'utilise almost the whole of the log. The mill employed women making cigar boxes, and also Japanese, Chinese, and Indians.