< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu
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493
INCREASE OF AMERICAN LAND VALUES

the Bureau of Labor (Bulletin No. 99, March, 1912) reports for lumber products a rise in price which is little short of phenomenal. Taking as a basis the price between 1890 and 1899, the price of hemlock lumber rose (1890-1912) from 105.2 to 172.9; of hard maple, from 100 to 129.5; of white oak, from 98.6 to 154.5; of white pine, from 96.4 to 214.2; of yellow pine, from 112.4 to 177.3; of poplar, from 97.2 to 196.4; of spruce, from 113.5 to 169.2; of shingles, from 110.7 to 130.1; of tar, from 122.4 to 176.4; of turpentine, from 122.0 to 203.1; and rosin claps the climax with an increase from 96.1 to 466.5. This series of twenty-two years, therefore, shows a remarkable rise in the wholesale price of timber and timber products. One turns from this extraordinary increase in the price of timber products to inquire into the increase in the value of the lands from which timber comes. Has the rise in the value of the land from which the raw material is derived corresponded with the rise in the value of the raw material?

The inability of officials and of private persons to supply data on the increase in the value of mineral lands was more than offset by their generosity in furnishing information regarding the rise in timber values. The editor of The Lumberman's Review, Frederick J. Caulkins, comments (March 19, 1913):

The sharp upward movement began about 1899, since which time I should say that timber had increased at about the same rate as lumber namely, about one hundred per cent.

A number of private firms wrote interesting letters regarding the movement of prices in their own section. A lumberman from Au Sable, Mich., states (March 5, 1913):

Hard-wood lands from which the pine had been cut were sold (1895) by pine operators, from one to two dollars per acre. Gradually, but steadily, these lands have advanced in value, until at this time they would bring from twenty to sixty dollars, and more, an acre.

A prominent lumber manufacturer from Bay City, Mich., writes (April 3, 1913):

In Minnesota white pine has been sold at from eight to twenty dollars per thousand feet. In Michigan, hard woods, including hemlock, have advanced from five and ten dollars per acre to, in some instances, as high as ninety dollars per acre for especially good tracts of timber.

Another lumberman gives an excellent illustration of a small increase in values (March 24, 1913):

Six years ago I bought a tract of hard-wood timber land in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The average cost was about nine dollars, and the interest, taxes and fire protection brought the investment up to about sixteen dollars an acre. The land could not be sold for over twenty dollars an acre to-day.

Similar letters from other sections of the country show a compara-

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