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The great expansion
which characterized the Ontario lumber trade' beginning about the
middle of the Nineteenth Century was due mainly to the increasing
demands of the United States for Canadian lumber. Active lumbering
operations were still being carried on in the central and eastern
states, and the industry was just beginning in the Saginaw Valley
and other points in the West. The adoption of the reciprocity treaty
in 1854, securing the free exchange of natural products between the
United States and Canada, including “timber and lumber of all kinds,
round, hewed and sawed, manufactured in whole or in part,”
stimulated considerably the growing demand for the forest products
of Canada.
In proportion as
the market for sawn lumber developed, the cutting of square timber,
long the leading branch of the industry, declined in importance and
became less essential to the prosperity of the lumbering interest.
From being the principal factor in the export trade it speedily fell
to a subordinate position, as its disadvantages, especially in the
matter of its wastefulness and the greater danger of forest fires
from the amount of litter its prosecution left in the woods, began
to attract attention. The extension of the market and the rapidly
changing conditions of the trade were attended by some fluctuations
and vicissitudes, and inflations and depressions naturally followed
because of the abundance of the supply of raw material available.
The price of waney and' square white pine would sometimes fall in
the Quebec market as low as ten cents a cubic foot and suddenly rise
to twenty-five cents, and the variations of the Albany market, then
an important center of the trade were extensive, and imparted a
speculative character to the business.
The American Civil
War, and the lavish expenditures which resulted, created a great
demand for Canadian lumber at high prices, though the trade received
a setback in 1866 by the abrogation of the reciprocity treaty. This
led to the reimposition by Ontario of export duties on
unmanufactured logs.
A few figures may
be given to show the altered character of the trade during the
decade immediately preceding this event, and the. growing importance
to Canadian lumbermen of the American, as compared with the British,
market.
The total exports
of forest products from Old Canada (the present Provinces of Ontario
and Quebec) to Great Britain for the three-year period 1854-6, at
about the time of the adoption of the reciprocity treaty, amounted
in value to $18,288,702, while the aggregate shipments to the United
States were valued at $8,894,218. The total shipments of lumber and
timber for the fiscal year 1867 amounted to $13,948,648. The
proportions consigned to Great Britain and the United States were
nearly equal, being valued at $6,889,783 and $6,831,252
respectively. The increase in the American export trade was almost
entirely in sawn lumber. While “planks and boards” were exported to
the United States in 1854 to the value of $1,866,712, the same item
figures in the returns for 1867 to the amount of $5,043,367. The
development of this feature of the trade, while to a certain extent
fostered by the favorable conditions of the reciprocity treaty, was
in the main due to the rapid growth of population in the eastern
states, coincident with a gradual diminution of their home sources
of supply, rendering it necessary for them to look abroad for their
requirements.
It was during this
period that many of the firms now prominent in connection with the
lumbering and allied industries of the Ottawa Valley first
established themselves. John R. Booth, one of the oldest and best
known representatives of the trade, began business in 1858. Like
those of most of the more extensive employers, his interests embrace
a number of subsidiary interests, including a large pulp mill and
railroad operations on a large scale. E. B. Eddy, head of the E. B.
Eddy Company, began the manufacture of matches in 1854. In addition
to this branch of the business and extensive lumbering operations,
the company is engaged in the manufacture of woodenware and paper.
The firm of Bronsons & Weston dates back to 1853, and was one of the
first to establish a sawmill on a large scale at the Chaudiere.
Other firms which flourished about this period or somewhat later,
some of which are still extant or have been reorganized as
incorporated companies, are A. H. Baldwin, established in 1853;
Perley & Puttee, who commenced business at the Chaudiere in 1857;
Gilmour & Co., who had extensive mills at Chelsea on the south bank
of the Gatineau; Wright, Batson & Currier, and Hamilton & Co.,
proprietors of the large Hawkesbury mills near the Grenville Rapids,
sixty miles from Ottawa down the Ottawa River.
In 1867 the
confederation of the British North American provinces was
accomplished, the old union between Upper and Lower Canada being
dissolved. The former became the Province of Ontario and the latter
the Province of Quebec. By the terms of the British North America
Act, under which the Dominion of Canada was constituted, the control
of public lands and forests was relegated to the several provinces.
By that time considerable headway had been made in the understanding
of how best to handle timber lands, but in the agitation over the
question of union and in the multiplicity of large political issues
which Canadians had to deal with in building up this confederation
and opening transportation systems from ocean to ocean, the question
of forestry was largely lost sight of for the time.
MANAGEMENT OF CROWN
LANDS.
With confederation
accomplished and with the knowledge that Crown lands would be
henceforth one of the principal sources of provincial revenue (the
customs, excise, etc., having gone to the Federal Parliament as a
basis of its revenue), the leaders in Ontario turned their attention
to the forests, and Honorable Stephen Richards, first Commissioner
of Crown Lands for Ontario, rather patted himself on the back on his
first reporting to the legislature that a bonus of $519 a square
mile, the largest price ever paid, had just been received at a
timber sale for an eighteen-mile berth. Contrasted with the price of
$31,500 a mile paid in the sale of December, 1903, this seems
insignificant, but it showed that the people were beginning to
realize the value of this great asset. His first report, covering
the year 1868, showed that the revenue from timber dues, ground
rents and bonuses amounted to $190,237. The change resulted in
increased stringency in the management of the public domain. New
regulations were issued, the dues being raised 50 percent of the
previous rates and a uniform rate of ground rent fixed.
For some years the
volume of exportation steadily increased, and the timber revenue
went up by leaps and bounds. In 1868 the dues and ground rents
amounted to $190,237; and in 1869, owing to the 50 percent increase
in the dues, increased business and more careful supervision, they
went up to $508,561. New regulations were adopted in 1869 which
increased the ground rent to $2 a square mile, and the dues to the
following: Black walnut and oak, per cubic foot, 3 cents; elm, ash,
tamarack, and maple, 2 cents ; red pine and white pine, birch,
basswood, cedar, buttonwood, cottonwood and all boom timber, 1 %
cents; all other woods, 1 cent; red pine, white pine, basswood,
buttonwood and cottonwood sawlogs, per standard of 200 feet board
measure, 15 cents; walnut, oak and maple sawlogs, 25 cents; hemlock,
spruce and other woods, 10 cents; pipe staves, per thousand, $7;
hemlock tanbark, per cord, 30 cents. The duties were to be collected
upon exact measurement; but, where this could not be obtained, each
stick was to be estimated as containing the following cubic feet:
White pine, 70; red pine, 38; oak, 50; elm, 45, and all other woods,
34.
In 1870 the
Dominion Parliament passed an act compelling lumber- • men to mark
their timber to be floated down stream and provided for a registry
of such marks; and in 1873 the throwing of sawdust, slabs, .
edgings, bark, or refuse into any part of a navigable stream was
prohibited.
About 1870 the
industry was mainly centered in the Ottawa Vdlley and on the upper
waters of the Trent River and waters tributary to the Georgian Bay.
Production in the latter region had before that time been limited to
a few mills, the output of which was principally consumed in the
locality. But, with the advance of settlement, the shipment of
lumber from this now important source of production began to
increase as the country was opened up.
The beginning of
lumbering operations in the Georgian Bay district on a comprehensive
scale practically dates from the year 1872, when an extensive sale
of timber limits, covering 5,301 square miles on the north shore of
Lake Huron, was held, from which the Government realized $602,665 in
bonuses and ground rents. The territory included in this sale was
largely unfit for agricultural settlement, and, large areas being
uninhabited, the timber was exposed to depredations, as every
facility existed for its being towed across the frontier. Among the
principal purchasers of limits at this sale were McArthur Bros.,
Toronto; Rathbun & Son, of Mill Point, now Deseronto; Cook Bros.,
Toronto; James Eagan, Ottawa; Henry Kirk, Toronto; Geo. Green,
Brampton; Isaac Cockburn, Toronto; W. H. Gibbs, Oshawa, and Hugh
Macdonald, Toronto, some of which names are well known in the
business world today. .
This period of
prosperity reached its climax in 1873, and was the time of the rise
of the great lumbering industry of Michigan, Wisconsin and
Minnesota, which production reached a volume far surpassing the
Canadian output and forming the most considerable source of supply
for the great West. The yield of sawn pine lumber of these great
pine-producing states reached the figure of 3,999,780,000 feet in
1873. Falling off during the protracted period of worldwide
depression which followed, it increased again in 1880 and developed
by leaps and bounds with the increased demand caused by immigration
and settlement in the western states, until the high-water mark was
reached in 1892 with the enormous total for that year of
8,594,222,802 feet.1 From that time the
output declined, owing partly to the exhaustion of sources of timber
supply and partly to the exploitation of the southern forests and
the substitution of other construction materials for pine.
RELATIONS WITH THE
UNITED STATES.
The change in the
lumbering situation in the neighboring states had an important
bearing upon the trade in Canada. With the depletion of the pine
forests in Michigan the dependence of the American consumer upon
Canada for a portion of the lumber supply increased. It became the
interest of the American manufacturer to secure this supply as far
as possible in the form of raw material to be worked up in the
American sawmills in those localities where the domestic forests no
longer remained within access. It was equally the interest of the
Canadians to export their forest product in as highly manufactured a
form as possible.
A committee was
appointed by the Federal house in the session of 1874 to look into
the question of the export duty on sawlogs, etc., imposed in 1868.
It reported that, reduced to an ad valorem rate, it^ averaged: On
stave bolts, 40 percent; oak logs, 30percent; pine logs,"' 20
percent; spruce logs, 25 percent, and shingle bolts, 25 percent. The
committee reported that, while this enabled sawmill owners to buy
cheaper logs, it hurt the settler and timber owner and at the same
time did not result in the establishment of more mills.
The duty on oak
logs and stave bolts was abolished in 1875. Things remained in this
state until 1886, when the export duty on shingle bolts was fixed at
$1.50 a cord; on spruce logs, $1 a thousand feet, and on pine logs,
$2. In November of the same year, by order in council, the export
duty on sawlogs was increased from $2 to $3 a thousand feet; but
July 5, 1889, in view of a probable understanding with the United
States in regard to duties on Canadian manufactured lumber, the old
rate was restored. The negotiations carried on while the McKinley
bill was under consideration were successful, and in October, 1890,
Sir John Macdonald, after negotiating with the United States
Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, removed the export duty on
spruce and pine logs in consideration of the United States Congress
reducing the import duty on sawn lumber from $2 to $1 a thousand.
When the Democrats
came into power the duty on sawn lumber was removed under the Wilson
bill and free trade on logs and lumber between Canada and the United
States followed. While this was satisfactory to Canadian lumbermen,
market conditions were such that it did them very little good, and
lumber exports were less in 1892 than in 1889. The depression of
1893 was accompanied by low prices of lumber which lasted until 1898
and low prices in the United States were attributed to Canadian
competition. As the outcome of this feeling, when the Dingley bill
was passed in 1897 the old duty of $2 on lumber • was restored. —
Large quantities of
sawlogs were being exported to feed Michigan mills and the Michigan
men, being naturally anxious to keep up the supply, adopted the
expedient of a clause in the Dingley bill providing that if any
country or dependency imposed an export duty the amount of such duty
would be added to the import duty. This, if successful, would have
transferred the bulk of the Georgian Bay trade to Michigan, because,
if that state could get free logs while sawn lumber was charged a
stiff duty, nothing could be sawn on the Georgian Bay for the United
States market; and, if an export duty was imposed by Canada, then
the duty on sawn lumber entering the United States would be
prohibitory. The authors of the measure overlooked the fact that the
Ontario government does not sell land and timber in fee simple as is
done in the United States, but only sells a license to cut timber
over a given area subject to the payment of Crown dues, retaining
the ownership of the land. .
The Georgian Bay
lumbermen applied to the Dominion Parliament for an export duty, but
the Government, fearing the imposition of retaliatory duties on sawn
lumber by the United States, declined to act. The lumbermen then
sought relief from the Ontario Provincial legislature. In the
session of 1898 the legislature passed an act requiring that v all
logs cut on government land be manufactured in the Province. Since
this was not a duty but the regulation of a landholder respecting
its own property, the United States could not impose a retaliatory
duty; but the Michigan holders of Ontario timber limits claimed that
it was a breach of contract, in that by payment of the bonus they
acquired the limit and the right to cut pine thereon and to dispose
of it as they saw fit.
The Government
replied that the licenses were for one year only, and that to obtain
a renewal of the license the next year they must submit to such
regulations as the Government saw fit to impose. The Dominion
Parliament refused to interfere and the courts decided in favor of
the Provincial government. The effect of this has been to cause the
removal of a large number of American lumbermen to Ontario to do a
sawmill business there, and it seems to be taken for granted that
the exportation of sawlogs from the Province will never again be
permitted.
IMPORTANCE OF
GEORGIAN BAY DISTRICT.
Michigan lumbermen
are largely interested in lumbering operations and timber properties
in the Georgian Bay district of Ontario. About 1890 lumbermen in the
Saginaw district began making investments in Canadian pine, and
increasingly large quantities of Canadian logs were rafted to
eastern Michigan mills—80,000,000 feet in 1891, 300,000,000 in 1894
and 238,843,024 in 1898. In April, 1898, the act of the Ontario
Legislature requiring logs cut on Crown lands in Canada to be
manufactured in that country became effective and this was the death
blow to the log rafting industry. At once Michigan men who had made
investments in Canadian timber began preparations to manufacture
their product in Canada, and now Holland & Graves, Eddy Bros. & Co.,
S. O. Fisher, The Moulthrop Lumber Company, The William Peter
Estate, McArthur Bros. Company, McEwen & Dolson, Huron Lumber
Company, Saginaw Lumber & Salt Company, Cleveland-Sarnia Sawmills
Company, Loveland & Stone, George L. Burtis and a number of other
concerns—with a few exceptions all hailing from Michigan— are
operating in the Georgian Bay district.
The lumber industry
in this district is the most important in Ontario, as, with the
single exception of the Ottawa River district, which embraces a
portion of Quebec Province and should not, therefore, be considered
here, this district produces by far the largest amount of lumber of
any portion of the Province. The condition of the lumber market of
the United States is a great factor in determining prices in the
Canadian lumber market. Shipments by water from the Georgian Bay
ports have increased materially since the abolition of tolls on the
Canadian canals. Birch and ash are manufactured and exported quite
extensively to the United States. Hemlock, oak, elm and red pine are
all used locally. Pickets, pine, cedar shingles, staves and lath are
exported. |
