A BLOW AT CHICAGO'S LUMBER TRADE.

Mr. Van Schaick, the Chairman of the committee of lumbermen appointed to look after their interests during the present labor troubles, made a very complete and important statement, published in Sunday's TRIBUNE, of the condition of the lumber trade and the manner in which it will be affected should the sudden, unexpected, and inordinate demands of the employés be conceded. He shows very conclusively that those demands cannot be met, because there is not a profit in the business that warrants it. Nearly all the dealers have to be satisfied with a very moderate profit on their investments.

During the last five years seventeen lumber-yards have been retired, and the remaining yards have steadily contracted the volume of their business. This fact the lumber hands appear to have overlooked. Mr. Van Schaick puts the situation in a nutshell when he says that "lumbermen are not going to "continue the transaction of a business in "which the output would be $1.10 and the "return $1," which would be the condition of things should they concede the extravagant demands now made upon them. If the lumber-shovers know of any way in which a business can be conducted on such a basis they ought to lose no time in notifying their bosses how to do it.

The lumber trade and the lake-carrying trade go together. What affects the one immediately affects the other. When the season opened vessel-owners expected a brisk business, but the "strike" in the lumber trade has left them but little to carry. If the shovers persist in their demands it means the forcing of the whole Chicago lumber fleet out of commission, and thousands of sailors, loaders, and unloaders must be thrown out of employment. Is there not something in all this for the lumber-shovers to consider?

For years Chicago was by far the greatest lumber market of the country, and had everything pretty much its own way; the business was remunerative, but during the last five or six years it has been severely pressed by competition on all sides. The decline has been so steady that many lumbermen have gone out of business, and those who are left have seriously contemplated moving to South Chicago for the sake of cheaper rents, dockage, towage, and labor, and to escape the long river run and bridge delays. Competitors have sprung up on all sides. Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Racine can push their lumber across the lake into yards where rent is cheaper, and then have the advantage of cheaper labor as well as of cheaper rail distribution through Wisconsin, Northern Iowa, and portions of Northern Illinois. Even Michigan City has come in as a small competitor with Chicago for the Indiana lumber trade. Duluth gets lumber from the vast forests in its vicinity and up cargoes on Lake Michigan, and distributes it over the northwest by the Northern Pacific and Manitoba lines. Northern Minnesota floats her logs to Minneapolis, saws them there, and rafts the stuff down the Mississippi, distributing it on each side as far as St. Louis, and the railroads convey it into Nebraska and Kansas. Northwestern Wisconsin empties large quantities of lumber out of the St. Croix and the Chippewa River into the prairies south and west of them.

The struggle to save this trade has been to Chicago a severe one, and had it not been for the amount of capital invested and the skill, shrewdness, and resolution displayed in business management, the great bulk of the lumber trade would have been lost long ago. As it is, it is now in a condition where it cannot bear any new burdens and live, and the hands rashly and thoughtlesly are placing on it a weight that will sink it. Notwithstanding the great shrinkage in the business and its precarious condition, and notwithstanding lumbermen can now only make ordinary interest on their money, these Communistic yardmen and lumber-handlers, without stopping to see what will be done at competing points, have made demands which add enormously to the cost of loading, unloading, piling, and handling, and accompany their demands with threats to burn and plunder if they are not instantly conceded! The suddenness of the blow has paralyzed this great business, and there is no alternative left but to stop it if the demand is maintained. The workingmen in these yards are mainly Communists, and in carrying out the orders of their incendiary demagog leaders they have struck a hard blow at this important industry just at the time when it was trying to hold its own against competition. There can be but one outcome to the situation if they persist in their demand. The yards will have to close and the 12,000 lumber-handlers will have to migrate and seek work elsewhere or starve. It is the first blow which Communism has dealt at the prosperity of Chicago.