Existing comment:
The forest industry:
Lumber Barons and Production:
In the difficult years after the Civil War, the remaining Lowcountry forests attracted the lumber barons of New England and the Upper Midwest, who had begun to exhaust the timber in their regions.
Beginning in the 1880s, large-scale lumbering operations, financed by Northern capital and powered by steam technology, moved into South Carolina. Fixated on production, heedless of conservation, the lumbermen logged on a vast, unmanaged scale. It was "cut and get out." More lumber was sawn in 1909 than any other year in our history. By the time the frenzy peaked during World War I, the Palmetto State had lost much of its forest cover. Civilization had "conquered" the forest. |