WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 329

native woodsmen, and that monument is just as much a monument
to a departed class as ordinary monuments are to departed individuals.
We did not build that monument for a class which the people can
still see; it was because the native woodsmen are pretty well gone
from the State.
The Crairman. What is the wage scale for common labor in the
State of Maine?
Mr. Guinac. It varies this winter, depending whether a man works
by the month or by the day. It would be about $2.50 a day and
board. However, many of those men work by the piece, cutting the
pulp wood by the cord or cutting logs by the thousand feet. That
usually is done for a price that, if one will work hard, he can make
unusually good wages, sometimes as much as $20 or $25 a day.
The CrairmaN. How many hours a day does a man work at that?
Mr. Gurnac. For that he would work from daylight to dark. It
would be a long day, but when they work by the piece they are willing
to work long hours.
The CrairMAN. That, as I understand, is the class that comes over
here for temporary work.
Mr. Gurnac. To a great extent, they come over here for temporary
work. A very serious thing for the State of Maine has been the war,
which drained what was left of the native woodsmen, and by that 1
mean those who had been recruited from other States, like Massachusetts,
 Connecticut, and lower New England. They enlisted and were
drafted, and as a result of our losing the woodsmen of the State our
tumber industry was almost destroyed.
When our men left for the war the industry was dependent upon
labor agencies to pick up for them crews from the streets of Boston
and New York and ship them to Maine by carloads. I, myself, had
to go to New York to get men, and the only good ones in those crews
were the few foreigners we were able to get, prinéipally Finns and
Poles. The remainder were tramps and loaders, unfortunate,
perhaps, who could not get a job anywhere else. They would go to
a labor agency and were shipped to the Maine woods. The cost of
getting logs out under those conditions was such that it practically
destroyed the lumber business of the State of Maine. While it has
destroyed the lumber business for the State of Maine, yet the pulp
industry is still a going concern. We were cutting on an average of
about 1,000,000,000 feet of sawn lumber, and this year I do not
think we will cut in excess of 80,000,000 or 90,000,000 feet, all told.
The Cuamrman, Do vou call that a big cut?
Mr. Guinac. No, sir; not when one considers that we were cutting
a billion feet at one time. One single mill could cut that in a single
year in your State of Washington. I calculated some time ago that
from 1900 to 1910 the average lumber cut in. the State of Maine
amounted to 1,018.748.000 feet, while in 1922 it had decreased to
362,224,000 feet.
The CuarrMan. You have depleted your forests somewhat. have
you not?
Mr. Gurvac. No. One of the reasons we need the experienced
woodsmen is so that we may practice the right methods of forestry.
There are many places in the State of Maine where there is a soft.
wood growth that is getting worse and worse every vear and is not