Electricity in the lumber industry

The adoption of electricity for power in the lumber industry of the Northwest is of comparatively recent date although conditions are peculiarly favorable to its use. In the greater number of instances power can be generated locally at a very cheap rate by utilizing the waste products as fuel. These waste products have, so far, little commercial value and in the past any fuel in excess of the quantity required for the steam units and auxiliary machinery has been conveyed to a burner and destroyed. Saw mills, as a rule, are located in remote and sparsely settled districts where the problem of transportation to markets where the by-products of sawdust, shavings and inferior slab wood could be used, makes it scarcely worth while.