The lumber handled was all White Pine
and Norway Pine, as no Hardwood or Hemlock was shipped during those days except sometimes cargoes of Hardwood 
were brought in which had been sold to users, such as the McCormick Harvester Company, Deering Company, and other 
large users. This Hardwood lumber 
usuallv came from the northern part 
of the Southern Peninsula of Michigan, and was always sold before it left 
the mill. 

The Oconto Company was one of the 
first companies to ship its lumber 
by rail from the mill, and I believe 
they began to do that as soon as the 
C. & N. W. Railroad was built through Oconto about 1872. One season the 
Oconto Company brought to Oconto, on 
big scows, the entire output of their mill at Nahma, Michigan, and sorted it
up in their yard at Oconto and shipped 
it by rail. At that time the Oconto Company had a planing mill and box factory In Oconto and another box 
factory in Chicago. 

The lumbermen on South Water Street 
used to gather frequently in our
office, especially in the wintertime 
when no lumber was coming in, and spin yarns about their business. I remember one day Mr. A. A. Carpenter, Mr. A. G. Van Schdaick, Mr. Jesse Spalding, and Mr. Isaac Stephenson who happened to be in the city from Marinette, were gathered 
in our office and they were telling 
about buying a large quantity of timber in Louisiana. I believe that they afterward built a mill at Ludington, Louisiana, where they operated for 
some time. They said  that  they 
bought  this  timber  at  a  cost  of  from  12 1/2c  to  15C per  thousand  feet  stumpage  and  they figured  to  make a lot of money on it. 

Later on my brother George was anxious to buy timber in the South but I felt that we had all we could do here and never was willing to go into it. At that time Kirby-Carpenter Company had three mills in Menominee and my father criticized Mr. Carpenter for cutting his timber so fast, and Mr.Carpenter said there was all kinds of timber on the Menominee River and there was no danger of its being cut out. Father said our mill in Oconto would be 
Later on my brother George was anxious to buy timber in the South but I felt that we had all we could do here and never was willing to go into it. At that time Kirby-Carpenter Company had three mills 
 

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There were three Stephenson brothers in Marinette and Menominee, each of whom was a manager of a different company. Sam was manager of the Kirby-Carpenter Company; Isaac, of the N. Ludington Company; and Robert, of the Ludington, Wells & Van Schaick Company. The latter, I believe, lost his life when he was caught in a fire in the company's lumber yard and burned to death. 
 

Mr. Edward Hines started in business for himself in Chicago just about the time that I started to work in the office. He had formerly been employed by S. K. Martin, who was popularly known at that time as "Skinny" Martin, and he felt that he had built up a big business for Martin and that he was not being properly appreciated, so he got Jesse Spalding to back him financially and he started a yard of his own, and in a very short time he had taken over a large part of Martin's customers and also had taken over the cut of a number of the mills which had formerly supplied Martin. The Hines Company became a great power in the lumber business and has continued up to the present time, while the other companies have all disappeared. 
 

The sawmills in the central part of Wisconsin, which were on the Wisconsin River, early began distributing lumber direct Irom'the mills by rail, and during the 1880s they were severe competition for the Chicago distributors, and when we started shipping our lumber from Oconto by rail the interior mills in Wisconsin, and the mills at Minneapolis were our principal competitors. 
 

One  summer  there  was  a  meeting  of lumbermen called at Eau Claire, and as my father did not care to attend he sent me. I was the youngest one there, as most of the men were old enough to be my father, but I had a very enjoyable time and got acquainted with a number of the lumbermen in that vicinity, among them Mr. Frederick Weyerhauser, Mr. Eugene Shaw, Mr. J. T. Barber, and others. They took us to see some of the mills in Eau Claire, then to Chippewa Falls to see the big mill. of the Chippewa Lumber and Boom Company, which I believe was the largest mill in Wisconsin. The purpose of the meeting was to see if it was not possible to reduce the output of lumber, and everybody agreed that there was too much lumber being sawed and that all of the mills should shut down for a time, or reduce their running hours. At that time all mills were running eleven hour shifts and most of them were running day and night. Each one agreed that it would be a good thing if the other fellows would shut down, but no one was willing to agree to shut down his own mill, so nothing happened. I attended a good many meetings in later years where the feeling was a good deal the same, namely, that it would help the business if some one else would produce less lumber. Up to about that time the Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls mills were rafting their lumber and floating it down the Chippewa River to the Mississippi and distributing it along
 

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