Looking Backward and Forward at Red Cedar Shingles

By Jack Dionne

Elsewhere in this issue u'ill be found the statement that 1923 was a mighty good year for the lurnber industry. True enough. It WAS. But there is a dissenting vote to be cast regarding that opinion, and that comes from the Red Cedar Shingle Industry. I'm going to cast it myself, before someone beats me to it.

Talk about "seeing red" as they say in the melodramas. You should look over the balance sheets of the average Red Cedar Shingle manufacturer for 1923. I have had the opportunity on various occasions, and you see so much red that it leaves a glare in vour eyes.

And if you are looking for material for a "sob stuff" story, I knorv nothing purer than the plant of the shingle manufacturer. I've heard 'em. If all the things I've seen are O. K. ar-rd if all the stories I'r'e heard are true, Uncle Sam will have to look elsewhere than to the Red Cedar Shingle industry for income to pay expenses with during the ensuing year.

For the past trvelve months the only financial question the shingle folks have continually asked one another is"Ho1v much are you losing?"

(Understand, I take a little salt rvith all this stuff, because I've seen men turn out big rich in this game who complained continually for fifteen years about how rotten things were. One day last summer I lunched with a gang of shingle manufacturers in a shingle city of the Northwest, and they got talking about the shingle situation. By the time they had been at it trventy minutes they were so worked up over it, and so sorry for themselves that they were almost in tears. One of them remarked that he actually envied the fellow that ran the cigar store on the corner. And the rest of them honestly and earnestly indorsed the sentiment. No foolin'. And every man in the crowd was rich, and every clollar they had carne from the shingle industry. Every nickle. So of course, I was ungentlemanly and unsentimental enough to recall that fact to their minds, and stopped the sobbing. Anyway, they wanted it understood that 1923 was hopeless and horrible, even if they HAD picked up a stray dime or two in years gone by.)

And 1923 WAS a bad-a MIGHTY bad-vear for Red

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