FLASHBack 93 Years Ago This Month
N inety-three years ago this month, in August of
1928, BPD’s sister publication, The California Lumber Merchant, noted the passing at age 88 of Thomas Barlow Walker, “one of the world’s greatest lumbermen.” Walker had become one of the 15 wealthiest men on earth, accumulating an estate rivaled only by his billionaire-contemporary Frederick Weyerhaeuser. Barlow entered the timber industry in the 1860s, aggressively buying up any available timberlands in Minnesota and Wisconsin, cutting them as the Red River Lumber Co., and by 1889 moving on to the fertile forests of California. In other news of August 1928: • One of the last official acts of Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce was the endorsement of the grademarking of forest products, particularly with reference to doors. In a telegram sent to the Western Door Manufacturers Association at Tacoma, Wa., Hoover said, “The grademarking of lumber and wood products with suitable guarantee makes for more efficient merchandising of benefit to manufacturer, distributor and especially the consumer. It helps stabilize trade and decreases distribution costs through establishing steady demand and lessening quality complaints.”
THE AUGUST 1928 issue spotlighted Schumacher Wall Board’s Grip Lath product with the curious notation “M.I.C. Number.” Despite our best efforts, we can’t decipher its meaning. Was the MIC number a microbiology rating? An area code? A typo for a now-defunct M.I.C. Lumber? Any theories, readers?
• Determined to promote the use of wood, the HooHoo Club of Detroit, Mi., held a golf tournament in which participants could use only wooden shafted clubs. • The Exchange Sawmills Co., Kansas City, Mo., rolled out a new campaign to help rural dealers sell more hog houses. The manufacturer would send a carpenter to retailers’ yards to construct and paint three display hog houses one each of its different models (Ready uilt, Ready-Cut, and Ready-to-Cut). Dealers could then sell the blueprints and materials to their farmer customers.
INDUSTRY INSURANCE companies, including Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual, stressed their fire prevention training and services as much as their prompt payment for losses.
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Building Products Digest August 2021
• San Diego area lumberman—and branding pioneer— H.G. Larrick announced he was renaming his three-unit Lumber & Builders Supply Company after his Timber Tim mascot. ffective immediately, the yards in olano each, Del Mar, and Encinitas, Ca., would be known as “Timber Tim” stores. As Larrick explained in his monthly in-store newspaper, The Sunkist Splinter, “Timber Tim will become a real live personality and mean something definite in the lives of his customers, for he will WARRANT all the high-grade merchandise sold in the future in his stores. If you will examine Webster you will find that ARRA D means to assure a thing sold to the purchaser. That is, to insure that the thing is what it is represented to be. This implies a covenant to make good on defects. Folks, this is nothing more or less than what we have been doing, but henceforth we will emphasize that fact by branding all our high grade merchandise with the figure of I R I , and the words arranted Merchandise.’” The Sunkist Splinter published 12 sepia-toned pages a month of home plans, building suggestions, columns by Larrick and his three branch managers, and local news such as crop reports and happenings in the neighborhood. Building-Products.com
