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89 Years Ago This Month
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ighty-nine years ago this month, in November of 1932, The California Lumber Merchant noted slipping lumber production as the country struggled with the Great Depression. Nonetheless, the lumber industry remained one of the largest employers in the nation during the Great Depression. In Idaho, 72% of all wageearners were employed in sawmilling or logging operations. Out of the state’s 15,648 wage earners in 1929, 11,228 were employed by mills or logging firms. These businesses paid $16,051,860 in wages, leading to production of $33,886,402 worth of products. In other news of November 1932: • Nineteen leaders in the lumber industry, representing about every species of wood grown in the U.S., accepted Secretary of Commerce Roy Chapin’s invitation to help draft a new lumber manual for the use of the federal government. The committee, chaired by Weyerhaeuser executive George
THE NOVEMBER 1932 issue of The California Lumber Merchant promoted Union Lumber Co.’s Noyo Brand Redwood interior paneling.
F. Lindsay, was to work with the Commerce Department’s National Committee on Wood Utilization to create a handbook of recommended uses for softwood and hardwood lumber. The federal government was purchasing a billion feet of lumber annually, but a “lack of dependable information regarding species and grades for each particular purpose led in many cases to wrongful and uneconomic use and has resulted to
the disadvantage of both producers and consumers.” The committee’s aim was “closer and more intelligent utilization of wood, not only as a practical means of promoting reforestation, but primarily for the elimination of consumer waste.” They, in fact, boldly predicted “that the Government will become the leader in the movement of putting each wood to its rightful and most economic use.” • The original Humboldt Redwood Co.—which operated a large redwood mill in Eureka, Ca.— was purchased by the Hammond & Little River Redwood Co., San Francisco. Hammond discontinued the Humboldt Redwood name, which was picked up 76 years later as the new name of the former Pacific Lumber Co. operations.
HAMMOND LUMBER CO. provided the redwood seating installed in the new grandstands at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, Ca.
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November 2021
• Lumber manufacturers increasingly began demanding that railroads ship them products in wood-walled and roofed boxcars instead of suspect steel cars. National Lumber Manufacturers Association explained that their insistence was not just to promote the use of their own products, but “fully justified by the superior protection given by wood cars to their contents.” They claimed that steel boxcar roofs frequently leaked. The railroads responded that they had little choice, since the vast majority of their boxcars had metal roofs.
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