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50 Years Ago This Month
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ifty years ago this month, in December of 1971, The California Lumber Merchant reported on the lumber industry grappling to deal with government-mandated wage and price freezes. The regulations had created severe “inequities” for lumber companies, charged John Hampton, president of the Western Wood Products Association and of the Willamina Lumber Co., Portland. “Probably the most serious inequity,” Hampton noted, “is a price freeze with no concurrent freeze on the cost of government timber. As a consequence, many mills dependent on federal timber are finding that they must sell their lumber at a loss. Others cannot afford to cut timber purchased at public auction and sell manufactured products at price levels established under the presidential freeze order. “When the freeze was announced,” Hampton said, “we assumed lumber prices would be established on the basis of sales we had made during the base period. Lumber sales are completed at the time the order is accepted and shipments may lag by as many as 12 weeks. Rail car availability, long
THE DECEMBER 1971 issue of The Merchant Magazine spotlighted moulding products from industry powerhouse American Forest Products Corp. Formed in 1910 as the Stockton Manufacturing Co., AFP soon became Tartar, Webster & Johnson and grew to encompass a multitude of sawmills, distribution centers, and timberlands. AFP was acquired by Georgia-Pacific in 1988.
order files, lumber inventories, and other factors affect the time interval between an order and a shipment.” Hampton said the Cost of Living Council rejected pleas by lumbermen for relief. “Basing prices on ship ments,” he explained, “has resulted in establishing any number of different price ceilings for identical products. Obviously the mill which ships late will have a comparatively low product price and mills with short order files which ship quickly will have a higher price more in line with the current market.” Dr. George Cline Smith, noted construction economist, concurred,
FREMONT FOREST PRODUCTS announced the opening of its wholesale lumber distribution yard at the Port of Long Beach, Ca. The facility is currently operated by Weyerhaeuser Co.
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The Merchant Magazine n
December 2021
calling the wage/price controls “the damnedest Rube Goldberg structure that has ever been worked out by any government.” In other news of 50 years ago: • Charles Bloedorn, Nebraska banker-turned-lumber merchant, passed away Nov. 1, 1971, at the age of 91. He co-founded the Bloedorn Lumber chain in 1919, serving as president until 1964, when he became chairman of the board. • Western red cedar manufacturers set their sights on a new market for their shingles and handsplit shakes— mobile homes. According to the report by the Red Cedar Shingle & Hand Split Shake Bureau, “Although long associated with the premium end of the single-family residential hosuing market, both shingles and shakes offer numerous practical and ‘cosmetic’ advantages to the low-cost mobile or modular unit devleoper. Chief among them, of course, is the ability to dress up the unit, give it a respectable degree of warmth, and just generally uipgrade its appearance with a touch of quality.” The Bureau had begun “actively engaging” designers, architects and mobile home manufacturers to develop “new product approaches” that would appeal to the fast-growing market, predicting they could move well over a half-million units annually.
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