Lumber Trade in L925

In Spite of Unprecedented Opportrrnities Business Has Not Prospered

By Wilson Compton, Secretary and Manager National Lum-ber Manufacturers Association

Lumber has come through another year of the kind that is becoming chronic. The mills have made more lumber than in any but a few years since the birth of the industry three centuries ago. Moreover, it has been the best lumber, on the whole, that they have ever made. The shipping docks have been cluttered with loads, and trains and ships have been over-burdened with lumber moving swiftly to destinations far and near. But from far and near come complaints of much labor and little reward.

The greatest building year recorded has drawn freely on the forests but has gone by with net losses for the manufacturers of billions of feet of lumber. The industry therefore has to chalk down another year sacrificed to erratic merchandising and periodic overcrowding of already saturated markets. Prices have varied but little from the beginning to the end of the year, having been about as low as they could be at the beginning and still coax production, and having so continued, practically at the buyers' dictation. Recently there has been a change for the better in a sudden eagerness of derirand and there is much hope, even in the Pacific Northwest, which has been the principal suf-