West Coast Annual Meeting

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3. Full exploitation of the "Lowest-Cost Home" and its financing under FHA Title 1, Class 3. This opens up a still wider market for lumber in the housing field. It should be followed up through research, publications featuring effective plans with special emphasis on sound construction; write-ups of successful suburban developments; and cooperative campaigns with dealer groups to whose territory this type of housing is adapted.

The Education of Lumber Salesmen

"Next to the steady promotion of low-cost housing, in fact, as an important part of it, should come the more effective training and stimulation of lumber salesmen-not only salaried employees of manufacturing companies, but lumber wholesalers, commission salesmen, retail lumber dealers and their employees. This all has a vital bearing upon our success in (1) putting the consumer's dollars into home building; and (2) putting the maximum share of those dollars into lumber.

Timber Engineering and Research

"The drive to hold lumber's place in heavy construction must be maintained and intensified, even though the prospective volume is small in relation to home building. The largest markets obtainable for the items of heavy construction are necessary to balance utilization and realization.

"For these lumber markets, the most effective work the industry can do is:

1. To continue the application of the principles of timber engineering through the preparation of standard designs for all types of structures; and

2. To have specific engineering service available for proposed construction of any type-in furnishing designs, arranging for prefabrication, etc.

"Our goal should be to have available the same kind and degree of engineering service that is supplied by competitive materials. This means largely-following through and expanding the engineering service now given by Timber Engineering Company and the trade promotion staffs of the Regional Associations. An important feature is the correlation of available designs for heavy constructionas now done through the auspices of TECO.

"Research in timber engineering must always be kept up by the lumber industry. Of immediate importance is a restudy of mill construction, utilizing all our modern knowledge of timber seasoning, timber joining, ringconnector framing, etc,

"In addition to pressure treatments of timber for greater resistance to decay or combustion, a new field in the application of chemicals to wood, through hygroscopic diffusion, is opening up. This offers significant possibilities as an aid to seasoning, in kiln or air drying, as a means of reducing shrinkage and as a possible technique in combining these features with preservation from decay and greater fire resistance.

"I have endeavored to cover some of the salient matters of policy relative to our domestic markets. The next policy is that covering our foreign markets.

"Foreign trade agreements, preferential duties and wars have burst in, about and over our foreign markets during the past ten years with seemingly one resuft, a constantly shrinking volume. This subject will be exhaustively discussed in these very meetings you are attending; therefore, I will not discuss it at length as I might otherwise do. IIowever, if we are to develop markets broad enough to make possible the utmost utilization of our standing timber and if we are to carry out an adequate fbrest policy, we must regain some of our lost foreign markets.

"The grading of our lumber is an important phase of our market policy. It is absolutely necessary to keep West Coast grades in step with modern market requirements, and protect their standing with the specifier. Few lumber manufacturers realize the importance of this service. In the first place, our inspectors in California, the Midwest and on the Atlantic Coast have constantly protected the market reputation of West Coast lumber by settling complaints, straightening out poor specifications, working with all the specifying agencies, running down fraudulent grade-marking, creating confidence by specifiers and buyers that the Association is an active agency working in the markets for the interest of consumers. I think the general standing and appreciation of West