"If Your Business Won't Support a Research Department-Go Into Some Other Business"

Said E. C. Mayo, President, Gorham Mfg. Co.

By Jack Dionne

The other day I was reading the thoughts of various present day successful business men, and the words quoted above just jumped right up out of the page and slapped me in the eye.

I think it's perfectly sound business wisdom and advice. Yet, if we follow it, this great big lumber business of ours would be automatically depopulated.

Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" would be a metropolis teeming withlife and energy as compared with what the lumber industry would be if we took Mr. Mayo literally'

Because this huge industry we are in, catering to the building industry of the United States, which spends five billion dollars a year, hasn't such a department, and isn't showing any disposition to create one.

This is the only great industry in existence that has any use for such a department, that hasn't one, and there is probably no other great industry in which the nded is so manifest. If ever on the face of this great and glittering globe there was an industry crying to the high heaven5 for research and engineering assistance and education, it's the lumber industry.

The auto industry, the cement industry, the steel industry, the new radio industry, the electrical industry, the tobacco industry, numerous of the food raising and food making industries, and innumerable others that might be listed, know that the very foundations of their business is research an-d engineering, finding new ways' new ideas, new developrirents in making their product more scientific'and intelligent in its application to public needs and cravings.

Behind the scenes in all the great industries that are making history by their progtessiveness and continual development and improvement, are the corps of scientific men who are digging, delving, investigating, experimenting, searching for IDEAS that will make their industry more useful'

And this good old rut-ridden, moss-covered, hide-bound, lumber industry, shackled by chains of her own forging to antediluvian days and prehistoric methods, weeps copious tears of self pity, and raising her shackled and manacled hands to high heaven, prays for Providential interference to save hir.

Save her from who? Why, frqm herself, of course' She never had any other enemy.

Does this industry NEED such a department? DOES SHE? Listen! She doesn't need it any more than a man lost in the Sahara Desert-his skin cracked and his tongue black and swollen-needs a drink. Not a bit worse ! And very little less !

I'm going totell you a story, you lumber readers' It's a true story. And it's a perfect illustration. I got it direct by word of mouth from the man to whom it happened' I'm not going to give his location or the association connected with the incident, although it wouldn't be a bad idea to do that. Some of these days someone ought to get up in this lumber industry of ours, face the situation fairly, and ask the question,: wHY DON',T WE QUrr CHASING SHADOWS AND BEGIN DOING SOMETHING IN THIS LUMBER INDUSTRY?

This man who told me this incident, recently built a fine home. He is one of the big lumber manufacturers of the country. He is almost rabid in his boosting for his own product. The architect who drew his plans was instructed to use wood wherever possible. When the specifications came in he found metal specified for one considerable use in the construction, This rnan has manufactured a wood product for that particular use for a generation'

Naturally he jumped the architect, and wanted to know why. The architect told him the metal for this purpose would, give much better service, and stated his objections 'to the wood for this item. My friend fired a hurried inquiry to the big manufacturing association he belonged to, and asked if the architect's statement in this respect was cor' rect. They were slow in replying. So he hollered for a quick anpwer, and got it. THEY SAID THEY DIDN'T KNOW. So he let the architect put in the metal, in place of the commodity he himself has made and sold for years'

Fersonally, I don't believe there was a word of fact in the architect's claim.. But, like the lumber association he called on for help, I don't KNOW either.

BUT THERE IS ONE THING THAT I AM SURE AND CERTAIN OF, AND THAT IS THAT SOME. ONE OUGHT TO KNOW.

I think that every big manufacturers' association should have its own research and engineering department. That and their grading rules department would be their two fundamentals.

And I thinkthat the National Lumber Manufacturers' Association should have a centralized one to handle such problems and furnish such information to the entire lumber industry.

The industry is spending plenty of money to get that sort of service. If you were to turn those funds that'this industry is spending for association work over to General Motors for instance, it's a thousand to one bet that they would stop every wheel of activity until a research and engineering department had given them something to work on; something definite to shoot at; some specific thing to accomplish; some fundamental program to follow'

The lumber industry goes at it like the greenhorn who

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