Opportunities for Cooperating With California Dealers

(Continued from Page 43) that that will have to be a matter of evolution-

We urged your committee and your board to concede, for the time being, in the grade-marking program the matter of sizing dimension to the California Standards on the theory that they are, in fact, the samg as the American Lumber Standards for industrial lumber.

The question of adopting American Standard sizes for yard stock on these items; the adoption of the surfacir-rg practices favored by the manufacturers, and the still more difficult problem of dry lumber should be left to the solution of time when your sales office in Los Angeles shall have won the consent of dealers to making the changes. These steps must be taken one at a time. Each will prove less difficult after the next has*been

We expect grade-marked lumber to revolutionize our retail selling practices and to give a stability to values that has never been possible in the past. The selling of mixed grades which were uncertain and not definable has led to the practice of some of our largest industrial buyers, governmental agencies, school board and even some private buyers writing their own specifications with the result of still further disturbing values and diluting grades. All of these have assured your representatives and representatives of the National that the moment selling was established in Southern California on a basis of guaranteed, ofticially grade-marked lumber, graded in accordance with the current rules of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association they would abandon their private specifications and buy on yours. This will help you no less than it will help us. And this is just one single angle of it. There will be difficulties experienced in the beginning but as they are ironed out we will find many unexpected benefits coming from the change.

I think I shoutd, however, frankly voice one serious warning. Many of the first experiences of our dealers in buying grade-marked lumber from the mills have been unhappy. Some of you have made the ,mistake of sending down properly marked Number 1 and Numtrer 2 all mixed together so that the shipments had to be segregated after arrival. A surprising number of shipments, considering the relatively small quantities that have so far been shipped down gradenrarked, have had to be reinspected because of heavy percentages below grade. I believe I am correct in stating that every shipm-nt of grade-marked lumber which has been queitioned bv the dealer. has been fourrd to be below grade by your official -reinspection. Proper adjustments have been made and all of us of course- understand that it takes time to get grade-marking to functioning smooth!f'at the mill but some of your first shipmenls have displayid shockingly poor grading.

As I have already suggested, I feel sure that you will look back in time upon your offer of this grade-marking agriement to the dealers of Southern California as one of the mile posts that mark the turning of the lane at the point where you began to exert your force in an effort to lift the industry out of the unprofitable morass into which it had pushed itself.

_,The theories of yesterday must be scrapped for the facts of today. The fact of today is that you are not making any money out of your investment as manufacturers and that neither of youi sales arms, the wholesaler or the retail dealer, is making a proht on his investment, for the simple reason that the man who uses your product