Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

If this isn't the ideal and exact time for a remodeling and renewing and rebuilding and improving and modernizing campaign-then there will never be one in this world's history. Personally, it looks to me as though Providence had arranged business conditions and building conditions as they are today to force the lumber industry to do things which for many years it has almost entirely overlooked or even scorned, but which, properly attended to, would mean much to them in actual profits, and much to the horne dwellers of the nation in satisfaction received.

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The F. W. Dodge Corporation, the supreme and dependable authority on building statistics, building facts, building prospects, and building prophecies, says that the home and residence building for the next year is going to be just 8 per cent new homes, and 92 per cent home improvements. Three loud an'd, rousing cheers ! All I hope is that Dodge isn't giving this building industry too much credit for improved vision, energy' and sense of stewardship. It's been in deep debtr to the public for a long, long time. Perhaps poverty-poverty of plentiful complete new house bills to figure and sharpen the old pencil on-will bring the needed change.

:F**

While I don't want to be downpight mean and utter wishes that will make my thousands of lumber dealer friends cuss me, I'll have to admit that I like to see situations develop that make men get off that old line of least resistance, and get on a bigger and. better and more necessary line of business effort.

Mr. Lumber Dealer "nJ "*rrlry in his office, and wonders whether the contractors are going to bring in any new lumber bills this week for him. to figure on, and if the local trade generally is going to decide that it needs sbme stock and come in for quotations. If the bills come in he cusses his competitor for the low prices he has to make. If they don't he says business is rotten, and bemoans conditions, and wonders when the slump is going to be over, and things are going to get right. He does-you know he does'

All of his affairs are so completely on the knees o{ the gods, so thoroughly dependent on outside forces over which he has no control, and which he can do no more than hope :and hope never was a very po'u'erful motive fuel-for. There's so pitifully little creative and constructive character in his program.

And 99 out of every 100 dwellings in his entire sales territory are in actual NEED of some'of the things he has to sell. On every street, in every block, on e\rery rural roadl the need for building service is manifest to those with eyes to see, and with minds to think. In most of the districts o,f this entire country EVERY DOMICILE IS A PASSIVE BUT THOROUGHLY LIVE PROSPECT FOR MODERN BUILDING SERVICE, ranging anywhere from a few shelves to a complete remodeling and conversionjob'

I've been shouting that fact at my retail readers by the printed and spoken word for a solid twenty years now. But this is ONE year when the word should drive hsme. We aren't going to have the new business this year ttrat we want. 'We aren't going to have the automatic volume of new building business this year that we MUST HAVE. Then what are we going to do about it?

I say go out into the highways and byways of your sales territory and furnish to the dwellers of t-hat territory the service Szou have been owing them and withholding from them since time began. And I spy that if you do that thing and do it forcefully and intelligently and "give your genius to it" as the colored brother said, that you will have a lot more prosperity THIS year than. you had LAST year, even though not a single contractor shows up all year with a new house bill for t"r ao*ttlru;

And I believe that just as firmly as I believe in the power of Good. But these are things that don't "just happen." You have to MAKE this happen. You have to create this business by developing these passive prospects, these instinctive but frequently un-thought-of NEEDS into ORDERS. Selling the MODERNIZING idea in terms of defiqite and specific improvements, is the answer.

The dealer sits and says-"Business is rotten-" And in his sdes territory there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of human dwellings that haven't a single, decenl, modernized closet, where the woman of the house may keep safely and attractively her clothes, her hats, her shoes; and fifty per cent of those people would install such closets if they were properly presented to them. Not the lurnber to build the closet. But the closet itself, cedar-lined, properly planned, and properly equipped t,n:"y other piece of furniture.

The dealer sits and says-"Business is bad." And in his (Continued on Page 8)

Prr.ul Srocrrra\&NEER in OAK

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