Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Signs of progr€ss and improvement here and there. ***

A lumber dealer coopErates with the agricultural extension department of a state college and gives the farm women of that territory a demonstration of how farm women can do'their own wall papering in their homes. He gets a large attendance of interested farm women, who watch with interest while they are shown exactly how to prepare the wall, make the paste, cut the paper, and hang it. Small jobs of papering on the farm are impractical except for home work. Wall paper is cheap. And the farmef's wife appreciates the brightening of her walls as much as the city woman. So this lumber dealer arrurnges to show thein just how to do it at small expense. That's service.

The President of " *r"L ;-;r manuracturing association declares to his members and fellow workers that the hope of the lumber industry is "research". Sure ! This column has beeq saying that to the mill men at frequent intervals for years past-saying it so vehemently as to make some of our friends in the lumber associations peeved at us. so we're told. Not "curtailment". because that is temporary; not "agreement", because that is artificial; not "cooperation", because cooperation, except when translated into specific activities, is only a gesture; but "research", which means specific effort to find new ways, new means, new ideas, new plans, new thoughts, and new things into which our raw materials may be translated, to appeal to the needs and the desires of the consumers of the land. THAT is what this industry needs-has always needed.

The head of General *:,r:" ,l*"rL"a not tong ago that he would not operate a peanut stand that didn't have a research department. Yet here is one of the wot'ld's greatest and most useful industries, plodding on year after year without one, and wondering why they were so eternally in trouble. Let us offer a prayer that before this year is ended there may be incorporated into this great industry some such practical research department as the auto industry has always had. You wouldn't know this industry in a few yearls, it would be so changed.

**

The Lord is good ! The lumber industry of East Texas was prostrate just sixty days ago. Then a wildcat oil well came spouting a geyser of oil in the,center of the milling and cut-over land districts of East Texas; An oil iush began such as the country has never before seen. And now the mills of East Texas, and West Louisiana, and Southern Arkansas, are shipping millions of feet of lumber into this huge and rapidly developing field. Of course, this only directly affects about a hundred sawmills. But it indirectly affects every other sawmill, for it is taking out of the other markets a huge amounl of lumber-a world of competition. If the field develops into one of the biggest in'history-as now predicted-it will use Southwestern lumber in huge quantities for a long time. And, with the coming of spring at hand, and the opening of building throughout the country that always follows, this diversion of a whole lot of lumber is going to help the general markets a lot. ***

Surely it is a wonderful sign of progress when a lumber manufacturing concern of great impoltance and progressiveness announces a line of perfectly manufactured dimension lumber. They guarantee that every piece of dimension will be within one one-hundredth of an inch of exact measurement in length, width and thickness; that the edges will be perfectly square, the ends square and smooth so that a sixteen-foot two-by-four will stand erect on end on any flat surface; that each piece will be like cabinet wor{< in precise manufacture. They believe that the dealers who sell such stock and display it properly, will never have to compete with "just lumber". >F**

And here come manufacturers of Red Cedar Shingles selling their product to the trade with a twenty-year guarL antee against damage from fire, the only provision in this guarantee being that it is from fire originating on the roof or the sidewalls. Naturally they are not guaranteeing against fire from within the building. This is decidedly new and interesting. A sealed and signed guarantee to this effect goes to every purchaser of such shingles.

Another piece of good news. One of the biggest oil producing companies in America announces that after using steel for their oil derricks for several years exclusively, they are going back to the use of wood. They are going to use heart wood, and believe that the change is for the better. A heart wood derrick will stand any sort of practical stress and strain, will last as long as any oil well, is economical in cost, arrd marvelously practical from every viewpoint.

***

Wooden derricks often get a black eye wheq the derrick builders use "just wood". Just any sort of wood will not

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