V.gabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

I don't know just who the guilty party is in this airmail debacle, but I can tell you who is taking a Hell of a licking as a result of it; AMERICAN BUSINESS. As usual it's the innocent bystander that gets hurt the worst.

There must have o""rr lo,l",ii'g "*rouy smelly about the thing to precipitate the action taken. But we'd had it a long time. Business foundations had firmly constructed upon its service. And, it seems to an ignbrant country boy as though we might have let it continue a little while until we could have found something to take its place, instead of kicking the roof down on all our heads.

Judging from rvhat I read and hear everyone has now been nominated for "the forgotten man" by some business speaker or writer except the man who collects the interest. If you discover some way to forget HIM, call me up at rn'exPense 'fi 'r 'F

Every time I listen to General Hugh Johnson make a speech I think of the famous story they used to tell about Teddy Roosevelt during his lifetime. They said Teddy died and went to Heaven, and immediately gave St. Peter orders for the creation of a great heavenly vocal chorus. "Stand ten thousand first tenors on the right, and ten thousand second tenors in the center, and ten thousand baritones on the left wing," he told St. Peter. "And who will sing bass?" inquired St. Peter. "I," said the redoubtable Teddy; "IWILL SING BASS."

Some men are chiseler",-"": .l-" "r. just smart traders. A retail lumber friend of mine sends me the story of the smart guy who went into a meat market and asked for a cut of steak. The butcher sliced and weighed it. The price was 25 cents. The buyer said he didn't need that much. So the butcher cut it exactly in half and offered him one-half for 15 cents. The fellow reached over and picked up the other half. "Pardner," he said, with conviction, "this ten-cent piece will be a-plenty for me."

If we may judge from what we hear, the business population of the United States today is divided into two general classes: those who are chiseling in one fashion or another; and those who are determined not to let them get away with it much longer before taking a hand.

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With few exceptions, everyone connected with the lum- ber industry admits-yea ! proclaims-that the Lumber Code has been of unquestionable benefit to the industry, that it came at a time when something had to be done to save lumber, that we couldn't havi gotten by without its protective agency, etc., etc., etc., BUT-and Oh ! Those buts ! They are almost innumerable. Everyone can tell you something that's wrong, some way the thing doesn't fit.

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The reason for all of which is that she's about the hardest horse to fit a Code harness to that anyone ever saw. It's nobody's fault, and nobody is responsible for it. (I'rn not talking about the various varieties of chiseling, now, I'm talking about fundamentals.) And regardless of what they do about it, or how hard they try to make the harness fit, it can never be anything but a makeshift on account of the very nature of the industry. And, when you pile on top of that the fact that the followers of the industry are just weak humans trying their best to get along, and grinding their own axes as best they may, you account for the rest of the murmuring you hear.

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Carl Crow is thundering in the Northwest against what he considers the threatened destruction of the Western wholesaler, who sells and has always sold the products of the big majority of Western rnills. Carl tells his story in no uncertain terms.

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The wholesaler generally doesn't like the looks of things. He can show you where detours are being built around him, leaving him well out of the picture. And, outspoken wholesalers are heard to murmur that they are going to eat, and may have to do a little detouring themselves to get their lumber to the hands of consumers. ft wouldn't be difficult.

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"What is a wholesaler," and who has a right to get the 8 per cent wholesale discount, is a question that is making universal trouble and agitation. Wholesalers whisper that plenty of big retailers are getting the discount, thus cutting out the professional wholesaler. And, the retailer who suspects that his competitor is getting such a discount by reason of a wholesale set-up, feels he is getting the worst of it.

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The mill classification brings up innumerable complaints -from both sides. It would require a volume to print the stories that are going around about little mill troubles and big mill troubles, etc., etc.

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My wise friend, Ray Saberson, Merchandising Counsel for Weyerhaeuser, utters an impressive truth worth repeating many times when he warns the lumber industry that the Lumber Code has great good in it, but that it won't make a good lumberman out of a poor lumberman any more than the Marquis of Queensbury Rules will make a good boxer out of a bad one. *

He further reminds the trade that the Code says your price cutting competitor cannot sell below cost, but it doesn't say he has to make a profit. Therefore he can be just about as dangerous as he ever was; and he also may find devious new ways of making you trouble; and therefore again the good retailer had better get to merchandising his goods as his best protection. *rF*

The Federal Trade Commission serves notice on all concerned that since the courts have decided in its favor in the so-called "California White Pine" case, it will enforce to the letter that mandate. Makers of California Ponderosa Pine must not call their product "white." The botanist has been upheld, and his nomenclatures (names to you) will be enforced upon the merchants of wood. Yet the prod- uct has been known exclusively as "California White Pine" for two generations.

Funny thing this l"-b": O""tr*r" ! Just a few years ago the Federal Trade Cornmission ordered the sellers of Philippine hardwoods in this country to quit calling certain of their cabinet woods "Philippine Mahogany." The Philippine proponents thumbed their noses at the F.T.C. and went to battle.

They did not claim or maintain that their beautiful Philippine cabinet woods were botanically Mahogany. But they insisted that they had from the first been called "Philippine Mahogany," that the trade knew them as such, that there was no attempt to defraud or deceive anyone, and that their rich, red cabinet woods were entitled to be called what they had always been called.

The F.T.C. contended that only woods of the species Swietenia and the family Meliaceae could be called Mahogany. The Philippine woods did not claim such pedigree. But the courts upheld their right to call their woods Philippine Mahogany. And, so it stands today.

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