Vagabond Editorials

(Continued from Page 6) o{ Tenino, Washington, issued a lot of their own wooden rnoney, when their banks failed, and guaranteed payment of same on dernand. And souvenir hunters have sFnt so much of it away that they will never have to redeem a very large part of their issue. That's abo'ut the only successful financial operation we've heard of for a long time. Why not let this country go OFF the gold standard and ON the wooden?

***

The price of lumber has gone back to levels of 25 years ago. Twenty-five years of tax-bearing, carrying charges, interrest charges, protection and care costs, and now-the market prices of twenty-five years ago; and with nothing like the volume of dernand of those olden days. A man sqid to me the other day: "And just to think that I could have sold all my timber for twelve dollars a thousand, and noril what is it worth?" I said "Yes, but if you had sold it, it is almost certain you would have bought bonds or other securities with the money, and what would THEY be worth? As much as your timber in proportion? Not likely." The only way a man co,uld have evaded this situation would have been to sell out for cash and bury thil cash; and no sane man, of course, ever did that. So there doesn't seem to be any "spilled milk" to cry over. **

Most of the great fortunes lost since the depression started were lost in 1931, and NOT in 1930 as is generally supposed, by people who figured that the condition was temporary and went in and loadred up on securities that they decided MUST be on bottom. The small investors went broke in '31 ; the big ones in '32. Today there are no commodities that would make safer investments than standing timber, or shed-covered lumber. A cinch ! A year frorn today lumber will either be worth a lot more than today's market price-or it will be worth nothing; and the green-backs in your pocket will be worth the same. **<*

I know a number of very smart lumbermen who, have loaded their yards and sheds to the very roof with low priced lumber, just as an investment. They had money idle in the bank. They know no securities that are a good buy. So they figure-as stated in the last paragraph-that lumber MUST be a good investment. They may prove to be wrong-but if they haven't made a good investment there isn't such a thing in e><istence.

And take standing timber ! A man with money can buy timber everywhere and of all species for tre.mendous re ductions from the market values of five years ago. Of course, if you believe that the lumber industry will never come back, then timber at any price is a poor investment. But otherwise good timber must be an investment of rurequalled worth. I have seen good pine tinr,ber drop from six dollars to a dollar and a half a thousand in the past two years in certain sections. If it is ever to be worth its former price again, no other investment could compare with s'uch timber at present prices. In ten years the carrying charges would only double the present pricg and it would still be half the former price.

Two years from now lumbermen will gather together and tell one another with deep regret in their voices, what they could have bought timber for in 1932, just as the old residents of every city point out the million dollar pieces of prop,erty they once turned down at a few thousands. For timbet will come back. It will come slowly for a short time after the dqrression definitely ends; and then it will come leaping like a hound in full cry. For this storm-ridden i4dustry-which is today drinking deep from ttie chalice of bitterness-deeper, perhaps, than any other basic industry-is going to do a comeback that will make any previous experience look flat, stale, and unprofitable by comParison

"Out of chaos new worlds must come," said an ancient sage. It is not exuberant optimism which says that lumber will corne back in this fashion; it is common sense; a belief in the law of supply and demand coupled with the law of compensation, which predicts this inwitable sequence. Intellectual tom-tits, moral cowards, and morbid economic savants may tell you that we are rushing toward a precipice with our brake-lining gone and nothing but a down-hill slide to destructiorl in front of us. But we have those harpies of pessimis,m with us always; prophetic neuropathics who would destroy mankind's faltering faith, and loosen his grip on the guide-line. Kick them and their prophecies out the window ! ***

You will see such a building program as you nerrer before dreamed of in this countryr :rnd it won't be long coming. Have you any definite co4ception of what it means for one hundred and twenty millions of people to go two or three years without doing any building or repairing? Not only have we been building practically no dwelling places for humans, and for their possessions, but wte have been letting everything else run down at the heel. The railroads have built nothing and repaired little. The industrials the same. If you want to discover how much build- ing we need in this country today, $ubtract the amo'unt of building we have done, from a normal figurg and add fifty per cent more to that total for the huge deterioration that has been going on, and for the growth in population, atd you will have the original order. But figure that these serreral years of non-buying have added years of life and depreciation to millions upon millions of human dwelling places that were already obsolete when the depression started, and you have a possible prospect that staggers the most vivid imagination.