V.gabond Editoriafs

By Jack Dionne

And now the federal Government starts to turn loose nearly FM BILLION DOLLARS to end unemployment and force the return of prosperity. How much of that money is the lumber industry going to get?

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That's the biggest guestion before the industry today. In my judgment the participation of the lumber industry in that huge sum of cash is going to depend on the intelligent effort of the industry to plan and work and point the way. That share will be great or small in exact proportion to the quality and quantity of the effort.

This will be the last tremendous effort of the administration at Washington to end this depression by artificial stimulation. It has naturally just GOT to work. A five billion dollar dud would be five billion dollars more than we could stand. And, because it MUST work it WILL work. But the efforts of the intelligent citizenship to help MAKE it WORK is going to be a great deterrnining factor in its develoPment'

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If the building industry, and the other heavy goods industries, secure a large share of that five billion bucks-the depression will be wiped out. If not, and the money does NOT find its way to the fundamentals of things, we can all of us just start singing a hymn.

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If we can find ways and means for using a large share of that money to restore to normal buildings and building conditions throughout the land, millions of men will go back to genuine work, and each of these men directly employed in building will further employ millions of other men, both before and behind them. It wiU require one great army to produce, and refine, and distribute, and deIiver the materials; it wiil require another great army to supply the NEEDS and the WANTS of the building mitIions when they get to spending their WAGES.

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Just what the lumber people, individually and collectively, can do to attract dollars into lumber and building directions, is the thing we should immediately set our heads to. That there ARE numerous-practicaily INNUMERABLE-such things that can be done, every intelligent man will admit. Those five billions of bucks have not yet been routed toward their job-creating destinations. They will seek the line of greatest attraction, and most practical promise.

The Government has tried many rnethods of financial distribution in the past two years to promote recovery. The President of General Motors says in a recent statement to the newspapers that many of these recovery efiorts have unquestionably retarded recovery, while others have been of unquestioned benefit, although almost entirely artificiaily. No real try has yet been made in the direction of home building. That great effort is due for the immediate future.

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There are individual things that I know the lumber folks can do to attract the coming shower of dollars into lumber channels. They can go back to selling. Conditions of the past two years have almost prohibited intensive selling. But that time is coming back. And, on the quality of their selling is going to depend how much prosperity the lumber industry is going to get.

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I believe the time has come again for the retail lumbermen to go out into the highways and by-ways and spread the gospel of homes and of home building and possession, seeking, searching, digging, tunneling, blasting if need be, for every dollar's wofth of available building business. They must offer prices that are always fair and will stand the closest scrutiny in that respect. The rising prices of living commodities of late has done much to set back recovery. A fair price for building material is utterly essential if recovery is to return via the building route.

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I believe that there is the greatest potential opportunity imrnediately ahead of the lumber industry today that any of us have ever seen. The huge buildingJess vacuum of the past ten years will swallow in huge gulps our available building materials and our available building artisans whenever the financial supply is available. And if, as I believe, the Government is going to try and create genuine recovery by financing worthy people in their needed buildings-then it won't be long.

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If I had all thd lumbermen in this country in an audience before me today and was privileged to address them, I would offer THIS prayer to them now: ..ff you love the lumber industry, and would see it emerge from this stifling depression, and would see it move forward into an enduring period of usefulness and prosperity-DO SOMETHING

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