Wilson Compton Tells Radio Listeners of Great Past and Important Future of Nation's Lumber Industry

Over a coast to coast network of the National Broadcasting System, Wilson Compton, Secretary and Manager of the National Lumber Manufacturers Association, on Tiresday evening, April 15, spoke of the lumber industry as one of the nation's fundamental activities and told of the important part it is destined to play in the country's future economic development.

An especially interesting feature of Mr Compton's talk was his discussion of the influence that advances in both physical and chemical research are already exerting upon the conversion of trees into articles of utility, not alone in creating a wider range of products, but in the direction of making possible improved lumber, proof against fire, decay and insect damage. He told also of the present attitude of timberland holders toward lumber as a crop and their abandonment of destructive cutting practices in favor of crop perpetuation and consequent reforestation and forest protection.

This talk was a part of a public salute by the Westinghouse Electric Company to the entire lumber industry. As a part of its radio advertising program this company selects each week a leading national industry to which it pays its compliments. The April 15 program consisted of orchestra music interspersed with comments on lumber, its importance, its history as an industry, the range of its products, present day manufacturing precision and standardization and such topics. Mr. Compton's broadcast, responding to the salute on behalf of the lumber industry follows:

Lumber's Answer to the "Westinghouse Salute"

The oldest manufacturing industry of America acknorvledges with appreciation the salute of the greatest of the prese4t generation of industrial giants. Lumber was a universal industry in the thirteen colonies when electricity was only a plaything for Franklin and a puzzle to Galvani.

A century ago there were 40,000 lumber mills in the United States. When the power giant of electricity was still unharnessed, the lumber industry worked with horses, cattle, water and even wind power. For seventy-five years b,efore electricity lvas more than light and novelty, the lumber industry was working on a large scale with what was then the new steam power, and one of the most conspicuous features of the American industrial scene was the tall smokestacks of the lumber mill which everywhere brought industry to the edge of the frontier.

The lumber industry is proud of its ancient origin and of its long service to mankind from Noah's ark to the wooden poles of modern power transmission lines. But it is not content to remain embalmed in history; it is more interested in the present and the future. Today, thanks to the wonders of electric power and its adaptability the 40,000 lumber mills of the middle o{ the last century are now but 15,000; and about 6O per cent of the huge output of lumber annually in the United States comes from the thousand mills which are most up-to-date in their use of electric power. They use it for everything from an instrument to measure moisture content in wood, to the screaming saws which rip through six-foot logs, and to sixty-ton electric locomotives which haul two hundred thousand feet of logs at a single trip.

It takes an army of men, thirty thousand miles of log- ging railway, two thousand wholesale distributors and over twenty thousand retail dealers to provide and distribute to the American people the favorite building material from which more than eighty per cent of their homes are constructed, and to deliver to sixty or seventy groups of manufacturing industries the lumber which is thpir principal raw material. By train, by ship, by motor tiuck, by team and even airplane, lumber is forwarded from the great mills of North, West and South to the remotest hamlets of America and to the centers and frontiers of civilization throughout the world.

The lumber industry is not much in evidence in the cities, but when you look around you for the uses of wood and try to imagine what life would be if there were no wood for shelter or for industry you may well imagine the myriads of men who are toiling for you in the forests and the woodusing'industries of America.

Up to now the lumber industry has been mainly a physical industry, chiefly occupied in changing by sawing the form of a natural material-wood. We stand today on the edge of a far-reaching revolution in the industry. In this applied chemistry will play a great part. Lumber so chemically treated as to be proof against decay, fire, insect damage, shrinkage and expansion is today somewhat of a novelty. Within a decade it will be commonplace. In the future, too, the lumber industry will deal more and more with wood pulp and with cellulose, that mysterious substance of wood. More and more will i1 be used as a plastic material which may be shaped to any conceivable form and from which may be derived hundreds and perhaps thousands of useful commodities. Wood in its physical forms and its chemi,cal derivatives is cafable of being made the most universally useful of all the matgrials of industry.

The natural forests, which originally covered one-half of the land area of America, were the ready-made material of the lumber industry. New volunteer crops are now replacing the virgin forests North, East, South and West. Nearly half of our lumber comes today from forests which have yielded one or more previous crops of timber. And now many lumber companies are coming to handle their forest lands as tree-crop land,.and are encouraging and caring for the tree crops as the farmer does for the crops of his tilled fields. Nature freely gave us the old forests. Civilization and its industrial arts will demand and will supply the new forests.

Now, as at all times in more than three hundred years which have elapsed since the first sawmill in America was set up at Jamestown, Va., the men of the lumber industry are taking their part in the great parade of American in' dustry wfiich goei on and on to evei widening achievdment.

lVendling - Nathan Co. SAN FRAT{qSCO

Wholesalera of Douglas Fir Redwood

California White & Sugar Pine

If you have never had

Let us sell you a car. It can be mixed with any other items of Old Growth Yellow Fir worked uppers.

Main Ofrce: San Francisco

I l0 Market St.

A. L Hoover, Agt. Los Angeles Standard Oil Bldg.

56 Dealers in 1926-817 in 1928

1600 in 1929. Whv?

Why does the list of Supercedar dealers grow so fast? Because Supercedar Closet Lining' guaranteed 90 per cent or more red heartwood, containing 100 per cent of the valuable oil of cedar, is better made and sells faster.

For ouotat;ons aud litetoture addtcss Calilonio - disfributorsi

E. J. STANTON & SON J. E. HIGGTNS LBR. CO. Lor Angeler San Francirco

I \^/ANT TO BUILD A HOME

I want to build a home to endure. A house of generous size and low-fung roofs, caressed by the gentle shade of great trees, where Permanence and Strength shall be reflected. A ho'use where little voices may babble in the ecstacy of babyhood, and grow to the full blush of fouth, and, in the fullness of Time, come to maturity, and age, and grow old, and nod, and sleep. A house where my children's children shall be nourished.and fed and protected by these same walls that have sheltered and protected me.

I want to build these little lives which have rooted in the garden-soil of my soul so that they, too, shall endure. Build them so that they shall know the glory that Love is, the joy that Happiness is, the peace that Contentment is. I want to root them in the eternal truths, and nourish them with the true ideals of usefulness and service. I want to build them unafraid-gentle as the daisies nodding in the fields, sturdy as the rock-ribbed hills, strong as Love.

f want to build a garden where loveliness dwells. A garden where the lingering pictures in Memory's eye come into being, and all the dreams I have dreamed of Paradise nestle at my feet in my own dooryard. A garden where mine enemy dare not corne lest he, too, be charmed into forgiveqess. A garden where the divine laboratory of Eternity lies in my hand, and speaks in untold tones the delights, the mysteries, the wonders of the Hand behind it ail.

I want to build a home where Love will dwell. A home valued not by the dollars it cost, or the richness of materials or furnishings going into it, so much as by the happiness it has created. A home which has grown dear and near because of the stress and storm it has weathered, the tears it has dried, the smiles it has caused. A home where patience, and effort, and denial have brought their treasures of happiness and contentment and peace. A home where love comes like the fluttering dove ind perches and dwells-unwilling to search elsewhere.

I want to build a HOME.

Economical

"Oh, John," screamed the excited woman driver, .,the car is running away."

"Can'tr you stop it?" asked her husband.

ttNo.t'

"Well, then, see if you can't hit something cheap.,'

Continuous Performan What Counts

"A mail carrier is not the only who has to keep on delivering.

"I'll tell you why that chap is such a wonder. The minute he winds up one big job, he goes after another. He. wastes no time patting himself on the back for past achievements.

"In other words, you have not only got to do good work, but you have got to repeat and keep on repeating if youlrant the world to respect you.

"The salesman who sets a high mark has to go right olrt and repeat his mark or suffer by comparison with his own reccd. He can't sit down in a rocking chair and devote the rest of his life to achieving congratulations.

"Have you ever sat in a restaurant and compared your job with that of, a waiter? Try it some time. No matter what your work is I am sure you will see the point if you watch the waiter and think how exactly his job typifics yours.

"A continuous'performance is what is wanted. Nothing else counts."-John Siddell.

Modernism

An enterprising and modernistic poultryman crossed his hens with parrots. Now, instead of wasting time hunting eggs, the hens just walk up to him and say: "Ilank, I just laid an egg-go get it."

Cigs

Don't worry about the ads. Grab a package of Luckies, don't "walk a mile" unless you \ilant to, get a box of,swe€ts, be nonchalant, and settle down to enjoy the Old Gold Hour.

\/ EVEN FISH HISToRY REPEATS

The Grandsire sat in his easy chair

And his laugh was a gurgling croak, While his grarldson told of a monstrous fish He had caught on a line-which broke. Then the old man gravely smiled, and said: . "Dear boy, it was large, I know, For I hooked that same old fish, myself, Some fifty years ago."