National Lumber Manufacturers Association Offers Sidelights on New Building Limitation Ordet

Washington, April 9.-The Building Limitation Order pending for many months in the War Production Board has now been issued effective today, as Conservation Order L-4t.

This Order in some respects is more restrictive than anticipated. In other respects it is less restrictive. Last year the benefit of priorities was withheld or withdrawn by the so-called SPAB Building Limitation Order. That Order, as you will recall, was subject to a wide range of interpretation and confusion. Essentially, it meant that civilian building which could be completed without the aid of priorities would not be interfered rvith. That Order related only to priorities assistance and did not limit the use of stocks on hand of building materials and building equipment, or the use of materials not restricted by priorities.

Shortly thereafter an effort was undertaken within the OPM, later continued by the War Production Board, to draw a supplementary Building Limitation Order which, conversely, had no bearing on priorities but related to the use of building materials and building equipment in the hands of distributors and builders, or available without priorities. Accordingly, it was then proposed to restrict the use of metals in building, allowing a different maximum weight of metals for each classification of building, but imposing no limitation on building itself provided that these limits on the use of metal products were not exceeded.

This, although proposed to be called a Building Limitation, would in effect have been a limitation on the use of particular metals without limitation of building as long as excess of use of these critical materials could be avoided or supplanted.

That type of limitation has now been abandoned in favor of a specific limitation based not on the weight or volume of critical materials used but on the total cost of the proposed construction. This limitation in some respects is more severe. It does not afford the same opportunity for the exercise of ingenuity in substituting non-critical for critical materials. At the same time the new order permits repairs and replacements of existing structures and within moderate limits permits remodeling of homes, new construction of business buildings on farms, and other construction which is neither residential nor farm construction.

Construction for the Army and Navy and the war agencies and construction for the production of minerals and petroleum are not subject to this Limitation Order. But other than these any substantial projects for new building hereafter will be subject to specific authorization in advance by the War Production Board

These limitations will affect all building materials and all building equipment. On lumber they will obviously affect retail distributors more directly and more drastically than they will affect lumber manufacturers. The trade in rural areas and in defense industrial areas will be the least affected; trade in non-defense urban areas the most.

This Order in substance means a cessation of major civilian construction during the war. It is known to be the result of months of consideration within the War Production Board, and that the responsible officials have wished and have intended to avoid the imposition of restrictions which would unnecessarily deprive localities of employment and industries and trades of markets for their products. There will, of course, be debate over the abandonment of the limitation of the use of metals and critical materials in favor of a limitation on the volume of building itself, whether it uses critical materials or not. But the Order should be and will be accepted as representing the best judgment of the men responsible for making the decision. More progress will be made by the building industries and building trades by using their ingenuities in devising ways and means of operating under this Order than in further argument over the merits of the Order itself. All pertinent facts and all conceivable viewpoints have, during

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