Our Bissest Sellins Job

Excerpts from o talk by Kenneth Smith, president, California Redwood Association, at the annual meeting of the Southern California Retail Lumber Association at Los Angeles, Apnl 29.

The biggest, most difficult and most vital selling job in America today is reselling Americans on the American way of life.

We must do the job our schools and the present crop of parents have failed to do-teach all who are under 35 what kind of an economic svstem it is thev were born into and what makes it tick.

We must find a way to teach all men the difference between a necessity economy and a luxury economy, and make sure they understand that we have long since passed the stage of a successful necessity economy and that u'e could burn down thouands of factories and close up thousands of stores and service establishments yet nobody would starve, nobody would go naked, and nobody would lack adequate shelter.

We must bring all men to understand that what we have here in America is a luxury economy and that our fundamental problem is how to further expend a luxury economy if we are not to go backward and lose some of our present very high standard of living.

We must teach all men why "Production for use" would inevitably lower our standard of living. They must understand that our luxury economy rests upon salesmanship. They must understand that we can mass-produce both essentials and luxuries at lower and lower cost only if the public buys the output of the machines. They must under. stand that what has built in America the highest standard of living in the world is that salesmen have induced us to "want " more things, newer things and better things and thus to "buy" the product of our mass-production engineering genius.

We must get it through our own heads that millions of men r,r'ill not work any harder than they have to in order to get what they want and that the only way we have a prayer of maintaining reasonably full employment at high wages and raising the standard of living still higher in this country is to stimulate more and more people into wanting more and more things and wanting them so in- tensely that they are actually willing to work a.little harder in order to get what they want.

We must teach all men that peace and harmony can be' maintained between management and labor only by recognizing that they must pull together as a team to reach their common goal of maximum production in order to curb the menace of inflation and maximum consumption in order to keep the'$261-billion debt and the unprecedented cost of government from decreasing our standard of living.

We must teach all men that our system depends for its existence upon freedom from violence, freedom to work together by voluntary agreement, freedom to own, to buy and sell, and to enjoy what one has produced or purchased.

We must teach all men that the words ..profit', and "dividends" mean merely "payment for the use of tools,, and that if there is no payment for the use of tools there will be no tools.

'We must safeguard the right of all persons to be secure in the ownership of the tools of production and. their management, and to enjoy the legitimate competitive earnings of tools (profits) free from taxation that punishes thriit.

We must teach all men that the money to buy new plant, tools, equipment, technical education-everything that lifts the productive power of men-comes from onli two sources-savings and hire for the use of tools ani equipment already in existence (profits). Every worker in America knows that he has a higher standard of living than workers anywhere else in the world because he hai more and better tools to work with. He knows well also that tools are always wearing out or becoming obsolete. But unfortunately he not only does not understand where they come from but he has been sold a lot of completely erroneous ideas about capital.

'We must teach all men that government is not a cow to be milked, that you can only confiscate and redistribute what thrifty men have saved in the past, and that every dollar the government spends comes out of the pockets of producers. We must make it clear to all men *hy .ro go.,r_

(Continued on page 32)

H. V. Simpson Says Modernizing of Mills ls Big Rage in Doughs Fir Mills Now

H. V. Simpson, Executive Vice President of the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, a recent visitor in Los Angeles where he attended the big retailers' convention in Los Angeles, says that modernization is the order of the day among the sawmills of the great Douglas Fir territory. Numerous mills are hastening to secure dry kilns and newer and better planing mill machinery and equipment, keeping up with the demand for dressing and seasoning lumber better and getting it to market more quickly.

The only thing that holds back the wholesale improvement of an army of mills is the difficulty of securing new machinery and kilns, and the time it takes to get it installed and going. In another year many, many mills in Douglas Fir will be out of the rough lqmber business entirely, and kiln drying and dressing more lumber than ever before. The change from rough green production to dressed and dry production has been going on for years past; the difference is that it is now going at the highest speed conditions will allow.

Visitor From Mexico

Fred J. Campillo, lumberman from Mexicali, Mexico, attended the convention of the Southern California Retail Lumber Association at the Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, April 2I and 22. H-is firm is the Madereria Del Valle. S.

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