Put the Fleadlight on in Front !

By Wilson Compton, Secretary-Manager, before National Manufacturers Association, at Chicago

The atmosphere of a declining industry has been allowed in recent years to penetrate the lumber business. For this fact the industry itself is not without fault. It is also sufrering the consequences. The consequenccs are not difficult to see,-loss of markets, waste of resources and decline of profits. No industry has ever made progtess by going backwardl

This atmosphere of expected decline has of course impressed the mind of the lumber consumer, It has been fanned by well-meaning conservationists, in cxaggerated fear of a "timber famine," exploited by audacious competitois seeking profitable markets for "substitutes;" and aggravated by the industrial "cannibalism" which has reccntly characterized the competition between species of lumber in common markets.

The most conspicuous result of this process has been to turn over to other materials, many of the choicest lumber markets, while thousands of competitors in the lumber industry have been- quarrelitrg f,or a share of the constantly declining remainder. The increase in the usc of "substitutes" for lumber has in the last sixteen years absorbed the market for an aggregate ol 232 billion fect.

Much of this substltuti-on is cconomically sound and therefore will be,-or at lcast should be,-lasting. But much of it also has been built upon the shifting sands of misreprcsentation and of -exaggcrated claims-of superiority supportcd not by facts but- by high-pressure salesmanship. Heretofore it has not bccn aggressively- contested.by thc lumber industry which has nevertheless been its principal victirn. But it is unsound and vulncrable; and it ofrers to a concerted lumbcr tradc extension movement its most promising opportunity.

The lumber industry-both regionally and nationally-is now taking a lcaf out of the book of its most enterprising comBetitors, in orgafrzing a concerted trade extension movement w-hich will use, to-maintain and extcnd its markets, thc same mcrchandising weapons which its competitors arb using to takc them awa,y.

For several years supply and demand, in the lumber industry, have bccn notorioully out -of balance. Its present potential producing caoacity is materially in excess of thc present lumber consumption. Alieadi immoderati and constantly increasing taxes are driving

MAT{Y LUMBER DEALERS ARE SF.T IING