Vagabond Editorials

(Continued from Page 6) we must emulate ,* ,:a":; and the enterprise of the men who make and market motor cars. They thought SAFETY-and they produced FOUR WHEEL BRAKE!; they thought COMFORT, and they produced SHOCK ABSORBERS and BALLOON TIRES; they thought ECONOMY, and they produced life-time protective auto paints, etc,, etc., etc., in the way of hundreds of specific examples.

And listen ! The day of glittering generalities as a hope of saving grace for this embattled business-is GONE. The hope and the sole hope of the lumber industry depends upon S P E CI F I C IMPROVEMENTS, SPECIFIC CHANGES, SPECIFIC DEVELOPMENTS in the making ar\d marketing of wood products. There is no other way out. Maledictions upon its active competitors won't do the trick. Excoriating their products won't save the day.

The lumber industry has got to HIRE BRAINS. It has got to say to those brains: 'Think, work, search, investigate, experiment, dig, delve, and deliver, and bring us NEW IDEAS for using wood that will be entirely different from the things we are doing now; things that will appeal to the modern desire for change, for improvement, for variety, for something better, and for something different." THAT'S what this industry has got to do, gentlemen of the lumber jury, if it is to survive. Present methods have proven abortive. They belong to the days of our grandfathers. But it is the problems of TODAY that this industry must face.

If the industry has only a dollar to spend trying to help itself, it should spend at least NINETY CENTS of that dollar in this SEARCHING efrort. It has been freely and frequently stated that the lumber industry has always been entirely too parsimonlous inits expenditures for trade extension work. True enough ! But if the money the industry HAS contributed and spent for market development had been used for specifically buying brains and employing them in searching fon new and better uses for wood, you wouldn't know this industry today.

'WE MUST ADVERTISE!" comes the cry. Yes, indcedl Just as soon as you find something specific, some- thing tangible, something brand new and thoroughly interesting, to exploit; just as soon as your searching and finding department has produced thoughts and things and ideas for the lumber industry, comparable to the drarnatic and amazing improvements the auto industty, the steel industry, the radio industry, are continually thrusting upon an interested public. THEN, and not until THEN, will the lurnber industqy .have a story to take to the public that will be worth spending money to exploit. And until THEN, gentlemen of the lumber jnty-SAVE YOUR MONEY! tl. tf *

Most of the consumer advertising the lumber industry has done has been wanton waste, because it had nothing to sell. Buying expensive space to paint in glittering generalities the comforts of home, is a wholly impractical and pitiful gesture that has caused many of those who have helped pay for same to drift into the camp of doubt, questioning the wisdom and usefirlness of advertising lumber. What the industry has done has been simply to load a shotgun with slugs, and fire airnlessly into the sky. There is no record of success emanating from that sort of hunting.

Two all-important things are demonstrable. First, the lumber industry CAN hire brains as other industries do, and this thinking department CAN discover amazing and interesting and practical new ways of using wood that will revolutionize the industry. It's a virgin field they will have to work in. Second, when these things ARE found and perfected, they CAN be practically and successfully advertised, exploited, and merchandised.

Let the dollans of the industry be intelligently spent in THAT way, and in not more than five years' time more change and more improvement will take place through this entire lumber business than has taken place in the last one hundred years.

Year after year, and year after year, this industry talks, talks, talks, and does NOTHING. It looks like the talking time has gone, and the DOING DAYS HAVE COME.