Tomorrow's Lumber Merchant Will Help Rebuild the \forld

By Henry Humann

General Chairman, 1943 Foreign Trade \fleek Committee, Los Angeles Chomber of Commerce

Priorities, rationirg, shortages and their restrictive rules and regulations imposed upon us by impact of global war, although burdensome to bear, need not prevent contemplation of those conditions which will face us tomorrow.

When ultimate and complbte victory comes and warboom orders cease, the lumber merchant will not have arrived at the end of his usefulness. nor of his opportunity. Who is there foolish enough even to suggest it?

After all, what are we fighting for, if not to remove the shackles from enslaved peoples and to rebuild a whole world-a world of free men, by free men and for free men ?

Tomorrow's lumber merchant must be in the big middle of any appreciable building activity within his community, if he would remain in that community.

Which brings up the reason for emphasis upon the week of May t6 to 22, when this country will observe National Foreign Trade Week. Started in 1927 as a community campaign in Los Angeles, this annual event spread first throughout other Pacific Coast communities and grew to its present national observance. Its purpose is to create wider interest among citizens of every community in the subject of world commerce.

, Tomorrow's lumber merchant looks upon his community as restricted only by the confines of the entire earth. He sees sales opportunity limited solely by the sum total of all the desires of all the peoples of the world, just as today he looks upon the products handled by him going to war by every air, land and sea route open to transport'

Just as the ravages of this beastly business of war demands that the lumber merchant tomoffow must stand by to help in rebuilding, where now is desolation, so will the blessings of the pursuit of happiness demand that he serve the community of mankind when peace rules.

Tomorrow's lumber merchant of the Pacific Coast looks upon a billion customers residing in those lands which border upon the mighty Pacific Ocean. To fill the possible orders from these billion customers, he will need to look beyond the borders of his own county, state, region or nation, if he would secure the raw materials with which he works.

The 1943 message on World Commerce to the lumber merchant would tell him the sources of timber are within reach. They are without limits. He knows, of course, that North America ofiers a great sour'ce of supply for softwoods, mostly, but does he know that Latin American forests abound mostly in hardwoods? That millions of miles of these forests have not yet been explored? To say nothing of forest resources across the Pacific.

Mahogany is found in Mexico, Honduras and several other countries among our southern neighbors. The same is true of sapodilla, cedar, rosewood, balsa, cocobolo, black balsam, logwood, pine, lignum-vitae, satinwood, divi-divi, balata, quebracho, alerce, luma, cinchona, tolu balsam. As many woods as there are countries, or tomorrows.

W:th Contractors' State License Board

Herbert E,. Weyler of Santa Barbara has taken ofifice as State Registrar of Contractors and Executive Secretary of the Contractors' State License Board, it was announced by Roy M. Butcher of San Jose, chairman of the board, and by Percy C. Heckendorf, member of Governor Warren's cabinet and director of the Department of Professional and Vocational Standards. He succeeds Allen Miller of Los Angeles, who has joined the Army.

Mr. Weyler brings to the job thirty years' experience in mill and contracting operations, and he is well known in California lumber and millwork circles.