Random Editorial Ramblings

By Jack Dionne

Mark this prediction! Changes will com*-many of them -to the lumber business in California We won t always have the Hellacious conditions that prevail her*and nowhere else. Don't doubt iL Sonate day softwoods will be prepared for use in California something after the manner that hardwoods are. California is one of the big hardwood consuming states. But we are ae particular aboul the preparation of our hardwoods, as we are un-particular (if there is such a word) about our softwoods. Hardwoods are separated as to grades, lengths, widths, thicknesses, moisture content, surface conditions, etc. California is a fine hardwood market, and a sad softwood market. The reasons will be found above.

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The world do move. Back in l9l7 a Mr. H. D. Tiemann, then a well known authority on kiln drying lumber, wroto: "How would it seem for an architect, for instance, to order lumber for his building and to state that it should contain between 5 and 7 p€r cent moisture, that it should have beerr manufactured only when it contained 5 per cent, that it should not be casehardened beyond a certain degree determlnable by a simple test" be free from all checks and honeycombing, and that it should not have been heated beyond 160 degrees in the dry kiln while it was moist in o,rder to avoid brittleness. Who would accept such an order today?', Mr. Tiemann was speaking with the voice of prophecy. There are worlds of lumber orders being placed and filled today withall those specifications, and even more of them. Mostly in hardwoods. But the softwoods are working in that direction also.

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According to the figures furnished by the Comrnon Brick Manufacturers Association there were consumed by the builders of the United States in 1928 more than eight billion bricks. This would build the foundations, chimneys, and walls of about 267,000 average homes. Of cotrrse, most of them did not go into homes, but into larger structures.

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Every now and then you rneet a business man who seems seriously concerned about the possibility of being a ..Babbit". Babbit, you know, was the serrrice-club eilthusiast business man whom Sinclair Lewis satirized in ..Main Stre€t," andwhom Metcken has been poking fun at. Don't be that way. Belong to your senrice clubs, build up friendships with your fellow business men, and follow that line of thought and endeavor wittrout worrying about what LEuds and Mencken think about it. If you ma.ke the world iust one shade better to live in by so doing, you wilt be just that much ahead of these two self-appointed satirists, who, when they pass, will leave the world the worse off by ex. actly the cost of their boardflU I*n.

Not long since I picked up a neq/spaper and read about a state official of a certain service club who wanted to call on these self-named "intelligentsia" (Heave'n keep this laughter from my lips) to tell us honr to make these serwice clubs really worth while. For two men who never uttered a constructive thought in their lives, this would be some propositio,n

The man who doesn't understand the value of his service club, ought to get out of it. One great and good thing they have done. They have brought fellowship into the business wodd. ft newer was here before. We have had religions for thousands upon thousands of ye:rrs, and Christianity for twenty centuries, but we have only had feltowship fora few slrort years. Many other great and good things these service clubs have done, but for this one alone the world should and w*ill be*eternall]r grateful.

Go on with your service clubs. Meet, call each other Bill and Jack, talk, laugh, sing, eat, do some barber shop chordg listen to sorne snappy speeches, and go back to your work with your batteries renetyed. Let the professional smartAlecs crack their jokes. They are, as ever1r really thinking man understands, an absurd and pitiful clique, seeking attention in much the same manner as does that striped-backed little animal who is said to be so utterly unpopular at lawn parties.

I meet a lot of retail lumbermen who have "service" and "ethics" badly scrambled. They can't distinguish the proper line of demarkation between the two. I know lots of them who won't give the consumer the most essential of service, because it would be "unethicaf'. There are retail districts where the dealers agree among themselves not to solicit, not to deliver, not to send out representatives, not to a& vertise, not to use plans, in fact, not to do anything that would improvo merchandising, increase the service that tho consumer should have, or furnish ideas for building that would improve the buildings of the district. Think there ar€n't such districts? Friends, the country is cluttered with them. Me'lieval and regrettable and condemnablebut there just the same.

I sat in a great retail lurnber convention where "ethics" were being discussed, and heard a bunch of retailers discuss and agree that if a house burned .down in to,wn it

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