The \(/est Coast is Not Qufttins

(Reprinted, trom the Vest Coast Lumbermen's Association Neus Letter)

The air seems to be thick with rumors that the West Coast mill will shortly abandon the price features of the Lumber Code. Let it therefore be said, once for all, that the meeting of all principal Division Agencies of the West Coast on May 25 adopted two resolutions, either unanimously or by overwhelming vote:

First, that the minimum price provisions Code must be maintained; and

Second, that the present average level of for West Coast lumber must be continued.

The West Coast is not quitting the Lumber Code. Nor is it quitting the minimum price provisions of the Code, We know that if we struck out cost protection prices, the entire Code would collapse.

I heartily commend to every reader of this News Letter Doctor Compton's address before the Wholesale Associat;on on "Oppression or Depression-Which?" It goes to the heart of the Lumber Code. It shows why the West Coast Division, or any other Division for that matter. will not abandon its cost protection prices.

Ten or twelve thousand sawmills, with a capacity to make three or four times as much lumber as the country is using, can not maintain a fixed wage level without a minimum price level that protects their cost of production.

Should cost protection prices be abandoned on the West Coast, they will be abandoned everywhere. The industry will slip right back into the destructive competition and sacrifice of capital assets that almost wrecked us in the earlier years of the depression. Once that condition returns, the fixed wage scales of the Lumber Code are doomed.

Whatever our disappointments and problems, let the critics of the Lumber Code-right here on the West Coast -ponder these facts. During April and May, the Code has kept 5@ Douglas fir sawmills running. It has kept over 45,000 men employed in sawmills and logging camps. It has paid these men under Code wage protection an average in excess of fifty-seven cents per hour. The inills have sold an averag'e volume of 96 million feet per week, notwithstanding the dock strikes; and have received an average price (for Douglas fir) of 918.26 per M feet. That is, the industry has made a gross realization of one and three-quarter millions of dollars per week.

Of course, the Code pinches the feet of individual manufacturers and wholesalers. Of course, nearly everyone has had to surrender something; and some have surrendered more than others. Of course, we should get better compliance. Of course, we can improve many features of Code administration.

But in the face of these solid facts of actual accomplishment, during a period of continued national depression, the West Coast lumber industry is not going to abandon its Code; nor is it going to destroy the Code by knocking out one of its main pillars-prices that protect the manufacturers' cost of production.

W. B. GREELEY, Secretary-Manager.

H. \,t/. COLE IN EAST

Harry W. Cole, executive officer of the Redwood Division of the l-umber Code Authority, left San Francisco June 6 for Chicago where he will attend the annual meeting of the Code Authority, June 11 to 14. He will also go to Washington to attend the meeting which will be reconvened there June 15.