THE CALIFOFf,.IIA LUMBERMERCHANT JackDiorrne,publ*ltu

How Lumber Looks

524 mills, reporting for the week ended June 10, produced 237,9D,mO feet of softwoods and hardwoods combined;shipped 223,161,W feet; and booked orders of.235,969,000 feet, according to the National Lumber Manufacturers Association.

Revised figures for the preceding week rvere mills, 542; production 215,758,W feet; shipments 2h,O99,00O feet; orders 237.ffi7.NO feet.

Lumber orders reported for the week ended Tune 437 softrvood mills tbtaled 227,239,W feet; shipinents 215,303,000 feet; and production 231,211,W ieet.

Reports from 103 hardwood mills for the same week new business as 8,730,0O0 feet; shipments 7,858,000 and production 6,718,000 feet.

1O by were gave feet ;

A total of 143 down and operating mills in Oregon and Washington, reporting to the West Coast Lumbermen's Association for the week ended June 10, produced 102,321,542 feet; shipped 98,643,623 feet; and .new business was 107,855,926 f.eet. Orders on hand at the end of the week at these mills totaled 346,253,769 teet.

The same number of mills, reporting for the week ended June 17, produced 101,312,939 feet; shipped llo,476,nz feet; and new business was 1L8,37O,677 feet. Orders on hand at the end of the week totaled 352,968,115 feet.

The Western Pine Association for the week ended Tune 77, IIO mills reporting, gave production as 76,719,W leet shipments 65,274,W feet; and orders 72,05$W feet. Orders on hand at the end of the week totaled 19.+.369,000 feet.

The California Redwood Association reported production of 13 mills for the week ended June 10 as 6,888,00O feet; shipments 7,353,000 feet; and new business 5,568,000 feet. Week-end orders on hand totaled 30.486,000 feet.

The Southern the week ended feet; shipments Orders on hand feet.

Pine Association, 123 mills reporting for June 17, gave production as 31,409,000 2r,031,000 feet; and orders 31,577,000 feet. at the end of the rveek totaled 80,175,000

The 10-day almost complete tieup of San Francisco Bay ports was ended June 27 by an agreement signed by the Ship Clerks' Association and Dock Checkers Employers' Association to submit to arbitration the dispute over tlie status of 10 cargo checkers employed by the AmericanHawaiian Steamship Company. The arbitrator selected is Wayne L. Morse, dean of the University of Oregon law school.

Lumber cargo arrivals at Los Angeles Harbor for the week ended June 24 totaled 10,387,000 feet as compared with the previous week's total of 18,619,000 feet. With the lumber industry at the Harbor tied-up due to the strike, most of the lumber in port remained lashed to decks of lumber schooners while longshoremen refused to unload the lumber until the controversy betu'een the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union and the California Wholesale Distributing Yards Association is ended.

And in the world, as in the school, You know how Fate may turn and shift; The prize be sometimes to the fool, The race not always to the swift. Who misses or who gains the prize, Go, lose or conquer if you can, But, if you fall or if you ris* Be each, pray God, a Gentleman.

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-Thackeray

Ruskin said: "No amount of pay ever made a goo'd soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good worker." That sort is born.

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Abraham Lincoln once made this momentous remark about property: "Property," said Honest Abe, "is the fruit of labor; it is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and to enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself ; thus, by example, assuring that his own home shall be safe from violence when built."

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Frank A. Munsey, famous publisher, was once asked the secret of his success. He replied that it came principally from two sources, "the forty dollars capital I brought with me from Maine to New York forty years ago, and the capacity God gave me for work. There has been no mystery, no legerdemain, no short cuts for me. It has been done by fairly sound reasoning, the courage to put my conclusions to the test, and by paying the price in work. I am a thorough believer in work. I love to work, and wish all Americans loved work as f love it. Generally speaking there is no such thing as getting something for nothing. We must pay the price in thought, in care, in watchfulness, in work-intense, everlasting work."

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Collier's Weekly editorially remarks: "It is NOT unpatriotic to speak up when you see something going on that you think imperils this country. It IS unpatriotic to keep your mouth shut about it, whatever it may be." Amen ! Grave problems face this nation. But the gtavest danger is that the time may come when, because of fear or favor' citizens will fail to speak their honest minds about things that concern us all. Remember, this is OUR government; and it will continue to be free just so long as we keep on turning over every suspicious-looking chip to see what's under it.

We freguently read or hear figures quoted showing how small a percentage of our citizenship own how large a portion of our wealth. Demagogues guote them to prove that the rich throttle the poor. Radicals quote them to prove that this world's goods should be assembled and redivided. The mob, which is appealed to through its emotions or its stomach, frequently assumes such logic to be truthful. The demagogue and the radical forget to tell them that all other good things are divided in about the same way, and cannot be re.assembled and re-divided. For instance, 2O per cent of dl the salesmen of this nation sell at least .._^ 70 per cent of all the goods sold. How are you going te-ftiassemble and re-divide sales ability? Scholars agree that 15 per cent of the people of this nation do at least 85 per cent of the actual constructive THINKING. How can you socialize the ability to think successfully?

The fact is-and "r"; oir"*-"r, knows it-that you could seize the wealth of him who has made much, and divide it among those who have made little; and turn them loose. And in a very short time he who made it before, will make it all back again. You can shuffle humanity any way you see fit, and the thinkers will keep right on doing the thinking, while the thoughtless will keep right on kicking about "unfairness." You can divide the sales territories' all over, and the skilled salesmen will get the sales gravY, just the same. Intelligence, virility, ability, and usefulness, cannot be regimented or budgeted. The statement that "all men were created equal" refers to opportunity; not to their intrinsic value.

When we attempt ," :"r uJ*r an" natural laws that made this nation great, those laws that put a premium on ABILITY:we court trouble. We must keep nature's books balanced. It is because we have attempted to reverse so many natural laws that we continue to struggle on fitfully, t fearfully, and doubtingly. This nation was built on the proposition that the man with ABILITY and USEFULNESS will profit more than he who has less; that he who can make two ears of corn grow where only onHr perhaps none-grew before, will profit accordingly; that the man who can CREATE more will EARN more and GET more than the weaker fellow. We will always have employers and employes, rich and poor, (it was Jesus Christ who said, "the poor ye have always with you"), efficient and inefEcient, energetic and lazy, worthy and worthless, just so long as human nature endures. The crosswise philosopher who attemps to prove otherwise, is only pulling on a rope of sand***

I don't know who wrote the following, but I like it: "f have no use for guys that swat their luck, And daily bemoan their fate, and spring a whine, Just gimme a shirt and a pair o' pants, An open field and an even chance-and I'll get mine."

The wise Lycurgus *4" **, out of iron so that luxury might not corrupt the people and debase the national pride. Guess lots of our American owners of savings accounts think it must be iron money they have saved, they get so little return on it. Truly the cheap money of --' today has wrought havoc with savings account returns. In the old days a thrifty man worked and saved until he had a thousand dollars in the savings bank, and got four per cent interest on it. He could leave it there and in 17 years he would have two thousand dollars to apply on his old age needs. Or he could take his forty dollars a year and use it for a vacation, or for doctor bills in case of emergency, etc. Today most banks pay one and one-half per cent interest on savings accounts. (Some banks have discontinued paying such interest entirely, because they cannot make their cash on hand make money.) So the thrifty guy with a thousand dollars in the savings bank now gets fifteen dollars a year, instead of forty. He can't take a vacation on that. And if he leaves it there and lets it accumulate, it will take him forty-six years to accumulate another thousand. fn order to get the annual forty dollars interest he used to get on his one thousand, he now has to have $2666 in the bank. Of all the squeeze plays going on, the one on the small, thrifty, savings account owner, is probably the most discouraging. tf*rF

In the June 15 issue I discussed. retail lumber plan books, and remarked that I remembered the first set I ever saw. Harry McGahey, of the San Diego Lumber Company, San Diego, writes in and wants to know how far back that was. He says they still have in their office the first set of plan books ever used by his company, and that it was dated 1902. That beats me. I remember making talks to lumber conventions in 1910 on the use of plan books in selling building materials, and the first lumber plan books I ever saw dated about 1907. Anyhow, I'm just a young feller trying to get along, and I don't claim to remember back as far as veterans like my friend Harry. Besides, I'm proud to know that the live wire San Diego Lumber Company was doing modern merchandising activities that long ago. Progressive folks, those San Diegans, and fine merchants.

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Ilave on hand a circular recently issued by the Ship. owners Association of the Pacific Coast, concerning federal taxes. The figures quoted show that California taxpayers paid the federal government nine million dollars in federal taxes in the year 1912, and two hundred and fifty-four million in 1937, an increase of twenty-five hundred per cent. Across the bottom of the circular the question is asked: "Which needs reforming-Business or Government?"