THE CALIFOR}.IIA LUMBERMERCHANT

How Lrumber Lrooks

The National Lumber Manufacturers Association reported that lumber production for the week ended July 4 stood at I45 per cent of the average of the corresponding week for 1935-39, and shipments 167 per cent.

Production for the week totaled 216,219,000 feet, shipments 258,035,000 feet, and orders booked 257,674,00A l.eet.

Seattle, Washington, July 9,1942.:The weekly average of West Coast lumber production in June (4 weeks) was 176,608,000 board feet, or 91.1 per cent of estimated capacity, according to the 'West Coast Lumbermen's Association in its monthly survey of the industry. Orders averaged 208,425,W board feet; shipments, 198,760,000. Weekly averages for May were: Production, 180,023,000 board feet (91.4 per cent of the 1926-1929 average) ; orders, n1,695,W0 ; shipments, 199,191,000

25 weeks of. 1942, cumulative production, 4,265,271,W board feet;25 weeks, l94l-4,@6,925,ffi;25 weeks, 19403,339,010,0m. -

Orders f.or 25 weeks of 1942 break down as follows: rail, 3,924,537,Offi board feet; domestic cargo, 511,574,000; export, 52,624,O0O; local, 652,571,W.

The industry's unfilled order file stood at 1,067,213,000 board feet at the end of June; gross stocks, at 756,034,000.

Declaration of lumber as a critical material by War Production Board Chairman Donald M. Nelson, was the main event of the month in the West Coast lumber industry. lVIr. Nelson's statement said :

"Lumber from every region in the United States is an important and critical material in our whole war program . . . The production of war materials such as lumber from the woods and copper from the mines is just as important in preparations for defeat of the Axis as is the production of finished war items made from such material. Indeed, without the raw materials the finished products cannot be made."

While war requirements for West Coast lumber remain unchanged, the WPB declaration puts the industry in the front rank of industrial war production.

The more permanent feature coming into the war jOb of West Coast lumber is the diversity of industrial items now requiring wood. The industry is still furnishing construction lumber in large volume for building of all types. The West Coast is being called on increasingly for airplane lumber-f)ouglas fir, West Coast hemlock, Noble fir and Port Orford cedar, as well as Sitka spruce. More and more boat lumber is wanted, and the Army has announced that275,ffi tons of steel will be saved by making truck bodies of wood. Other important similar spotlight wood as a universal war material.

The Western Pine Association for the week ended Joly 4, 91 mills reporting, gave orders as 80,3t9,000 feet, shipments 76,n/W feet, and production 74,560,000 feet. Orders on hand at the end of the week totaled 465,782,W f.eet.

The Southern Pine Association for the week ended July 4, 96mills reporting, gave orders as26,66l,NO feet, shipments 26,848,W feet, and production 23,493,W Leet. Orders on hand at the end of the week totaled 144.753.000 feet.

The West Coast Lumbermen's ended June 27 reported orders as 157,509,000 feet, and .production

Association for the week 142,446W feet, shipments 130,754,000 feet.

The California Redwood Association reported production of eleven operations for the month of May as 37,397,000 feet, shipments 41,2O5,W0 feet, and orders received 39,445,W feet. Orders on hand at the end of the month totaled 64,152,0ffi feet.

Egtimatcd Wood Box Needs for Ordnancs Reach New High

Requirements of lumber for wood boxes for ordnance field service equipment will exceed four billion board feet this year, according to a War Department estimate. This is the highest estimate yet of lumber needs for ordnance alone. It is figured that 75,000,000 pounds of nails will be needed to make the boxes and 1,500,000,000 feet of steel bands and wire will be used to brace them.

This is in spite of the fact that the Service of Supply has devised many ways to reduce bulk in packaging the thousands of items that must be shipped overseas. An overall saving in cargo space approximating 1O per cent is predicted, while space saving in individual items runs as high as 60 per cent. This saving is tantamount to additional ships in the life line.

For instance, clothing, formerly packed in fibre and wood cases, is now compression baled, saving 35 per cent of the space. Shovels, formerly shipped in wood crates, are now strapped together with wire. Space saved: 2O per cent. Field range stoves, formerly shipped in double crates, are now shipped in single crates, saving 7 per cent of the space. Six garbage cans, formerly shipped in individual crates, are no\M nested in a single, lighter crate taking 40 per cent of the space. Machine guns are packed two to a box instead of singly, thus saving 35 per cent of space.

The Office of the Chief of Ordnance has been conducting a training course at the Forest Products Laboratory to instruct chief inspectors and inspectors in the new methods. A manual gives the most detailed instructions to private manufacturers on packing miscellaneous items, telling them the types of box, nails, and wire found best, construc' tion details. and so on.

Arthur Griswold Goet to Louisiana

Arthur B. Griswold, manager of the San Francisco office of the C. D. Johnson Lur.nber Comporation, recently resigned his position and has left for Louisiana, where he will make his home at Lewisburs, on Lake Pontchartrain.

He was 19 years with this concern, and is widely known throughout California. He has not announced his plans for the future, but says that when the lumber business gets back to normal he will probably represent the C. D. Johnson Lumber Corporation in the Southwest.

A. R. (Bob) McCullough, who has been with the firm for the past several years as salesman out of the San Francisco office, will succeed Mr. Griswold as manager.

Products Exempted From Inventory

Limitat:on Order L-63

Exemption Order No. 5 exempts the following products from Inventory Limitation Order L-63: Portland and natural cement, lime, gypsum and gypsum products, bituminous roofing materials, concrete pipe, cut stone, sand and gfavel, crushed stone, clay products, insulation board, acoustical materials, mineral wool, paving materials, concrete products, glass, lumber and wooden millwork.

Pine Plywood

Soft, even textured prne and modern plywood construction. Easy to work and linish. Pcrints, enamels crnd lccquers cover economicclly with level, smooth surIaces oI lcrsting becuty.

THE CALIF"ORNIA

Lumber Merchant

was twenty years old this month. The first issue was July first, 1922. Twenty years. All values, of course, are relative. Twenty years in the life of a Redwood tree is nothing. But twenty years in the lifetime of a publication is quite a spell, and covers a plenitude of human and industrial events.

r{ere's how it n nn"rr"a*. :L. porter invited me to speak to the annual convention of the Western Retail Lumbermen's Association, which was held that time in Fresno. A goodly crowd was there. They made an awful hit with me. Never saw a liver, more enthusiastic, more friendln more progressive bunch of men anywhere, in any industry.

***

California had no lumber journal. Long before that time Guy Buell published a lumber magazine in San Francisco, but Buell and his paper were both gone. And one of the livest lumber territories on earthand one just getting ready for a great building boom-had no lumber magazine nearer than Portland, and no retail lumber magazine nearer than Kansas City and Houston. It looked like a spot. ***

I began asking-"What do you folks think of a live merchandising lumber journal here in California?,,-and boy, what a comeback I got from everyone I talked to. I put it up to a lot of the leaders, and their enthusiasm did the trick. In the words of Red Skeltonwho had scarcely been born at that time-I said, "I dood it !"

I talked to all classes of building material folks all over' California, Fir, Pine, Redwood, manufacturers, wholesalers of all sorts and sizes, millwork and shingle folks, and they all thought this an ideal spot for a lumber journal., So the thing happened in a hurry. We opened offices for publication in the old Fay Building in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles vyas just entering its great building boom. I flatter myself that I saw it coming. We got started with the tide. The next thing we knew the whole world was rushing in trying to sell building materials in the booming city of Los Angeles, and territory. The Merchant was caught by the high tide. In a year's time it was one of the biggest lumber journals in the entire country. There. was a great element of luck in that, of course. California quickly filled up with building material distributors, and they tiked to advertise. We let'em. rF** ft was a cinch to meet th" t"-O* folks of California face to face in those days, so thoroughly was the State, and each department of the industry, organized. There was a Northern retail association, and one in the Soutfi, and there were retail associations and clubs covering each separate district of the State, all of which met frequently. The California White & Sugar Pine Association was still in existence with offices in San Francisco and C. Stowell Smith as secretary, and the California Redwood Association was run by Dick Hammatt. There was a wholesale association in San Francisco. There was a pacific Coast hardwood distributors' association, and local associations in Los Angeles and San Francisco. A visitor going the rounds could attend lumber meetings almost every day in the year. tt*{.

The first issue of THE CALIFORNIA LUMBER MERCHANT contained 52 pages, of which 20 pages were paid advertisements. There were 33 advertisers. Of that number, 18 are no longer in business, while others stitl exist in changed form. Of the advertisers that appeared in that first issue there are ten who still advertise with us, and there are two, both San Franciscans, who have been in our advertising columns continuously from that day to this; the Santa Fe Lumber Company, and WendlingNathan Company.

Our first managing editor was a grand guy, Shad Krantz, an old Portland newspaper man who went to Seattle as advertising manager for the West Coast Lumbermen's Association, and then came to California with me. He lived less than a year after reaching California. Ed Martin took the San Farncisco territory. Curtis Merryman handled the advertising. That was the gang that started the journal.

And then there was Hoo-Hoo. I shall never forget the splendid organization work Hoo-Hoo did in California in those days. The State was divided into Hoo-Hoo groups' and they were not only very active, but their work was attractive and interesting, and without the horseplay that killed the order in most of the country. For instance, nothing I ever attended in my life impressed me more with its dignity and usefulness than Hoo-Hoo meetings in the city of San Diego. Every officer knew his part of the ritual by heart, and recited it like a Shakespearean professional. They were swell meetings, and there were plenty of others I attended in other California cities that made me take off my hat. Surely Hoo-Hoo was the playground of the lumber industry in California in those days, and served the industry well. The biggest and best lumbermen in each district took active part in the Hoo-Hoo clubs and work. Charlie LeMaster was Supreme Arcanoper the year The Merchant started. Dick Hiscox and Frank Trower, of San Francisco, were wheelhorses in the order, and their names were names to conjure with. A Hoo-Hoo meeting of two hundred men was nothing unusual in San Francisco, Los Angeles or Oakland in those days. There were swell programs, and fine fellowship. I am sure that Hoo-Hoo found its highest level, at that time in California.

There were scores of big, grand men in the lumber industry in California in those days. I am tempted to start naming them, but my memory couldn't possibly cover the territory. Parso)r Peter A. Simpkin lived in California then, and entertained and enthused the lumbermen with his eloquence. When will there be another like him? I still remember H. P. Dixon of Los Angeles, when he was president of the Millwork Institute, as the cleverest chairman of a lumber or building convention I ever saw in action. There were a lot of keen minds and stout and lingering personalities in that Millwork Institute. Most of them I have in mind are long since gone the way of all fesh. Also in 1922 the State of California tried to outlaw wooden shingle roofs and the lurnber industry organized on a state-wide basis with Gus Russell of San Francisco, as chairman, and in the Novernber elections they voted down that threat. Peter B. Kyne, then in the zenith of his writing career, made speeches for shingles, as did many others of note.

*{.*

An interesting gentleman named. Henry Riddiford was secretary of the Los Angeles Lumbermen's Exchange at that time, and handed out lumber statistics for Southern California territory. Fred Conner was a popular retail lumberman in Sacramento, and his wife was beginning her career as a lumber poetess. She wrote for the first issue of The Merchant, and saluted it again the other day on its

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