Vagabond Editorials

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We're all going to have to do a lot of things in our business in the next year that we won't particularly like, but we're going to have them'to do whether we like them or not. So why not make the best of it, and see how much zest we can put into it, and how much fun we can get out of it? For life, through the bitter and the sweet, is packed with things of interest and of joy. We only make difficult situations more difficult by taking them too seriously. ***

Once during the Civil War Secretary Stanton violently disagreed with President Lincoln over a matter of policy. When informed of Lincolds opinion Stanton blurted out"Lincoln's a damn fool t" The word was carried back to Lincoln. The President grinned. "That's bad," he remarked, "for I find that Stanton is nearly always right in his opinions."

A most interesting development of renewed lumber activity in the Southwest, is a labor shortage. Men are scarcely to be found in East Texas and \Vestern Louisiana. Cotton picking reports a labor shortage, also. At the same time our cities are still feeding thousands of unemployed. One of the most difficult jobs that the reconstruction days that follow the depression will encounter is getting the unemployable people off the charity lists. For the jobless can well be divided into two classes: the unemployed who cannot find work; and the unemployable, who are never going to work again if they can help it. We have a large percentage of the latter on every charity roll. To weed them out and get rid of them is no small job. It will require little short of dynamite to get a lot of them off the charity list.

Another novel thing that has come to us is a car shortage. The reason is simple. The railroads, with no tonnage to haul, have let their freight cars go into disrepair and bad order to a degree never before known. All of a sudden car loadings revive, and the railroads find themselves suddenly confronted with a rising tide of business, and insufficient cars in good order to handle it. Result, a wild rush to get cars back into condition, and operation. The most insistent demand the mills have had of late is for car repair materials. ***

I know a retail lumberman whom fear made a lot of money for recently. The closing of the banks last spring scared him within an inch of a fit. When the banks reopened he found his money intact, but his scare stayed, also. Se he went out and blindly bought lumber. He filled his sheds and his yards to capacity, blindly reasoning that nothing could happen to his lumber that would scare him like he had just been scared. He not only put all his available cash into lumber, but he borrowed some money and used that the same way. Result, he's got the biggest stock of lumber he ever had in his life with an inventory profit right now of at least ten dollars a thousand. It was fearnot wisdom-that did it. ***

I had a notion that the Southern cotton producer with advancing cotton prices holding possible promise of a golden reward at the end of the harvest season, might combat the idea of plowing under a certain part of his crop as the Government demanded. Did he? He did notl He turned out to be a better business man than many of us gave him credit for. He didn't say-"How little can I plow under?" He asked-"How much?" Cash on the barrel head in Uncle Sam's money. No boll-weavil, no drouth, no storm, no market crash can hurt the man who made his contract with the Government and plowed his cotton under. The old theory of "a bird in the hand" stood stout as Stonewall Jackson.

California Lumber Cut Decreases 27 Per Cent

The lumber cut of California for the year 1932 was 694,521,000 board feet, according to preliminary report of the California Forest Experiment Station of the United States Forest Servi'ce based on returns from a lumber census conducted for the Bureau of the Census. This total is 27.6 per cent less than the cut in 1931, and 54.2 per cent below the 1930 cut.

The lumber cut of the pine region mills, mainly in the Sierra Nevada, was 509,149,000 feet, or 25.6 per cent less ' than in 1931 and 50.3 per ,cent under the 193O cut. The redwood region mills along the Pacific Coast produced I84,447W feet, or 32.6 per cent less than in 1931, and 62.3 per cent under the 1930 cut.

Ponderosa pine led all species in lumber production with 385,406,000 feet, or 55.7 per cent of the total State cut. Redwood was second with 135,647,000 feet, or 19.6 per cent, and Douglas fir third with 77,826,000 feet, or ll.2 per cent.

Sugar pine, white fir, cedar and spruce were other important lumber species. In addition to lumber, the report shows a production of 9,393,000 lath and 17,002,000 shingles. The latter are mainly redwood.

The above lumber figures are based on the annual production of all mills in the State cutting 50,000 board feet or over, together with 38 smaller mills.