Retail Plan Service Badly Needed In Pacific Northwest

BY JACK

Do you know where they misuse lumber and shingles more criminally-as to architecture, painting, and building service-than they do anywhere else on earth?

That place is right where lumber and shingles are produced : the towns and cities of the Pacific Northwest. Nowhere in the United States today is so little help given to t,he builder along the line of building plans, building se.vice, building ideas, building architecture, as in that great territory of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.

The., reason simply is that in most of those towns ancl cities there are saw and shingle mills operating, and the greater share of the building business-in many towns IOO/o ol it-is done by the mrills themselves. They have their retail departments, so-called, and they sell lumber and shingles to those who come to buy.

But they have NOT arrived at the point of putting in genuine retail departments that study the building game, and furnish building IDEAS and SERVICE, al'ong with their materials.

The resultr is that the man who builds enough of a home to employ an architect, builds very attractively, but the fellow who doesn't, simply turns board,s and shingles into SHELTER-and most unprepossessing shelter it is.

\A'ith no ,building assistance the small hom,e is just four walls, with doors for openings, and windows for light and ventilation, without any skillful advice or assistance in the securing or the placing of those do'ors and windows, the arran,gement of the ventilation, or any idea of building with modern home ideas to create beauty, attractiveness, comfort, convenience-all the things that make a moderu small home worth while.

The small home owner in most of the Pacific Northwest has not been educated and assisted in knowing that it costs no more to build a REAL HOME of sm,all size, than it does to build an U'GLY SHELTER.

I don't know of any greater service that the millmen of

Dionne

the Northwest who operate retail departments in their local towns could give the people of those towns today, than by bringing their retail departments up to date, and selling building icleas along with their boards and shingles. What it would mean to those towns in a couple of years time by improving the homes of the men od snrall means, no words can tell ; what blessings it would bring to the women of the Northwest who have to live in those homes, would be immeasureable.

You can go to Vancout'er, New Westminster, Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, Aberdeen, Tacoma, Hoquiam', Willapa Harbor, Portland, and dozens of other well known nrill towns ancl cities in that territory, and the same great need is seen everywhere.

The man without a plan buys his boards and shingles and builds a shelter for his family. He buys unsightly stock windows, and doors, and sticks them in unsightly places in the structure, and as you pass by those crosseyed planless houses give you the shivers. And they either leave them, unpainted or daub them with sad look-