New Markets Taking Fir Pressure From California

By Jack Dionne

A change of great importance to the Fir industry as a whole, and to the lumber industry of California in particular, has been taking place during the past few months, one that the lumberman of the California territory has been unaware of, but will do well to reckon with, namely, the opening of great new consuming territories to Douglas Fir that have already begun to.lighten the Fir pressure on this territory, and that will unquestionably do so more and more as the Fir invasion of Southern, Southwestern, Middle 'Western, and Middle Eastern territories takes on impetus and volume.

For the past five successive years California har been the actual mainstay of the Northwestern lumber situation. Now and then you will hear a Northwestern mill man refer to California as the Fir "dumping ground," but there is none so unwise as not to know and appreciate what a blessing undisguised this so-called "dumping-ground" has been.

As is always the case under such circumstances, good horses get overloaded at times when they show an eternal readiness to pull, and numerous times during the past five years the mills of the North, finding no demand elsewhere, dump too much lumber in California, and by so doing break their own market and are forced to sell.at unreasonably low prices. But California is not to blame for this. The only folks to blame are those weak selling Northwestern mills who understand n9 method of merchandising except to turn their lumber loose and hope for the best. California buys the lumber, pays the price asked for it, and consumes it. That's about all that could be asked.

But there are nrunerous indications and demonstrations of a new order of things. Rich lumber consuming territories that have long used Southern Pine for their general building material, have turned to Fir for a large supply, and during the past several months these territories have been opening wide like a lady's fan, to the sales efforts of the Fir folks. Last spring rate reductions on F'ir to many points in the South, Southwest, and Middle West, helped the Fir men in their market widening efiorts, and since that time they have been selling in constantly increased volume into new territories.

A big Fir producer in Oregon said to me a couple of weeks ago: "Things have changed so fast we can hardly keep up with them. We have been selling most of our lumber in California and on the eastern seaboard. Today we are selling twenty states that we have never sold before, and that business is increasing of its own volition apparently."

The shipping reports frorn the Northwest show that with every month that passes shipments are increasing with a rush into Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, and even Arkansas. And it is big volume, not small, and going into a market that builds twelve months in the year. .And many of the Middte Western, and Southern, and Eastern states, are buying faster every month. Tllat Fir is suddenly and really unexpectedly intering tremendops new territories and finding wonderful new markets, is the event of the season in western lumbep. The fact that a Fir inspection bureau is being planned right now for Southwestern territory, shows the volume of business.

And with this great diversion of demand, taking lumber away that would otherwise be simply loaded and shipped into California, there will undoubtedly come a definite change in California lumber conditions. If the,Northwestern mills were overproducing, it might not be felt so rapidly, but for the first seven months this year the great Fir production has failed to equal sales and shipments, and the demand is getting better, rather than weaker.

The mills that can do so are trndoubtedly going to divert all the lumber possible into territories that ofrer the most inducement, and the new territories are doing that right now. The strictly water shipping mills will not divert their stock, of course, but their tendency to overload California and cut the price to the quick will grow less evident as pressure into this territory decreases.

While lumber always has its ups and downs, and always will have, it is a safe prediction that the rapid territorial expansion of Fir is going to change the nature of competition down here for all time to come.