Northwestern Observations-No. 2

By JACK DIONNE

Portland, Oregon.-I said in myfirst rePort from here this summer that things in the Northwestern lumber industry were in better condition than they had ever been before. Some of my friends up here expressed surprise at ttat statement.

But, after more traveling' listening, looking, questioning, and devining, I have come much more firmly to that conclusion than I was in the first place.

Because it looks to me like for the first time since they cut their first commercial log many years ago, the yeast of organized consciousness is working in the lumber industry of the Northwest. I don't know just what these folks THINK they have beeq doing and thinking for the last generation, but it looks to an unbiased student as though these folks are right now taking the first intelligent iqterest in their industry and its future, that they have ever demonstrated.

They have ALWAYS had a PERSONAL interest, each man and each firm in his own affairs. But it seems to me that they have finally discovered for the first time, what INTELLIGENT SELF INTEREST means. It means that they have discovered that "a house divided within itself cannot stand." It means that they have discovered that only by concerted, co-ordinated, co-operative INTEREST in their business, can they solve its problems.

Since I sat in that meeting at Tacoma and listened to those men get right down and talk business about their business, and from my contact with many of those men personally since that meeting, the conclusion that a great change is coming over the lumber industry of the Northwest has been most forcefully impressed upon me.

Many, many mill men, who uP to Practically this hour have conducted their affairs in such a way and manner as to demonstrate their belief that the lumber industry was in the hands of Providence and could do nothing to create and carve its own way in the world, are now enthusiasticatly declaring in favor of organized and co-ordinated activities to put their lumber before the world in an intelligent and creative fashion.

Everywhere I have been, among all the men I have talked to, I find for the first time the general thought that lumber prosperity IS man-made, and not God-made, and that something MUST be done.

And their conclusions run to various interesting ways of helping things along. Co-operative merchandising, cooperative trade extension, co-ordinated advertising' more intelligent irlvestigation of new markets, better preparation of lumber for market, less dumping of stocks into certain markets, moie interest in the other fellow and his problems, and more of the spirit of give and take.

I found this spirit everywhere. It is what the lumber industry of the Northwest has long lacked and much needed. It augurs well for the future up here, and means much to the lumber industry as a whole. ****

According to the best figures obtainable, covering a majority of the Fir Production of the Northwest, the average mill price of Fir for the first six months of. 1926 was just 6 cents per thousand higher than, when that term started.

Yet during that six months sales and shipments of lumber had exceeded production to a very considerable extent.

Which, to the men who are asserting that curtailment is NOT the answer to the Northwestern lumber problem, is proof of their claims. "\11/'e are selling more than we are cutting, so it isn't curtailment that this business needs, it is co-operation and better merchandising."

So there You are'

There have been lots of mill fires in the Northwest this summer, and many of them undoubtedly incendiary. In Everett, Wash., and vicinity, ihere have been many fires undoubtedly of incendiary origin, and the mills are working heavy watching crews to defend*their *proPerties.

Everywhere I go there is one subject being freely discussed, one that I mentioned freely last issue. To dry or not to dry lumber, and how, and what. That's the subject.

Talked to Russell Bordeaux the other day. He is one of the Mumby Lumber & Shingle Company owners, and active manager. He just returned from a trip through the Middle West and Southwest. He told me he had returned convinced that shipping unseasoned Fir intothat climate was entirely unwise, and that his congern would dry their lumber for that territory in the future, entirely.

By the way, he tells me that Mumby was, the first con-

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