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is my conviction that a whole lot more lumber has been USED during the past sixty days-natio,nally speakinithan has been BOUGHT. Looking into the future with some doubts and misgivings it has been the tendency of lumber users everywhere to dig into their inventories, reduce their stocks, and wait for some developments before doing much lumber buying.

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This seemed to be particularly true of many of the lumber consuming industries of the North and East, as well of the retail lumber end of the industry. In my judgment lumber stocks are much lower than they were the first of June, and that as fall opens up there will be brisk lumber buying in most all normal localities.

I think it was the fear of labor trouble, and fear of what Congress might do, that caused most of the summer lumber slurnp. With conditions running all the way from fair to fine all over the country, there should be a very definite improvement in the demand for all sorts of lumber, softwood and hardwood of all kinds. I believe there will be, and that it is about due to start.

**d<

The revival in national horne building-in spite of the fact that a lot of homes have been built in the past eighteen months-is no more than well started. Increased cost of building has had a cooling effect most everywhere, and has undoubtedly cut down the building permits considerably, but this was to be expected. But we still need millions of modern homes in this country, and we are going to get them.

Residential construction will be the hope of the lumber industry for the next two years, and perhaps longer. The new home and the home improvement reservoirs of need, built up over a long series of short building years, has been scarcely touch€d. {<

The lumber industry itself can put a giant lever under the home building industry by intelligent merchandising. Showing and teaching people how to use better lumber, is one thing; teaching and showing them how to use lumber better, is another. There are millions o'f habitations in this country that could and would be amazingly improved in the next year, if those who own them could be shown the possibilities. Just boards and dimensions won't make any one buy. It is what lumber and lumber products can be made to do, that will excite the human appetite to the wood-buying point.

Physical improvements in making and seasoning lumber (Continued on Page 8)

(Continued from Page 7) and preparing it for market have come apace in the past few years. There ARE many new things under the lumber making sun, and don't you doubt it. This is particularly true with regard to the seasoning of hardwoods. Every lumberman and lumber consumer knows that the seasoning proposition has been the biggest thing the hardwood industry has had to work out. At first it was a slow process. But they have learned. *r<T

It was just a few short years ago when few men would have conceded that kiln-drying hardwood lumber green from the saw uras within the realms of practical possibility. Yet today tremendous quantities of the most difficult of hardwoods are being artificially dried right from the saw, and with thorough success. The ordinary method of drying commercial hardu'ood lumber even yet is to pile it carefully out in the air for a certain number of mohths, and then taking it to the kilns. But the greatest lumber drying authority in the world tells us that he believes hardwoods dried green from the saws are comparable in every possible vvay to those air dried wholly or in part.

He goes farther than that, and declares that with the proper sort of kilns and kiln methods, concerns drying hardwoods green from the saws are enabled to overcome many other handicaps and still take a dominant place in the markets with their goods. Both in the West and South there are now a number of outstanding concerns that are kiln drying their green hardwoods, and my informant believes that their number will grow faster in the next few years than any other department of the lumber business.

May I digress here to ask a question? It is one that nobody can answer, but I'll ask it just to give you something to think about. There is quite a lot of hardwood lumber now being manufactured in Washington and Oregon, the principal species of commercial value being Maple and Alder. Will somebody kindly tell me why these Western States produce softwoods so much larger than the softwoods of the South and North, yet produce hardwoods so much smaller than do those districts? They do. But why? Looks like the same land that breathed the breath of life into the enormous Firs, and Pines, and Cedars, and Redwoods of the West would also create large hardwoods. But they don't.

As this is written there is serious labor trouble in the milling districts of the Pacific Northwest again. In fact they have hardly been without serious labor troubles up there fo,r the past five years. Today the trouble is between the C. I. O. and A. F. of L. for supremacy in organizing and controlling the sawmill labor. The mills are innocent bystanders caught between the two grinding wheels of the labor organizations. Just at a time when the mills should be doing their best cutting of the season, and the camps the best logging, labor troubles close them down.

In some cases a mill finds itself with three labor organization groups contending for their men at o,ne time, the 4 L being the third organization. Two sets of pickets have become common. Three is not unusual. Poor industry ! **d.

Is it any wonder that so few new business enterprises are being started anywhere? What with labor trouble and taxes, who wants to be in business these days?