Random Editorial Ramblings

By Jack Dionne

Where competition lags, everyone suffers. Some men, looking thbough the wrong end of the business telescope, become imbued with the idea that pro{it-making must hinge upon the elimination or evasion-of competition. Nothing was ever farther from the truth, and I base that opinion on close observation of business, and upon the opinions of successful men in many lines of business. And this statement particularly applies to the retail lumber business. I have seen many towns where competition was chloroformed-and you would recognize such towns by merely riding through them. Kill competition, and initiative ceases, service succumbs, enthusiasm wanes, creative merchandising disappears. I pity the people who live in such tciwns, for the buildings will plainly show the lack of competitive, creative, enthusiastic, idea-giving merchdn; dising'*,r<**+

Get a price. Sure ! Make a good profit. Don't cut your own or your neighbors throat to get business, ever. But don't ever get off your business toes. Do the building thinking for yodr community. Play the same part in their building affairs, that the tailor, the haberdasher, the clothing, the dry goods merchants play with regard to the affairs of dress. Keep your business alive with new ideas, and by so doing, keep your town alive. Get out, get busy, think eternally about your business and how you can make it more useful to mankind, create something, advdrtise, merchandise, serv+and do more and more of it all the time. Don't be a wood yard man. Sell ideaq not boards; functions, not planks; buildings, not raw materials ! "He profits most who serves best." Ifse your brains, or they will atrophy.

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"A prophet is not without honor save in his own country," says the Scripture. Probably no saying of The Book has been more generally used, or more thoroughly believed -and proven. This thought is so frequently coupled with the thought of Southern Gum lumber. There is more figured Gum trim in use in the City of Los Angeles than in all the Southern states-where this lumber is producedcombined. Thcre are more displays of Southern Gum in lumber yards and offices in California, than in all the rest of the country combined. You find it displayed, sold, and used, all over California.

The announcement of the Michigan-California Lumber Company that they have scientifically planned to make their timber supply for their mill perpetual, is fine lumber and timber news. The fact is that California could easily supply its present output of ALL lumber perpetually, if all manufacturers were as wise as this one. And it isn't a very serious or far-fetched assumption that California'WILL. To begin with, California has more merchantable standing timber in comparison to its production, than any other state. Its present stand of 284 billion feet, would last for over 142 years at present rate of cutting. And wisely handled, it may easily last always. More intelligent reforestation work is being done today in California than in any other state. California forests WILL, I feel entirely safe in saying, be perpetual. *****

The All-Year Club of Southern California estimates that the "tourist crop" is the second biggest income producer in Southern California, ranking close to oil in that respect. They figure that tourists bring to Southern California an average of $160,000,000 annually. *t<rF*t<

The lumber tides ebb and flow. I notice one westetrn wood shows a considerable loss in exports to Australia and New Zealand. Depressed report. Another wood reports considerable increase into those islands. Considerable elation. Again the same old lumber industry. What the lumber industry needs is to teach these Australians and New Zealandets to use more lumber. That's what it needs at home, likewise. :F**rkrk

"Vigorous lumber advertising campaign decided upon," reads a Washington report of National Lumber Manufacturers' Association activities. Good ! They are going at their money-spending in very intelligent-looking fashion. Their field men are intelligent, active, enthusiastic, capable. If their efforts at usefulness measure up to their possibilities, gteat work will be done in backing up the publicity, and THAT really, is the essence of the whole thing. Their slo. gan, "Make your wants known and a national man will help yotr," is splendid. There is a wonderful field of endeavor that has been long crying for laborers. There is work that could be done that would return the investment a hundred for one. f am sincerely hoping that the National Lumber Manufacturers' Association campaign shoots at a practical mark, and centers the bullseye.

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"Dependence upon new buildings for retail lumber prosperity is the bunk," said a live lumber merchant to me the other day. And I agree with him, as I have remarked several million times before. Pity the man whose business hopes rest upon the conttactors landing some new contracts. Truly, he is leaning against the Keeper of his Harem of Hopes. All over his district they NEED the things he has for sale. Perhaps not the lumber. You might pile it in their yards free, and they wouldn't recognize the need. But they need your lumber and other materials, properly and intelligently translated into the language of building improvements and conveniences and modernizations. Too far fetcheC? Yes, for wood yard men. But not for merchants.

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