The Preservation Of Principal Was Never More Important Than NOW -

For that rcalon more and more investon are turning to com. petent inve.6ent counrel. They eppreciate the advantage of rn unbiarcd rource of guidance which truly r'Reprecentr the Buyer.tt

Br.oo&mire har enjoyed a preeminent plece in the feld of econonic and fnanciel counrel. Itr 3O yearr of uninterrupted rerv. icc her enrbled it to go far beyond the ordinary *market analy. rirtt in neting recommendationr. Our cafi ir conctandy et york on the prerent and future problemr of induatry.

Such a rerwice can be valuable to you. \9rite today for a dercrip. tion with latcrt reportr on tte investment and burinecg oudoot.

Address Department CLM BJ trol of maximum houis and minimum wages. Therefore on the mattbr of the labor provisions of our code we say by all means preserve them no matter what else you preserve.

Article VIII of our Code has to do with control of production. I need not recite the statistical facts whi,ch made it seem to the industry at the time of the adoption of the Code that control of production was necessary. The installed capacity in the tumber business was so entirely out of proportion to what might reasonably be predicted as a normal demond that it seemed imperative that we adopt measures that would tend to balance production with consumption; limit the baleful effects of the piling up of inventories which could be sold only at ruinous prices and thus make possible the maintenance of fair price levels. The proposed increases in hourly rates of wages taken in connection with the provisions as to maximum hours of labor made it certain that the costs of producing lumber in all regions would be radically advanced. Unquestionably the failure to maintain in the past a decent level of prices and the violent fluctuations which took place in those levels, were mainly due to overproduction. Aside from the fact that at the inception of the Code inventories were somewhat too high, control of production, if it had been administered in accordance with the dictates of the Code, would have been an almost perfect remedy for all of the evils which had prevented the maintenance of fair prices. If we had started with inventories which bore the proper relationship to- current use the proper application of the provisions of Article VIII would certainly have prevented any condition that would have made price dutting either necessary or attractive. What the industry itself has done in the administration of Article VIII is now a matter of history. We cannot go back and correct the past mistakes or the efiects of them. The fact of the matier is, however, that we did agree upon and were permitted a weapon, if it may be called that, which would substantially have cured most of the evils in our industry and permitted us to pay the increased wages upon which we agreed. That this weapon has not been properly used is not the fault of the NRA or of anyone but ourselves. Our motives in fixing production quotas larger, not only than what consumption turned out to be, but larger than any considered thought should have predicted them to be, were largely to give labor more hours of employment. That was a laudable motive, but we should have considered that failure to get the best results from Article VIII would, in the long run, be as bad for labor as for ourselves. While control of production of itself probably cannot, Ior the reason that we have permitted inventories to be unduly increased, be for several months wholly effective to accomplish the purposes fot which it was adopted, nevertheless to throw overboard control of production, and thus further aggravate inventory conditions which make the maintenance of a remunerative price so difficult, would in our judgment be a mistake

It is, however, our belief that neither wisdom nor necessity calls for a continuance of production control beyond the period of the present emergency. Furthermore, production control in order to be either fair or effective must be carefully administered, with due regard to the right of individuals to retain, generally speaking, that place in the industry which they demonstrated belongs to them.

Article X and the amendments to the Code which have been madb pursuant thereto should be retained permanently, The principles of forest management and conservation which are embodied in these amendments and the rules which have been drawn to carrv them out are not an undue burden upon the industry so tong ai they are enforced upon all alike. These principles and methodJ are those which many lumbermen would have liked to have put in force years ago. So great, however, has been the stress of com- stress petition, that it was wholly impracticable for individual operators to adopt these methods when their competitors did not. We think that the larse maioritv of the industrv not onlv recoqnize such that public responsibili large majority industry only recognize such ponsibilities as are involved. but are not averse to under- involved, undertaking reasonable measures which look to the perpetuation of their own industry.

The elimination of fixed minimum prices will make unnecessary and to some extent meaningless many of the present and proposed provisions of Schedule B. There are, however, portions of Schedule B and of the proposed amendments to it which are not concerned alone with price maintenance but which are valuable rules of fair practice. These should be retained.

What we desire to urge is the immediate elimination of fixed minimum prices, at least in the lumber divisions. We insist that this is necessary in the interest of fair play, fair competition, common honesty and moral integrity; that minimum prices are unworkable because of their basic economic unsoundness, because of the impossibility of stabilizing price relations between 'species and grades and still preserve the price fluidity which will permit free correlation with the ever changing current demand, and because of the impossibility of obtaining compliance through enforcement or otherwise; and more than all because we are sacrificing all that is good in our code, and all that is desirable in self government of our industry, by blindly striving to achieve that which economic laws and the character of our industry makes impossible of achievement.