Random Editorial Ramblings

By Jack Dionne

Recent remarks in this column concerning the lumber trade press, and the things that have happened to same, have brought a surprising lot of replies and comment. Enough to justify a few supplementary facts as illustrations of previous statements. For instance; before me is the current issue of a nationally known lumber journal (not one of our own). This journal has excellent circulation in one of the stoutest lumber consuming territo'ries in the whole country, where nany varieties of lumber meet compdtitively. Here is an inventory of its advertising, as taken from this issue:

Cement and l;ime, 30lo; Insurance, /2 of. LVo; Insulating materials, lZVo; lwber, 23/s; wooden shingles, 2/o; lumber and shingles, 2/s; rnetal materials, 6Vo; wholesale miscellaneous, ZVo;lurorrber and millwork, 4/o; millwotk, 6Vo; paint, 4/s; plywood and panels, 8/o; brick and tile, Ye of lflo. A few years ago that journal carried lumber and wooden shingle ads alone far in excess of its total advertising today. A lot of interesting deductions may be drawn from the above. Make your own.

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It's really a great game. I'd like to tell you more about it. For instance: A gentleman, speaking officially for a big industry, wrote a lumber journal protesting against copy appearing in advertising of a particular firm in that journal. He said the copy said the product of the advertiser was better than the product of his industry-and that it was not. That particular individual advertiser spends more money ev€ry year with that journal, than the entire protesting industry spends in ten. But they wanted the advertiser muzzled. And I have had a prospective advertiser write me and offer to spend $25 a month with me if I would cut a competitive ad out of my paper that was bringing me S160. And the offer was a serious one.

Every lumberman is interested in what's happening in the stock market. It doesn't matter whether or not he is playing the market, or ever wa;i, he is vitally interested. Every man in every legitimate line of business or industry is vitally, tragically int€rested in that same stock market. For it is the stock market and nothing else that has been raising havoc with building in this country of late. It doesn't matter what part of the country you live in, that statement rings and proves true.

About eighteen months ago the stock market began its meteoric risc, and the nation began sitting up and taking notice. The rapid rise in'stocks, the everywhere reports of big and quick profits, took hold of the popular imagination. The population, big and little, great and small, began falling into the ranks of speculators, playing the market on margin. It takes in the ice-man who comes to your back door, and the policeman on your corner. It includes the business man, the professional man, the industrial man, and a large percentage of the employes of all of them. It's a bug that bites hard and bites deep, and once he bites it's hard to get away from him. If you win, he's got you. If you lose, you're trying to get even, or too broke to be of any use to anyone.

Employers tell me they can tell in no time when their employes begin bucking the market. If they are winner they are cocky and independent. They don't care so much wtrether they hold their jobs in competent fashion, or not. If they are loser they are so worried they can't keep their minds on their work. At the end of eighteen months we find most of the pgople of the nation who have a hundred dollars or more loose, playing the market. They are not living normally, or buying normally. They are not building homes, or buying furniture, or even buying clothes normally. They are too busy playing the market. If they are winning they are waiting for the final killing before they do some investing. If they are loser they are playing for even before they take up their normal ways of living. If they are broke, they can't buy. The population has been largely divided into those three divisions. Even the automobile business is taking a dreadful whipping.

Just how we are going to get out of this gambling orgy and start getting our feet on the ground again, is strictly a matter of opinion, and one man's is about as good as another's. If the market had stayed up, we would nerrer have gone back to normal. The ranks of the gamblers would have been continually recruited by the success of their predecessors. The recession of recent weeks had to come. It isn't the law of economics. It's simply the law of gravity. What goes up comes down. The higher it goes the harder it falls. That's one law you can't beat.

When the people of this country finally decide that the stock exchanges were not created for the purpose of pouring easy and unearned money into the pockets of the poptrlation, and discover that they could as wisely and as well have permitted crap games every day on every office floor for the past few months-we'll start getting normal again.

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