United States Gypsum Company

3OO ITEST ADAMS ST.

PLASTERS ROCI(LA'T'HT MTTAL LATH

SHEETROCKI. FIBER WALLBOARD.. SHEATH.

ING.. INSI'LATING BOARD.. INSULATING WOOL

ACOI'STICAL MATERIALS. PAINT PRODUCTS

STEEL PRODUCTS ROOFING PRODUCTS

SIDING PRODUCTS LIME PRODU TS. tR.sittacdt/ada@hs

CHICAGO. IIJINOIS

People easiest to sell are hardest to collect from.

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"The gods," said an old philosopher, "are powerless against stupidity."

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And then there was the American who was fighting in one of the armies in Spain, who wrote his shrew of a wife at home: "Don't write me no more nagging letters. f'm three thousand miles away and I want to enjoy this war in peace,"

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Repetition of worth-while things is never boresome. A colored preacher was asked the secret of his amazing influence with the members of his race and flock, and he explained: "Fust, Ah tells 'em what Ah's goin' to tell 'em. Then Ah tells 'em. An' then Ah tells 'em what Ahse done tole 'em."

***

A dealer writes that he read those recent paint editorials, and sticking a paint color card in his pocket went out and sold a paint job to the first prospect he called on. That tickled me. I doubt seriously if there is a dealer anywhere who cannot go out and sell at least one paint, repair, or remodel job every day. Not now and then by accident, but every day. And he doesn't have to sharpen his pencil to sign those sort of orders, either.

***

The National Association of Real Estate Boards finds that 71% of suburban areas report having an under supply of single family dwellings, and 47 7o have a shortage of apartments. For the entire nation, big and small cities included, an under supply of single family dwellings is reported in 4l% of the cases, and a shortage of apartments in 29%.

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The world do change ! We used to worry a lot in the lumber industry about automobile competition. We had the idea that the more cars the auto man sold, the fewer houses and other buildings we wotrld sell. Now we pray for the automobile industry to swing into high gear to help create a condition of national prosperity which will in turn create a demand for buildings. No automobile prosperity-no buildine prosperity !

All seasons may not be ideal seasons for building, but they ARE for building planning. The return of bountiful prosperity, when it comes, should find the lumber industry enriched with new ideas, new services, new ways of using its products, that will ring loud on the cash register. Slack times should be planning times.

Every retailer should look his own place of business over, and say to himself : "This yard of mine is the show window by which my business and my industry will be judged by the public." *** t*t€ t!F*

The story goes that a lumber dealer who was having a lot of trouble with mail order competition in home selling, got his nephew to write the mail order competition and ask for his catalogue, so that they could find out what was being offered. The catalogue came. Then a follow-up with a sales proposition. Then an offer of financial help. Then a sales representative. The next thing the retailer knew HIS NEPHEW HAD BOUGHT A HOUSE FROM THE MAIL ORDER MAN.

A philosopher tells about the Seven Little Troubles that came marching down ttre street. They met a policeman, who asked where they were going. "We're going where we are expected," said the Seven Little Troubles. Troubles always do, you know. There never was a trouble that was "all dressed up and nowhere to go."

The National rax *"":"r; lo--i,,"" says that they estimate that the ratio of total taxes to national income in 1938 will be 28 per cent. More than one-fourth of the entire national income this year will be collected by the 'ax-collectors to pay the cost of Government. In 1929 the ratio of taxes to national income was 12 per cent. It l'as doubled in nine years.

This is easy to understand when we see some of the available figures. In July this year the social security board in Washington estimated that 20,800,000 persons recelved public assistance of some type. This includes relief workers, recipients of social security aid and bene- ficiaries of local government bounties, as well as Federal payments. It does not include payinents for thousands of farmers for complying with Federal farm programs. So you see that one out of every six persons in this country today is supported by the other five, and that does not include millions of employees of national and state governments.

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Most of us have read with awe and wonderment Daniel Webster's salute to the fag, and marveled at his mighty eloquence. Such a man would seem necessarily far-sighted. Yet that same gallant Webster made a speech in the United States Senate in October 1852, when it was proposed that the Federal government aid the Union Pacific to buitd through to the Pacific Coast. Here is what he said about the Great West: "What do we want with this vast, worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts and shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the Western Coast of 3,000 miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to bring the Pacific Ocean one inch nearer to Boston than it now is." And that was just 86 years ago.

8**

In 86 years that land which Webster so strongly condemned, has become one of God's great masterpieces. Mighty ports dot the entire three thousand miles of coast, connecting the west with the world by water. The deserts have been made to bloom and to give the world of its bounty, lavishly affording to mankind a multitude of precious products. The snow that covers the mighty mountains has furnished the hydroelectric power that has transformed the west, furnishing unlimited light, power, irrigation, water, making it possible for man to redeem millions of acres of soil whose products now astound the world. Yes, from Coronado's Silvery Strand to that great land "where rolls the Oregon," as Bryant so deathlessly put it, there is ample evidence that Daniel Webster may have been a great American and a great orator, but he was no great shakes as a prophet.