Timber Conservation Board Advise Divisional LCA Reprerentatives

Lumber Stocks Should be Reduced Accorded NRA

Washington, D. C., Nov. 29.-In a report to the Secretary of Commerce which says that "complications" including "secret violations" of established minimum cost-protection prices, in the lumber industry have been "constantly aggravated by excessive stocks and continuing over-protection", the Lumber Survey Committee of the U. S. Timber Conservation Board recor-nmends that stocks on hand at the mills be reduced 1,400,000,000 feet. The recommendation is based on stocks on hand at the mills as of October l,1934, which totalled 8,352,0m,000 feet, as against 7,693,000,000, October 1, 1933. Consumption has increased only 2 per cent in 1934 over 1933.

The report declares that the lumber industry "should be a large beneficiary of increased public and private a'ctivity in housing, repair, remodeling and construction," but adds that the participation of the lumber industry in the national housing promotion has been "generally inconspicuous and inadequate." "Non-compliance with code provisions," it asserts, "would have been much less acute had the slackening of demand and the continued over-production in some regions not forced an unusually sharp competition."

Need of Stimulating Consumption

Pointing 'out that the industry is continuing to lose markets in some directions, although gaining in others, the Committee states that "the importance of code organiza' tion, compliahce and enforcement should not obscure the urgency of 'stimulating lumber demand and consumption."

' Calling attention to the fact that average wholesale lumber prices as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are at only 82.3 per cent of 1926 levels, "an average level relatively lower than any other major building material reported by the Bureau," the Board points out that national lumber production in 1934 is estimated at approximately 16,000,000,000 feet, as against 14,000,000,000 in 1933, with consumption at about 15,500,000,000. It is explained that in many regions the excess of stocks is largely, and in some instances solely, in grades and items for which there is little demand, with a shortage existing in others. "At no time since the war has there been so large a percentage of 'frozen' or slow-moving stocks, nor so unbalanced an assortment of customary grades and items."

Hand-to'Mouth Buying

The Committee points to the fact that retail distributors show an increasing disposition to buy hand to mouth, thus forcing the sawmills and distributing yards to carry a larger proportion of the national lumber supply than formerly; and that because of this condition a ratio of stocks on hand to annual shipments greater than the corresponding ratio in 1929 by 35 per cent represents a reasonably stable lalance between production and consumption for the industry as a whole. The Committee notes that conditions may be irnproved by exchange of stocks, throug the establishment of mutual organizations for the sale and distribution of lumber, and by agreements, approved by the President, under Section 4 of the NRA.

The Lumber Survey Committee appointed on July 9,