\(/here California's Pine Lumber Goes

By W. E. Grif{ee Assistant Secretary-M andger | \flestern

Retail lumber dealers in California, like the manufacturers, now have little difficulty in finding ready customers for all the lurnber they can furnish. Some dealers enjoy a good volume of highly rated business on which they have effective priority assistance in securing needed supplies of lumber. The average dealer, however, serves a class of trade which is not highly rated by the WPB, and he now finds it impossible to keep a well balanced stock.

The pine sawmills of California last year produced about seventy thousand carloads o{ lumber or roughly thirty per cent of the production in the entire Western Pine region. This year the mills have had to contend with an average labor shortage of ten per cent or more, the situatior.r irr logging camps generally being much more acute tharr it is in mill, yard and shipping departments. The War Manpower Commission has propose'd several schemes to belp return needed labor to woods and mills, but net results have been negligible. Meat rationing, shortages of equipment and supplies and various brands of unnecessal'y government red tape also have tended to hold down production this past season. Nevertheless the mills are expected to come within less than ten per cent of last year's total production. Even this reduced output will be well above that in any prewar year.

Many in the industry formerly thought that substantia.l completion of the tremendous troop housing and war industry construction programs, which took .so much Iunrber in the fall of l94l and all through 1942, would release large amounts of lumber for ordinary civilian uses. Few anticipated that at this stage in the war, steel and aluminum would be more readily available than Idaho White Pine, Ponderosa Pine and Sugar Pine lumber, yet such actually is the case. Some lumber manufacturers now are securing power falling saws and lumber carriers on AA-3 ratings, yet cannot ship boards to old customers on a. rating lower than AA-1. For most lumber items an AA-3 rating is little better than no rating at all.

The WPB estimates that civilian lumber consuurption this year was not over half that of last year. So far as constru'ction uses ari concerned, the percentage must l>e even smaller. Purchase of boards and dimension of the Western Pines and White Fir for'construction uses is 1>ermitted only upon special release from the WPB in Washington. Still more drastic limitations upon the use of tlrese rvoods are said to be under consideration.

Much publicity has been given to the fact that this war requires tremendous amounts of munitions, equipment and supplies. The ability of American industry to produce efficiently is frequent cited as one of the main reasons why the Axis powers cannot .rvin. Yet few people realize that the bulk of these war materials not only require large amounts of lumber for their successful produ'ction, but must also be stoutly boxed or crated for shipment.

Boxing and crating uses this year will require about 14 billion feet as compared lvith only five billion feet used in 1941. Consumption during 1944 is expected to be even higher if fighting continues full blast through the year. For most of these boxes and crates the Western Pines are greatlv preferred, so are used to the extent available before other species are called upon. Since total boxing and crating requirements for the country are more than twice the total production of lumber in the Western Pine region, it is easy to see why those directing war production are releasing these soft pines for other uses only where absolutely necessary.

California's fruits and vegetables are considered so essential for both the armed forces and civilians that they (Continued on Page 20)