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attempts to show us they will meet our demands for less government and less taxation. We are exposed to the general public which is watching to see how drastic business cuts will be.

Our employees know sales are down and they arrive each day watching management to find a sign of whether there will be a reduction in the staff. Every retailer in the building material industry is watching the competitor down the street and other dealers in other communities to see if he is the only one with a poor sales month.

We all feel naked with our current exposure to the public and to each other. Many dealers are concerned that they are the only ones with low sales and that they are doing something wrong. They have difficulty accepting the fact that the general trend at the present is a poor showing. The usual comment is, "By August I usually have my borrowed money paid back and the rest of the year is profit, but I've got a problem this year."

Because we tend to be a cyclical industry, we are accustomed to the expansion and contraction required to move with the economy. The present cycle appears to be more severe with different problems than those in the past. It makes better managers of all of us as we watch expense areas that under normal business conditions would not get much scrutiny.

Company credit cards are watched carefully. Phone calls are reduced, and office supplies limited, but these are minor compared to the large expense of payroll. If a business man is watching his return on investment he should be looking closely at payroll and employee production. If there was ever a time to crack the whip, it is now. Employees know sales are down. They are concerned, but it requires initiative frqm management to encourage eight hours ofwork for eight hburs ofpay. A number of people are looking for work and we should be able to find employees who are happy to have a job. We have developed a society that is low in productivity with government and labor unions encouraging it. The cost of goods has increased to a point where the U.S. has become noncompetitive with other countries.

There appears to be a new awareness among workers of the need to perform a good day's work for a day's pay. They need encouragement and guidance. A large number of people do not know how to put in a good day's work.

Ifthe employees are educated in product knowledge, selling skills, customer relations, and the duties of their assignment, they can and will perform. They know that if they don't, there is someone looking for a job.

Now is the time to change their attitude, but management must lead the way. Employees must be informed of the economic conditions. They must be trained for maximum efficiency. All economic indications are that the current conditions will be with us until the third quarter of 1982 so we have time to get the employee training job done well.

IMPORIED ANI) DOMESTIC WOODS

Our aim is to fill your requirements, promptly, with competitively priced quality products.

New Hardwood Plant

Believed to be the largest integrated hardwood millwork plant in the United States, a new facility of Canadian Millwork, Inc., Canadian, Tx., has begun phased start-up operations in Freeport, Tx.

With approximately 5Vz acres under roof, it has computerized equipment for lumber handling and sorting. The lumber, mainly tropical hardwood from Central and South America, is delivered to the plant site directly from the port docks after discharge from Canadian Millwork, Inc. chartered vessels. Capacity for kiln-drying all lumber to be processed by the firm has been included in the operation with the added feature of designed excess capacity to dry and surface raw lumber handled separately by their newly created lumber department for sales to outside manufacturers.

Products will include split and flat jambs, various mouldings and millwork, both raw and prefinished with stain or print/gravure technology, in solid lineal or fingerjointed lengths to meet the needs of the building, industrial, and home center markets.

In addition to department man- agers and operating personnel transferred for the Canadian plant, Charles F. Vignal, pres. has added A. Jongejan, general mgr.; J.M. VandenBerghe, v. p. -marketing; Peter Juul, v.p.-production, and Johnie Cates, controller.

Moths Menace Hardwood

A potential regional menace to the hardwood industry lurks in I I Eastern states where the gypsy moth has defoliated millions of acres of hardwood trees in the past two years.

Southern New England, New York and Pennsylvania have been attacked by the pests in the past two years with the area damaged in 1980 alone comparable to Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey combined.

Although in Pennsylvanialast year there was spraying with Dylox (a chemical comparable to malathion in toxicity) in parks and residential areas, nothing was done in the oak forests. Wide area spraying is out of the question, according to experts, because of prohibitive cost and the destruction of the moths' natural enemies. Pennsylvania spent $1.9 million in the spring to spray 40/o of the five million acres where the gypsy moth works.

According to James Nichols, chief of the state forest-pest management program, you can get up to five million caterpillars to an acre. "They crawl all over houses, get inside houses and if yog stand to lose 2090 of the trees in your backyard, you're not very happy." Public pressure was responsible for the spraying taking place.

Hardwood is not the only wood threatened by insects. Mountain pine beetles, the No. I killer of forest trees in North America, destroyed about f our million lodgepole and Ponderosa pines last year in the northern Rocky Mountains. In Maine and eastern Canada, spruce budworms threaten millions of acres of spruce and fir.

Because spraying is not effective against the mountain pine beetle, timber companies in Montana, Idaho, and eastern Oregon run salvage operations while waiting for the population cycle of the insects to recede. Since the pests like trees at least 80 years old, timber operations are attempting to stop them by harvesting older trees.