Vagabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

Four things that I may happy be, I pray that God will give to me; Someone to love with all my heart, Something to do by toil or art, Something to hope for farther on, A memory sweet to muse upon.

Lincoln once said that God must love the common people, He made so many of them. Reasoning the same way it seems to me that mankind must truly love wooden things, he remains so loyal to them. As I look about me today at the building that the people of this nation are doing, that thought is foremost in my mind. ***

After years and years of depression and little building activity, people who build are using wood in even greater proportion to the total material consumed than they did before the depression started. And that in spite of the fact that practically nothing has been done during the past six or more years to definitely and directly promote the use of wood.

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And that in spite of all the misunderstanding and misinformation that exists with regard to wood and its products. Just the other day I sat in an old rustic club building, where prorninent in the construction of the interior were some 12 by 12 timbers. A highly intelligent lady who sat next to me at dinner and discussed with me the construction of the building, remarked to me that this building was unique because of those square timbers, because, she said, "you can't get timbers like those any more.', fn answer to my inquiry she assured me that she had been told that very definitely. Those t2by l2's were unique, she thought. And it sort of shattered her concepts when I assured her that they were still as common as pig tracks around a country school house, drd as easy to get as bread at a bakery.

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And continually I run into just such strange ideas. And what that one lady had heard, no doubt many other people had heard and likewise believed. I often wonder just what volume the lumber business would attain to if it were better understood, and there was a better job of publicizing of wood being done throughout the nation. Every time f turn around, someone mentions to me in grieved tones what a pity it is that people "can't get lumber :rny more like they did in the old days." And I have a desperate time trying to make them believe-and usually failing, I admit, in spite of my best efrorts-that you can get just as goodand even better-lumber today, anywhere and for any purpose, that you ever got in history. They listen, but sort of shake their heads.

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The fact that we are living in a day of shoddy, and that we undoubtedly DO manufacture and sell a world of lumber inferior in strength, rot-resisting quality, etc., is a point hard to get over. The fact that there are just as good quality trees growing as there ever were, and better equipment and methods for manufacturing and seasoning the stock, is not nearly well enough known and understood.

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A Yellow Pine manufacturer told me the other day about a consumer in a certain town who wanted to buy some long-lived heart timbers, and was willing to pay whatever they were worth, and who was convincingly told by each of the several retail lumber dealers in the town that such materials were no longer to be had. Even after the mill man offered the stuff through the local dealers for pro,rnpt shipment, he had some difficulty in getting his stock handled. Which doesn't help the lumber business.

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Lots of signs of activity in paint everywhere I go. The need for paint is probably greater than at any previotrs time in our building history. The same chronic inactivity that prevailed in building repairing lines, applied to paint also. Throughout this land there are literally millions of buildngs cryrng aloud for the brightening, saving touch of paint. The coming spring and summer should see such a clean-up, and paint-up, and repair campaign as will live in history. *tf,t

Some of the Western manufabturers of lumber have done some clever publicity work in the past few months via the moving picture route. I saw one picture that showed many details of the manufacture of Redwood. The signs on the buildings were well blotted out so. that you could not tell whose mill it was; but the scenes were marvelous, and made mighty good publicity for Redwood.

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Another film now showing all over the country is a succession of pictures of lumbering in the Pacific Nort*rwest. Timber falling scenes, logging scenes, skidding and loading scenes, topping the high spar trees, sawmill scenes, and dock scenes were all mixed up with a romantic story of the North woods. Fir, Hemlock, and Cedar timber is shown in beautiful photography throughout this film. And people pay their money to see them.

A whole lot of tfrat slrt+oftthing might be done by clever lurnber industry publicity men, without ever getting the mark of advertising on the pictures. fn the Northwest picture just mentioned, many misunderstandings were conveyed to the threatre-goers. For instance they showed a man climbing a high tree and cutting o,ff the top, away up there in the air. There was no explanation in the film, and many people phoned me to ask why the loggers climb the trees and cut off their tops before sawing down the tree. I had to explain that they don't, that they simply top one tree in each logging area, and then use that topless trunk for the spar-tree which they convert into a gteat derrick for hauling the logs from woods to railroad. But it looked to the layman as though the loggers topped all the trees first, and then sawed them down; which WAS hard to understand.

Every time I think of publicizing lumber or wood products f think of Beaver Board. f have probably remarked this many times before. But there never was quite so thorough an example of successful advertising. Beaver Board was the first pulp building board that was nationally advertised. Today you can ask any carpenter anywhere, what the material is he is using, and he will promptly and certainly spsqTsl-"Beaver Board." The fact that it may be any one of ten other pulp boards, and the fact that the Beaver Board people and their product have been gone for many, many years, makes not the slightest difference. After all these years, pulp board is Beaver Board, and that's all there is to it. The fact that some other name is plainly stamped on the material doesn't impress the user in the least. It is STILL Beaver Board. With such a remarkable demonstration, how can anyone venture to suggest that boards cannot be successfully advertised?

Lumber dealers have taken much profit already, and will take much more in the future, from the several building materials of wooden character that have come into use the last few years. Insulation has come to stay, and the live dealer can sell insulating materials all the year around, since they protect both from heat and cold; the various boards made of pressed wood and wood refuse, have become big sellers; plywood has become to the modern lumber dealer what bread and butter was to the old time grocer. New products will be added to these. They are needed. They will come. The dealer will sell them and profit from them.

The most useful sideline, in my judgment, that has ever come to the wooden building business, is plywood. Big, wide, clear, strong, attractive-looking boards that can be readily cut for a thousand and one different building purposes are "duck soup" for the live lumber dealer. The more he tries to merchandise them, the more uses for them appear. To the carpenter they are as handy as his saw and hammer. Their use is only well started. There is-no limit to their adaptibility.

Yes, Sir! 'We use to say: A board and a nail and a can of paint, Make many a place look new that aint. But now we say: Sing a song of plywood, saw and hammer too, Mr. Carpenter can make, your building dreams come true.

L. A. P. l. Votes to Join C. R. L. A.

The Board of Trustees of the Lumber and Allied Products Institute of Los Angeles has voted to join the California Retail Lumbermen's Association as a group when its reorganization becomes effective which will probably be late this spring. The Board of Trustees will elect two members to serve on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Division of the State Association.