LUMBER CAREERS Frank \(/. Trower

One of the best known and respected men in the lumber industry of the West Coast is Frank W. Trower of the Trower Lumber Company, San Francisco. In a few weeks' time he will have completed 46 years of service in the wholesale lumber business in San Francisco, which must be a record or close to it.

Although now still in his fifties, Mr. Trower knew as a mere youngster many of the big figures in the California lumber world of the 1890's and early 1900's, names that are now but memories, in the days when the first block oh Steuart Street and on Market Street housed most of the lumber manufacturers of San Francisco, and the wholesaler without mill ownership or connection was unknown.

Frank Whittaker Trorver was born in Oakland, Calif., September I0, 1876, His father, Ebenezer Trower, was a native of England, and his mother, born in New Brunswick, was of English ancestry. He attended the Oakland public schools, finishing grammar school in 1890 in his 14th year, and after starting to work took a course in night high school work in Oakland to complete his schooling.

His first job was as office boy with the Mendocino County Redwood Association, on Steuart Street, San Fran.cisco. an organization which aimed to handle all the Redwood produced in Mendocino County, but which lasted only nine months. The Association was headed successively by the late E. C. Williams, and later by the late R. G. Byxbee. When the Association dissolved young Frank immediately became office boy for Heywood & Hackley, agents for the Gualala Mill Company. Recognizing his ability the firm thrust a great deal of responsibility on the young lumberman and before he was 19 he was signing checks for the concern. From 1893 the San Francisco end of the business was conducte{ under the name of the Gualala Mill Company, and Mr. Trower looked after the sales, the charters, etc., and later became secretary of the company, remaining with them for 13 years, until the property was sold in 1903 to the Empire Redwood Company.

As a boy young Trower was in the era of small lumber sailing vessels from 75,000 feet capacity and up that were discharged by hand labor, "shoving" a piece or two at a time "over the rail." He saw the gradual upbuilding of the steam schooner fleet, from the time when a boat carrying 5@,000 feet was considered a large steamer. In those days all the lumber was tallied and inspected at San Francisco Bay and San Pedro docks by local lumber surveyors' associations, the cost being equally divided between buyer and seller, work which is now done at the mills bv PLIB and WCLA Inspection Bureaus.

During his teens young Frank spent most of his lunch hours along the San Francisco waterfront watching the boats unload, learning the lumber grades and supplementing his training by frequent trips to the mill at Gualala, in Mendocino County.

With his brother, A. E. Trower, whohad been with the Gualala Mill Company for three years, he organized in 1903 the firm of Trower Bros., wholesalers and mill agents, with offices at 5 Market Street, corner of East Street, now the Embarcadero.

Burned out by the great fire of 1906 they were one of 15 lumber firms that erected the first office structure east of Van Ness Avenue. It was known as the Lumbermen's Building, a "long, low, rakish looking craft," one story high, located at Folsom Street Bulkhead. Each office had one door, and one window fore-and-aft. Trower Bros. moved to the present Lumbermen's Building, 110 Market Street, when it was built in 1908, and they incorporated as Trower Lumber Company in 19L7.

Mr. Trower recalls that after the 1906 fire and earthquake many lumber firms located temporarily in Oakland,' and that the Fir manufacturers (then organized as the Pine Manufacturers' Association, so called from the use of the name "Oregon Pine") held regular meetings on board the river steamer "H. J. Corcoran," moored to Clay Street wharf, San Francisco. Later these meetings were held in a small assembly room in the back of an East Street drug store near Howard Street wharf, that being the only available meeting room in the burned district until the spring of. IX)7. An interesting bit of lumber history is that at , one of these meetings he presented a resolution that resulted in abolishing the old $2.0O per M reduction for No. 2 Common included with the No. 1 Common, and establishing one price for the grade known as California Common, which permitted 75 per cent No. I and 25 per cent No. 2, and was afterwards reduced to 15 per cent No. 2. This reform saved the lumber manufacturers millions of dollars, for it became the Coastwise custom, as San Francisco was then headquarters for the Fir interests of the Pacific Coast. It is a matter of record that it was not until many years afterwards that orders were taken for straight No. 2 Common. Many Fir basic price lists were established in San Francisco, which became the ruling discount and differential prices for the entire Coast.

He helped to organize the Wholesale Lumberrnen's Club, of which he was president, and later the Douglas Fir Club of San Francisco in 1913. He was the latter club's first president for two terms, and was presented with a beautiful silver tea service in 1915. This club did much useful work in the 13 years of its existence.

For nearly 25 years he was active in Hoo-Hoo circles. Ife was elected Supreme Junior Hoo-Hoo in 1911, and attained national prominence when at the annual meeting at Asheville, N. C., in 1972, he was elected Snark of the IJniverse. Space limitations prevent detailing his many varied activities, but in that quarter of a century he did a tremendous amoullt of work for the Order, believing that in Friendship, Goodwill, Confidence and Cooperation would be found the means to overcome many of the lumber industry's troubles.

In Oakland, on September 6, 1905, Mr. Trower married Miss Naomi Agnes Blake. They have a daughter, Miss Elizabeth (Betty) Blake Trower, their son Franklin having passed away last November, aged 8.

He is a member of several fraternal orders, and his home is in Oakland. He and Mrs. Trower, since 1905, have been members of the First Congregational Church of Oakland, and he was president of its large Men's Club. . His principal diversions are walking and reading, €specially history, economics, the money question, and the study of politics and g'overnment. He maintains a lively interest in what is going on in the world everywhere. Believes in what Robert Louis Stevenson told the little girl: "The world is so full of a number of things, I think we should all be as h"ppy as kings." And that this philosophy includes material things too, and a fair distribution of them according to merit and effort. He thinks that our greatest problem now is how to combine the best in the co-oferative and individualistic systems according to sound, progressive American standards and traditions; believes that most of the world's sore problems can be solved by adhering to the principles of decency and justice; in short-the practice of the Golden Rule; has found by many years' experience that nearly all lumbermen are "good scouts," even those who like to be considered "hard-boiled" are "brothers under the skin," possessing the common failings and virtues of mankind.

By instinct a crusader against wrong and injustice, his long business training taught him caution in appraising quack remedies for "all the ills that flesh is heir to." He likes that famous expression of Theodore Roosevelt-"practical idealism."

Mr. Trower believes in trade associations for limited purposes, based on voluntary self-interest rather than coercion. He has a high conception of the splendid part that lumbermen have played in upbuilding the Nation, and believes that we must adapt our methods to changing conditions, so that our industry may always continue to render solid service to the people it touches in production, distribution and consumption. Frank's "suppressed desire" was to be a freelance columnist or editor on a first-class newspaper or syndicate.

Northwest Lumberman Visitslos Angeles

Carl H. Kuhl, Carl H. Kuhl Lumber Co., Portland, Ore., is a Los Angeles visitor, and with Carl Davies, their Southern California representative, is calling on the trade. Mr. Kuhl will also spend a few days calling on the Arizona dealers.

Make Trip Over Arizona Territory

Warren B. Wood, Pelcy Merithew, and Gus Hoover, Los Angeles, and Francis Pool, Phoenix, motored to El Paso the early part of the month. They called on the Arizona trade and also attended the Arizona retailers'annual convention.

Altho this wood is not widely advertised

INDUSTRIALS

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