Twonty Years with Long-Boll at longview

Twenty years ago, right about this date, I went to Longview, Washington, to have my first look at the giant sawmill plant just being completed by the Long-Bell Lumber Company. The second sawmill unit had been placed in operation the previous May 3rd, and was slashing away. The first unit had been running since the summer ol 1924. And when I got there to look the thing over, the last work was being done about the huge plant. The mighty dream sawmill of R. A. Long was finished. It could cut as much as two million feet a day.

I shall never forget that day of sight-seeing and sawmill investigation.. I had for my only guide, a slightly-built, heavily-spectacled gentleman whom I shall always remember as he was that day. His name was Robert A. Long' We did that great plant together, one unit in the morning, the other in the afternoon. At noon we ate our lunch in the great commissary, al.ter the crew had been fed and were gone. Mr. Long had invited the key men of the plant to meet and eat with us, and they were there. After eating, there were two speeches made. Mr. Long made one, and I made the other.

I had known Mr. Long many years even then. But in his office in Kansas City he was always the busiest of men. His splendid secretary used to say to me: "I'll let you go in to tell him hello and one story, but you must promise not to sit down even when he asks you, for his time is all taken." But at Longview it was different. His time was his ow,n, and I talked more to him that day and listened to him more than in all the rest of our visits combined. He was a gentleman of much charm, a bubbling sense of humor, and when he heard a story that hit him just right he threw back his head and showed his considerable set of teeth, and guffawed. He was a swell companion.

And we sat on some piling on one of the new docks at the new unit, and he invited me to ask questions as freely as I desired. Here was a man about the biblical threescore years and ten, who had liquidated about thirty-five million dollars sawmilling and otherwise lumbering in the South, who at that advanced age, took that great fortune

By Jack Dionne

West and buried it in an investment close to a hundred million dollars. It was evident that he looked forward to a very long life, since it was his determination to see his crop not only planted, but harvested. Such a man naturally invited numerous inquisitive questions. And I asked all I could think of ; and he answered them. He invited me to tell him the criticisms I had heard in the lumber industry of his bold move. So I unloaded on him. And they seerned to please him. And he told me his reply to every one, his age, his investment, his future expectations, etc. It was the most remarkable discussion and interview of my journalistic career. For this was one of the most unusual men I ever knew in this business. Think it over yourself, and see if he was not. It would take quite a book to contain the things R. A. Long told me'that day concerning his hopes, his ambitions, his future outlook.

But he had not counted on one terrific obstacle to his ambitions, namely, panic and depression. When the mill was just three years old the crash came, and lasted until World War II put an end to it. And during those years Mr. Long was gathered to his fathers, his financial fortunes at a very low ebb. Too bad he could not have lived -as I am sure he expected to live-to see the comeback of Long-Bell.

But the great mill stands there today, a mighty monument to his genuis and his courage and his indomitable will, which refused to look upon himself as an old man, even though, according to the Bible he so dearly loved, he was already old. He took on sixty or seventy millions of bonds and debts with all the sang-froid of a man with all his life before him.

Not long before he passed away f visited him in his Kansas City office. Cancer had marked him, and he knew that his time was up. Yet you would never have known it from his bearing. He was friendly, he was jovial, his laugh was quick and spontaneous.

"There were giants in those days," says the Good Book. There were in the lumber days I have known, too. The great mill at Longview, was one. And the builder was another.