T\TENTY.FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY

As reported in The California Lumber Merchant October 1, 1931

On the 15th day of September, the McCloud Lumber Company, of McCloud, California, made a shipment of a solid trainload of 60 Qars of Shevlin Pine, one of the greatest single shipments in lumber history.

Announcement is made of the creation of a huge sales corporation, the Shevlin Pine Sales Company, of Minneapolis, Minn., which will henceforth handle all the sales of the McCloud River Lumber Company, McCloud, fornia; the Shevlin-I{ixon Company, Bend, Oregon; penter-Hixon Company, Ltd., Blind River, Ontario, ada, and Shevlin-Clarke Company, Ltd., Fort Frances, tario, Canada. J. P. Hennessy is president.

CaliCarCanOn- picture and article conthe T. P. Hogan Com-

An editorial in this issue estimates that the commercial value of California forests is about tr'vo and one-half billions of dollars, based on timber prices at that time.

In this issue appears a full page cerning T. P. Hogan, Jr., head of pany, of Oakland.

Announcement is made that the bermen's Association will hold its Oakland on Nov. 19th and 20th.

California Retail Lumannual convention in

The building and loan associations of the state of California announce that they have financed the construction of over 30,000 homes during the past year.

LaRue J. Woodson of president of the East Bay land.

San Francisco has been elected Hoo-Hoo Club, No. 39, at Oak-

Cfub 2 Conccrf October 19

Los Angeles lfoo-Hoo Club 2 will hold a Concatenation with its regular meeting October 19. Site of this month's gathering rvill be Montebello Country Club. Snark Jim Forgie is planning to make it one of the best initiations the club has ever held and the Nine rn'ill be 'ivell rehearsed to conduct the ceremony in a most impressive way for the new lumbermen. Names of prospective Kittens and completed application forms, accompanied by checks, should be in the hands of John Osgood, Membership chairman, 3315 W. 5th St., Los Angeles 5, for processing as soon as possible.

Terrorism Chorged in lqbor Union Srrike qt Feofher Folls

(Continued from Page 44) the corporation, called the second largest lumber company in the world.

Meanwhile, Georgia-Pacific Vice-President R. E. Floweree, in charge of west coast operations, said there was "no strike at Feather Falls," and added:

"The emptroyes of the mill rejected the union in 1954 and prefer no union. The workers have the right to decide if they want to be unionized, and the employes decided they don't want the union."

A second arson attempt to knock out the railroad serving the struck Feather River Pine Mills was under investigation by FBI agents September 5, the San Francisco Examiner reported September 7, after a fire September 4 destroyed a crossing on the railway owned by the lumber company. It was discovered only hours before the first train over the line since the August 19 burning was scheduled to leave the mills.

The crossing blaze was linked by Capt. Christiansen to the labor strife at the lumber mill which has resulted in the bridge burning, the beating of the truck driver, the insults to the nonunion workers, and the bombing of the trucking executive's home.

A sheriff's captain said the fire definitely was of incendiary origin, destroying timbers and ties at an unused crossing. A work train would have been derailed and supplies lost if the fire had not been discovered and put out by two workmen on a handcar on an inspection run.

- Inland's Planing Mill re- ceives, unloads, mills, stores, deliversat a

"The Leaven Was Working "

Faith r,l'as a force at rvork on all forest lands of Washington as the new machine logging and the new forest products plants thundered into the 1930s. There were no flags of warning out for the pioneering investors of risk capital in timber tractors and logging trucks and in the costly construction of truck roads.

America rn'as wheeling into new wonderlands of prosperity, all hands agreed. And America was building, now and forever more,

The family home was typically a home of lumber still. Through the 1920s lumber held its own in farm building, 1e6-f166 the chicken coop and portable hoghouse to hippodrome barns and sky-high silos.

A flood of lumber "substitutes" streamed into the nation's 25,000 retail lumber yards-most of all in formd of wallboard, sheathing, roofing and flooring materials. Plywood, while competing with lumber, helped to fortify Pacific Northwest building products in general against the new building trade rivals.

Faith in the Forests .

The loggers chirked up as the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company added plywood and woodpulp mills to its sarvmills, and as the Crown Willamette Paper Company and the Zellerbach Corporation were merged in 1928, and "l'ith the 1927 opening of production by the Longview Fibre Company.

By 1930 "Crown" was making pulp and paper both at Port Angeles and Port Townsend, 'ivhile in June of the year the Olympic Forest Products Company began to saw Douglas fir lumber from the forests of World War I's United States Spruce Corporation and in its sawmill.

The young company also installed machines to produce fine grades of woodpulp. This enterprise was to become Rayonier, Incorporated, which had built pulp and paper mills in l9D at Shelton and Hoquiam. Pulp and paper outfits at Everett and Bellingham gave added promise to the forest industry future of Northu'est Washington's forest-growing lands, which bore the state's finest West Coast hemlock stands.

Hemlock was the hope of the nerv age of pulp and paper around Puget Sound, on Juan de Fuca Strait, Grays Harbor and on both banks of the Lower Columbia River. The day had come when Dr. Bror Leonard Grondal from Round Rock, Texas, could proclaim his faith in the region's hemlock tree in terms of proven scientific facts, as developed from industrial manufacture, marketing and consumer use. Grondal, af.ter 2O years at the University of Washington, was no longer just a prophet but an exponent of experience. The weed tree of yesterday was transformed.into a treasure tree of tomorrow. This was the best of nervs to timber owners and loggers,

On with Science

Many researchers took to the old trail of Dr. Grondal. Irving F. Laucks, partner in founding a chemical business in Seattle, year of 1908, eventually cooked up a soya-bean glue that caught on with the young plywood industry in 1923 and was in use by all the Douglas fir plants by 1930. So science came to play a stellar part in adding commercial value to the Butt Log of the West Coast forests, even as science was the prime mover in utilizing hemlock weed trees, and in experiments to make use of low-grade and little logs and lumber scraps for the production of woodpulp, paper and rayon.

The outlook for plywood production had not been lost on Robert Alexander Long and his faithful associates on the Lower Columbia where James Malarkey was the Longview plywood pioneer.

The green land was bright with promise from the big Douglas firs on the slopes of the South Olympics, as Mark

Reed and his co-workers of the Simpson Logging Company planned for the future in Mason county. In Port Angeles, Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and down the line to Portland, then on through Oregon-plywood production came into giant growth between World War I and the Great Depression.

Roddis Plywood Eornings Up

Marshfield, Wis.-Roddis Plywood Corp., Marshfield, Wis., earnings for the nine months ended July 31, 1956, were $1,167,467, compared with $7ffi,481 for the first nine months last year. Earnings for the 12 months ended July 31, 1956, were $1,827,170, on sales of $55,521,002. The profits include gain on liquidation of sundry assets acquired from the California Barrel Company.