EDITORIAL

Notionol Forest Prpducts Week

It is again time to bring to your attention that ritual of our industry, National Forest Products Week which this year is sched' uled to run from the l8th to the 24th.

Although it has had considerable success and has been promoted avidly in some parts of the country, it has never met with much real enthusiasm in California, despite the good results that groups in Arizona and Oregon have gotten from their efiorts with The Week.

From what we have learned so far from some of the groups that normally take a hand, this year will be even worse than last. To cite an example, Los Angeles' National Forest Products Week committee gave up even nominal activity last spring when it was discovered that neither money nor effort would be forthcoming. The monies that were carried over from the previous years's committee have already been allocated for use in a local charity. We can't help but think that anyone attempting to raise money in southern California for NFPW in the near future is going to meet with some pretty stifi resistance.

But the real problem with getting Nationel Forest Products Week rolling and self-sustaining is one that seems to plague the whole industry. It is a v€ry quiet problem and it's called apathy. And the soupy quiet of apathy has all but submerged the promise that National Forest Products Week showed when it was officially proclaimed by the president of the United States a few years ago.

We have only to look at the great strides made by the socalled substitute materials in promoting not only the superiorities of their products, but what they so ringingly and repeatedly re{er to as the inferiorities bf wood, to realize the need for promoting wood and wood products.

It isn't as if everyone was unaware of the need to promote our products. On the contrary, in the last eighteen months, several important indrrslay groups have made considerable strides in planing, financing and implementing promotion at a national level.

But when we get down to a local level where promoting can bring in results the same day from customers walking in and buying, apathy, strangely enough, comes from some of the very people who could most benefit.

We wish we had a cure to present for this apathy that plagues the successful operation of National Forest Produets Week, but we don't. But this much we do know. The week is a good sales tool to bring in the customer and sell him on our products, but it's not being used. Like any bad practice it's going to cost us all a lot of money to let it continue uncorrected.

ln This lssue

This seems to be our issue for birthdays. In this issue it is our pleasure to show you two oldJine firms that are celebrating their corporate birthdays. Neither one, we might add, looks their age. But then who does these days?

Senior of the two firms is the venerable Hobbs Wall Lumber Company of Sen Francisco, which is startlng its smnd century this month as we review the first on pages six and seven. The other, Western Door and Sash Company of Sacramento is at the half.century mark and, judging from their current business vitality, will no doubt double their age. See them on page 10.

Our warmest congratulations to them both.