Find Silver Fir Bork Beetle Doing Million-Dollor Domoge in Weslern Woshington

Seattle-Over half a million acres of forest land in rvestern Washington has been infested with the Silver Fir bark beetle. This startling disclosure of a serious menace to the commercial forests of the state was made in a mid-October meeting in Everett, Washington, of the Silver Fir Beetle Committee headed by R. V. Dickhaus, Bellingham forester.

Focal points of greatest damage to the forests are the Mt. Baker and Day Lake areas of Skagit and Whatcom counties. First reported in 1947 by W. V. Catlow, chicf forester for Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Company, its spread has been observed throughout the western area of the state. Potential loss to the economy of the state at value of timber infested is in the millions of dollars. All efforts of the committee are to minimize this loss.

All forest agencies are reorienting their logging plans to hold down the loss of timber from the infestation. So far this year, 140,000,000 board feet of trees have been harvested in an aggressive salvage logging operation in the beetle area to lessen the potential loss. Immediate needs are for ,continuing construction of logging roads so that salvage of infested timber can keep ahead of deterioration of killed trees.

Cloy Brown Nomed President Of M ond M Wood Working Co.

Portland, Ore.-The directors of the M and M Wood Working Co. have elected Clay Brown, lumber and plywood executive, president, effective November 1, to fill the post which has been vacant since the resignation of Thomas B. Malarkey late in 1953.

Mr. Brown began his business career with Long-Bell Lumber Co. and served as sales manager for M and M for a number of years. He later became vice president ancl a member of the executive committee of U.S. Plywood Corp. He resigned the position in 1945 fo enter private business and is now chairman of the board of Fortuna Sawmills, fnc., a position he will continue to fill.

Eberly Thompson, who has been acting as executive head of the company, will continue as executive vice president of M and M.

Defroit Friend Likes Ediroriols

"Just a few lines to express my feeling of gratefulness for your editorial commentsyour thoughts have many times, when I have felt beaten ancl whipped, given my spirits a tug upward. Many of your articles have such down to earth sense, beauty, and often holy thoughts."

N. J. Patterson, President, Patterson Lumber Co., Inc. Detroit, Michigan.

Southern Colifornio Building Permits for September Bring Yeor's Torol to New Record

Building permits for Southern California totaled $141,778,302 in September, giving indication that 1954 may produce the new all-time record year for builcling there, according to the research department of tl,e SecurityFirst National Bank. It was a 3/o gain over the previous record of $117,390,039 in September 1953.

This year's September total was the highest of any September on record, and brought the total for the first nine months of 1954 to $I,247,405,013 for Southern California building. The figure is the highest ever recorded for any similar period. Last year's then all-time record was $1,212,339,915.

The survey is based on building permit dollar valuations of 64 cities plus nine unincorporated areas. The September figure this year was slightly below the August peak of $144,493,859, but substantially higher than the $134,964,634 of August 1953. September was the fourth month this year that all previous records for corresponding months in the past have been beaten.

In Los Angeles, September building permits were $30,216,7n, as against $31,435,562 last year. The city's ninemonths total stands at $307,3&,086, as compared with $615,874,275 in the first nine months of 1953. The nine unincorporated areas' September 1954 total was $27,522,900, compared to $27,873,305 in September last year. The county area's nine-months total was $254,151,645, well ahead of the $231,643,945 similarly registered last year.

..GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW." ESPECIALLY IN GOVERNMENT MATTERS.

Once upon a time-and only a few short years agothe Government of the United States devoted itself to very simple matters. ft ran its business here at home, and let other governments wherever located, run theirs. It allowed its citizens to run the businesses of their choice, and had no thought of competing with them. It wished the farmer well and assisted him in old-fashioned ways, but had no thought that it owed him government-created prosperity. No idea of a welfare state in this country had yet penetrated its thinking machinery. AND NOW LOOK.

Take the matter "i f,rlirJ"". President Ike has called for the rapid elimination of Government from domestic business. Wonder if he himself knew how deep the Federal biz had dug into private biz? Charles E. Wilson, formerly president of General Electr:ic, recently estimated that this Government could pay off some thirty billion dollars of its national debt by selling its business corporations to taxpaying private owners. Congressman Osmers, of New Jersey, not long ago introduced a bill to hasten getting Government out of business, and he listed over one hundred types of business in which the Government is engaged. He said that the Government has inventories "larger than the similar inventories of all private enterprise combined." A start has been made on reducing the number of Government business enterprises, but only a start'

One of the smallest acorns that has grown into one of the greatest oaks is farm subsidies. In a powerful illustrated article written by Fletcher Knebel, and headed "Do Farm Price Supports Make Sense?"-Look Magazine does an illuminating job of exposing the fallacies of our farrn support operations, Government support of farm products started in this country in the thirties as a temporary effort to help the farmer. How that has qrown is told in I-ook, which remarks: "High price supports make sense when the nation needs more food. They make for economic lunacy when the nation has more food than it can eat oruse."

At the present time the Government has 6.25 billions of dollars tied up in loans or ownership of surplus foods. It threatens to reach 10 billion very soon. It is costing $700,000 every day just to store this extra food. \Me own 877 million bushels of wheat, 800 million bushels of corn, 7 million bales of cotton, 447 million pounds of butter, besides unbelievable quantities of cottonseed oil, dried milk,

BY JACK DIONNE

wool, cheese, cotton linters, and other farm products. From one end of this country to the other these surplus farm products are stored in every conceivable place and container. The end is not in sight. Here is a mighty oak that has grown from a very small acorll ; one that is going to be mighty hard to cut down. Over six billions of the taxpayers' money is now so invested.

on March 8th, 1941, ;" ;.J Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, a grand man and an outstanding America-forAmericans thinker, wrote in his diary as follows: "\Me have torn up 150 years of traditional American foreign policy. We have tossed Washington's Farewell Address into the discard. We have thrown ourselves squarely into the power politics and power wars of Europe, Asia, and Africa. We have taken the first step upon a course from which we can never hereafter withdraw Our fate is now inseverably linked with that of Europe, Asia, and Africa. We have deliberately chosen to sit in on the most gigantic spectrlation since Time began."

**t<

When he wrote that fateful paragraph which by now has turned to prophecy, he had just lost his great fight to prevent the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill, which he said "would turn the White House into G.H.Q. for all the wars of the world." Lend-Lease, of course, was the first of four tremendous giveaway programs entered into by this Government, the other three being in turn UNRRA, from 194.5 to 1948; Marshall Plan, from 1948 to 1951 ; and Mutual Security, from 1952 through 1953. The first, the one Senator Va-ndenberg fought against so valiantly, cost the American taxpayers 49 billion dollars; UNRRA, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, cost us 3-V2 billions of dollars; the Marshall Plan, the European Recovery Program, cost us 14.1 billions of dollars; and Mutual Security cost us 11 billions of dollars. Total 77.6 billions of dollars. It all started*with Lend-Lease.

The "illimitable obligations" that Senator Vandenberg had predicted would follow the passage of Lend-Lease, have come upon us. From 1946 through t952, the American people had been obligated by treaty or executive agreement to defend 37 countries, and today this Government maintains American soldiers in 49 countries, with 109 major military installations in other countries than our own. Clarence Randall, head of Inland Steel and chairman of the President's Commission On Foreign Economic Policy, recently said: "Not compassion, not trade, but American security is the only standard by which to measure our success or failure. We are in Europe solely to serve our-