V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

Today, for the first time in twenty-fo,ur months, men are saying to one "n61hs1-"fhings look fsffsl"-..lusiness is really picking up." They are saying thatonthe street corners, in the clubs, and in their places of business all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and from Detroit to New Orleans.

They are saying it confidently, hopefully, believingly. It is the first real sign of the dawn. Many times in many months leading financiers have announced that the bottom has been reached. But the man in the street paid them no mind. But when HE, this guy that makes up Mr. American Public, decides that things are on the up and up, they ARE, because all it need*s t"* t*tt opinion.

Over the sales desks of the lumber industry this feeling has not yet manifested itself. It wouldn't. Not immediately. The first thinga man can drop when times get hard, is a building project. And it isn't a thing he will take up again the first day the business sun shines. It will take a little time after business is definitely climbing the hill, before lumber gets the genuine feel. But when it DOES come, it will come a-runnin'.

I told a man that the other day, and he wanted to know where the business is to come from, even after the turn. He couldn't see where the prospects lie. So I told him a story from Scott's "Lady of the Lake." The King of Scotland, traveling in the rnountains of Scotland incognito, becomes lost, and is being guided out of the mountain fastnesses by a huge mountaineer whom he has chanced upon. The mountaineer is none other than the King's chief enemy, Roderic Dhu, leader of an insurgent mountain army. Roderic Dhu is also incognito. The King has no idea of the identity of his guide.

As they walk along they talk politics, and the King bitterly condemns the outlaw Roderic Dhu, and finally expresses the wish that he rnight meet face to face "this rebel chieftain and his band." Roderic flamed with wrath. ,.Have then thy wish," he cried, and blew his whistle. Instantly the lonely mountainside was covered with an army of mountaineers, fully equipped for war. Every tree, every bush, every rock, every tuft of grass gave forth a soldier. One minute there was not a man. The next there was an arm'' tl.**

And so it has always been, and so it will be this time, with business. It comes frorn everywhere when the tide turns. You lumbermen will all remember the many times this has happened. No man can say whence it will come.

Like Roderic's arrny, the whole earth will produce and develop it. When she starts, look out for sky rockets.

Advertisers in the lumber press these days ought to be enjoying an unusual degree of publicity-they have so little competition.

Recent business conditions have played holy havoc with the lumber trade press. Three have folded up and quit, or been absorbed. Three semi-monthlies have gone once-amonth. One weekly has*gone semi-monthly.

And what has happened to the remainder reminds me of the finish of the old, old story of the man who ordered a headstone for the grave of his departed wife, with the inscription-"God, she was thine." And the stone engraver got his lettering so over-sized that the width of the stone wouldn't quite permit the.finishing of the epitaph, so that when he finished it read-"God, she was thin."

"Anyone can write an ad," says the cynic, "bgt it takes a smart man to wash a window." ,t**

One of my friends was talking to me the other day about merchandising. He recalled the famous adage that if you build a rnouse trap better than anyone else, the world will make a beaten path to your door. To buy traps from you, is the assumption. But this friend hazarded the opinion that the fellow in the wilderness who builds a better mousetrap than the other fellow WILL have a path beaten to his door, but it won't be by would-be buyers of mouse traps-it will be by cheese salesmen wanting to sell him a supply of bait. * :r *

Wonder how long it will be befo,re we are wrapping packages of lumber or lumber products in oellophane? They're wrapping nearly everything else in it already, and the craze has just Botten*well started.

C. C. Sheppard, President of the Southern Pine Association, in 3 recent address to a lumber group, made the declaration that if the lumber industry had started a research campaign just five years ago, the chances are that right now we would have discovered and would be using fire-proof wood. We've been saying sornething very much like that in this column every month for a long, long time. We think the lumber industry has GOT to get busy with such a research campaign. We are convinced that its future depends absolutely and utterly on such action. What are we waiting on?

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