The West Coast Lumbermen's Association's Home Planning Institute

Bv \fl. B. Greeley, Secretary-Monoger \West Coast Lumbermen's Association

There are sound reasons why the West Coast lumber industry should take the lead in home planning and home promotion. For three years, sawmills of the Douglas fir region have poured ,two-thirds of their production into the war. Our old time distributors and customers, and particularly the retail lumber yards, have been put on very short rations. One of the heavy sacrifices of the war has fallen upon the retail lumber distributor. His market has largely been taken from him by restrictions on building and his source of supply has been cut ofr by war priorities. The casualty list of retail lumber yards is serious.

The manufacturers of lumber have a direct interest in restoring and re-energizing the retail lumber business. When Uncle Sam quits commandeering our product, we will be r'ight back knocking at the 'doors of the retail distributors, with our hats in our hands. \Me, therefore, should do everything within our power both to recreate business for the retail lumber dealer and to restore his interest in our particular products. With all the new war plant capacities and technologies seeking new fields of conquest, there wil,l be plenty of fresh competition in supplying the home-building materials of the future. If lumber is the leader in the American home, as we have vociferously claimed, the time for us to show it is right now. The sawmills of the Wes,t Coast-the Douglas fir region-have put more of their production into the war than any other regional group of mills in the United States I and have-to a corres,ponding degree-lost trade standing and contacts with former retail distributors. It certainly behooves us to move aggressively, at the earliest possible time, to restore these old connections and reestablish a common interest in marketing West Coast lumber. I know of no better way to do this than by cooperating with them ,in planning and promoting home bui,l'ding-which again will be our largest peacetime market.

Among all the possible fields of post-war planning, we will all agree-f believe----on the desirability of encouraging people to p,lan ,for home building. It is a form of planning that directly aids the prosecution of the war, by encouraging people to buy war bonds as a nest egg for the post-war home. Home building is .one of the simples,t and most obvious activities which can be launched in any American community as soon as labor and materials are available. ft requires no overall programming by the nationa'l g'overnmen't; no federal subsidies or pump prim- itrg. It is a self-starter ready to spring from the grass roots of every American community. Moreover, home planning and home building fit admirably the temper of the American people as we think of the return of peace. It is a splendid antidote for the strain and fever of war. It is just the sort of thing that will appeal to the men returning from the armed forces. It expresses in itself a large part of the American way of life for which we are fighting. ft seems likely that the war will be followed by a period of active home building, with or without benefit of planning. It will flow from the reservoir of unsatisfied home needs during the war and from the accumulation of war earnings and savings. You may ask: Why bother to interest people in home planning? Let nature take its course.

From the more practical side, home building ranks high as a means to post-war economic stability. The building trades in the United States number upwards of three million men. When you add the number of men employed in lumber and other building material industries and in furniture making and all the other household equipment and appliances, it will be difficult to find any other source of employment so large in the aggregate or so widespread in its ramifications. It is doubtful if any better preventive of monetary inflation could be devised than to get hundreds of thousands of American families; first, saving for a home and secondly, paying for their home through installments over a period of years.

To those of us who hope that private enterprise will continue to be the main spring of ,the American way of life after the war, home building offers an immediate opportunity to put private enterprise at work. Among the postwar plans which are a-brewing at Wash,ington, D. C., there are very targe projects for federalized housing. There is apparently a housing philosophy that wants to project the so-called slum clearance projects which we wi'tnessed before the war and the emergency defense housing which we are witnessing today, into a permanent national policy of socialized home building by grace of federal appropriations, federal architectural boards, ,federal contractors and all the paraphenalia of centralized bureaucracy. Certainly one way to defeat that kind of post-war planning is to apply an antidote in every "Middlesex, village and shire." That is, get busy on private home building, privately financed, working with the town contractor and the town lumber yard, just as soon as the turn of war gives us an opening. The best way to stop socialized housing is to step right out with a vigorous, universal revival of private housing. Thereby, we will not only prove that federalized housing is unnecessary; we will help create civic and political opinion against it.

It.is my view that "The Lord helps ,those who help them- selves;" that the industries which manufacture building materials should not just wait for such plums as may fall in their laps but move aggressively to create a peacetime market to rqrlace our war market. With the best we can do there will be serious strains and dislocations in changing over from war business to peace business. The more rapidly we can create peace-time demands for labor and industrial products and services, the easier will this adjustment become. I view it as a challenge to American business an'd to our vaunted system of private enterprise. It is certain-that if American business does not work it out, .the government will attempt to do so with all manner of federal programs, pump priming, socialized housing, and so on.

The Home Planning Institute now in "pilot plant" operation at Portland, Oregon, is a training school for ourselves and the groups associated with us in learning how best to do this kind of job. It is also a factory for making the working tools necessary to an effective job. The idea, which originated with the F4uitable Savings and Loan Association, is simply to try out a plan for inducing people to make systematic savings towards a home, through the purchase of war bonds; and at the same time for educating them and holding their ,interest in home building through a series of group lectures and discussions on important phases of the home. These class discussions are led by experts in home financing, in the selection of a home site, in designing a home, in the materials used in home building, in home appliances and conveniences, in furnishing a home, in home landscaping and gardening, and so on. The only ticket of admission is that each reg'istrant shall undertake some definite plan, through monthly savings or otherwise, for financing the first payment on his home. We are cooperating with a Savings and Loan Association; and through it with the U. S. Savings and l-oan League in which some 5,000 Savings and Loan Associations are organized throughout the United States.

But the program does not imply any limitations whatever on the methods of financing which any home builder may adopt. We hope that the plan we are testing out in Portland may ultimately command every kind of sound home financing in the country, from strictly local loans made by the village banker to the F.H.A. insured loans under the National Housing Act. But we do want vigorously to aid the movement throughout the United States for private home financing as distinguished from government-built housing.

During the class discussions at Portland, which evidently will be repeated a good many times in that town, we are accumulating and testing a lot of valuable material on home planning-the lectures given by top men in the various phases of home planning; the problems of greatest interest brought out in class discussions; the newspaper advertisements, trolley and bus cards and radio broadcasts which we are employing to gather in the folks; the slogans, the newspaper stories and editorials; everything else that has a bearing upon the success of such an undertaking. As all of this material is tested and retested, we are accumulating a portfolio that should be of real service to the next

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