California Greatest Lumber User

By H.V. Simpson Executive Vice President West Coost lumbermen's Associotion

could bu1' a home easier than he could buy an automobile and it was cheaper to own a horne than rent one.

Some producers rvill remember l95O as the year of artificial stimulants and curbs, applied to business by government manipulation of credits, as simple as turning a water hydrant on and oft. Not a few lumbermen and other businessmen took a long look at this credit juggling and got a better picture'of the po\r'er government today has over our entire domestic economy. Autocratic porver or benevolent, it is still an awesome force.

Industry made many net gains during l95O in the \\'est Coast region. The ts'o-decade expansion of forestry continued with increased acreage dedicated to tree farms during the year. Utilization practices continued improving all along the forest p:oducts industrial front as research laboratories discovered new products to be made from parts of the log once throrvn away or burned.

California led the parade of states in the purchase of Douglas fir lumber during 1950, with an estimated unprecedented 1.5 billion board feet shipped in from western Oregon and Washington sawmills.

Due to a prolonged shortage of freight cars in Oregon and Northern California producing regions, rvhich began in May and did not end until late October, lumber shippers diverted hundreds of millions of feet of traditional rail business to truck and water cargo. Water cargo from North Pacific ports to California doubled in 1950 over the previous year. No accurate check can be made of the volume hauled by truck into California markets, but it totals a huge pile of lumber.

The Douglas fir region seems headed for its greatest all-time record production year, with the 1800 sarvmills of Western W'ashington and Oregon certain to cut 10.5 billion feet of lumber in 1950. At the end of October mills had run up an amazing total of 8.89 billion feet. Shipments and orders were both slightly higher for the year than production.

Nobody seems willing to attempt a forecast for 1951. Certainly we will not approach the fantastic record of 1.3 million ne'iv homes built by American private industry in 1950. Estimates vary on degree of drop off in nerv home starts but we will still build many homes.

There seems general agreement that industrial and commercial construction rvill step up some in 1951 over this year, with many industries expanding their facilities to get on a full-scale war or defense footing.

The year 1950 will long be remembered here in the Douglas fir region. It will be recited as the year the boxcar shortage lasted six long months. It will be recalled as a year rvhen customers for West Coast woods were plentiful and easy to sell. Many lumbermen will look back on 1950 as the biggest home building boom year in the history of our nation, when credits rvere so eas)' a man

Loggers brought in an additional 25 per cent more sound wood per acre than they did a decade ago as they found

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Itts Christmas again , , , and in genaine appreciation we cxtcnd

Manafaarrcn: Pondervs Pinc, Sagar Pinc, Incense Ccdan Doagbs Fir, Vbitc Fir.

Mills: Anderson, California; Canby, California Sales Office: Anderson. California