R, e, '- Good Cltlzea of the Redwood Regloa

(The follozuing is from talks deliuered' by Mr. Farnsuorth to the DeI Norte Chamber of Cornmerce, Crescent City, and to the Rotary Club, Arcata, Californ'ia, this Selttember.)

Nowhere is change more apparent than in the Redwood Region. I know that you, as business men, wish to look at these changes squarely, evaluate them, and use the results in making decisions which will greatly affect your own businesses and the future of your communities. I think that before I have finished talking we will find that each of you here in business, and several groups of very fine people in the offices of redwood lumber mills-stretching all the way down to San Francisco-plus the staff of the CRA, are all on the same team; that we are all in ihe business of helping make the Redwood Region a good place in which to live, a good place to raise families,.and a place where an investment can be made with assurance that its value can be maintained far into the foreseeable furure.

A little later I want to tell you something of the history of the organization which f represent, but first I would like to outline some reasons for its existence. Those reasons are basically the same today as they were 60 years ago 'when the redwood mills made their first attempts at joint promotional work.

Redwood lumber costs more per thousand feet to pro- duce than any other softwood species. There are many reasons for this. The nature of the tree itself is one. The terrain in which the trees grow is another. The waste factors which are forced upon the mills also are a contributing

One of. the greatest additional causes comes'from the high moisture content and long drying time which is necessary for redwood. As you know, the water content of a redwood tree can run as high as three times the weight of the wood content, and it costs money to get that much water out of the board. fn short, the redwood manufacturers have today, iust as they had 60 years ago, a very definite marketing problem, and the tool they have selected for solving that problem is the California Redwood Associa,tion.

The result is that the finished product-redwood lumber , -has to sell for more- than the other softwood species or ,, the mills would go broke. True, the.re are certain characteristics of redwood which justify placing a higher market , value on it, but whether these characteristics would help - the wood fetch a higher price if the lumber were dumped , on the market as an ordinary commodity-is questionable.

, The job the Association does is largely a promotional one. Two-thirds of its rather substantial budget is spent directly in promotional work, and more than half of the remaining third is spent in technical work which supports the promotion.

PfW i Faneuoftho Erccativc lfcc-Prcsldca t, Callfomla Rodnood essoclatloa

Association. They are: Arcata Redwood Company, Hammond Lumber Company, Hollow Tree Lumber Company, Holmes Eureka Lumber Company, Hulbert & Muffly Company, Inc., The Pacific Coast Company, The Pacific Lumber Company, Simpson Redwood Company, Union Lumber Company, Warm Springs Redwood Company, Willits Redwood Products Company, and Wolf Creek Timber Company, Inc.

Some have been memberS since 1916, when the CRA was first incorporated. Some have joined as recently as 1953.

In order to give you a picture of what the Association The three things they have in commol are: is and how it works, I should first tell you that we look

1. They produce a high quality product. upon it as being the sales promotion and advertising de-

2. They wish to establish a permanent, profrtable market partment of each of our 13 member mills, and these 13 for redwood and, departments have simply been put into one office so that 3. They are willing to pay the necessary promotional the job can be done more effectively and more efficiently. costs. Actually, we have two offices: one in San Francisco and

Over the years this has amounted to quite a handsome one in Eureka. In them we have 36 employes divided into investment. Many millions of dollars have gone into findfour divisions: These four divisions operate on an annual ing the markets that redwood can serve best and then budget of close to half a million dollars.

You will be interested in knowing which mills form the getting it firmly established.

The four divisions I mentioned are. first of all. the De- partment of Inspection and Grading. With sound grading and a predictable product we have, of course, laid a splendid basis for promotion work. During the twenty years I have known the redwood industry, this department has been guided successively by three men-and I am sure any of you who have known them will agree with me that from the standpoint of personal integrity, if for no other reason, each has been admirably fitted to act as the conscience of a great industry-I refer to Andrew Nelson, George Nelson, and our present Supervisor of Inspectors, Ralph Talvola.

Nine men form the inspection staff. Their job is to see that every person who buys a given grade of redwood, no matter where or rvhen he buys it, gets exactly the same quality of material. And that, grade for grade, the output of every subscribing mill is absolutely equivalent.

The second basis that is needed for a sound promotion program is technical knowledge about the product itself, and records of its performance in various applications. In short, somebody in the Association must know everything there is to know about Redwood, so that when customers have a question they get a good answer.

That pretty well describes our Technical and Research Division, which operates under Mr. Willard Pratt. You'd be surprised how big a library we've built up on redwood usage, and how many people get help from us. Any time you want to know the answer to a tough problem in redwood usage, like finding the highest safe temperature for a tenth-normal solution of sulphuric acid in a redwood tank, I know exactly where you can find out. . . ft's in the Technical Division of the CRA in San Francisco.

Our technical people are pretty fine detectives, too. As you know, most big industrial cooling towers are made of redwood. A few years ago some owners thought their towers were being attacked by some mysterious type of decay. The Association's Technical Division was called in and, af.ter a good deal of study, found that only certain towers were seriously affected. The one thing in common was that, under the operating procedures their owners

FOR OLD-TIMERS ONIY (lf'll Drive Anyone Else Crazyl

The California Redwood Association library recently came into possession of two small lumber price lists, dated 1899 and 1910. Old-timers will have severe nostalgia when they learn that the price of 1x12 Clear (they called it #1) was $23/M in 1899, and $35lM in 1910 at ships' tackle in San Francisco. For points south of S.F., $1/M was added. The difierential between Clear , and Sap clear in 1910 was $4/M, and you could get 2x4 for $22/M in 1910. If you required specified widths rather than random, it would have cost you all of $1/M extra. Cross-ties brought $14lM in 1899.

were employing, there was a critical combination of chlorine and alkalinity that had a dreadfully deleterious effect upon the wood in the towers.

Our technical people outlined an operating procedure which avoided this critical combination and made it available to plant engineers. Since that time the trouble has been greatly reduced and a dangerous threat to redwood's continued use in the cooling tower industry has been averted.

I could give many other examples of the work of this Division-its work with the building code officials in the three major building code areas of the United States, its work u'ith FHA and VA, its work with individual manufacturers of redwood items, but I am sure you get the idea that its sound technical knowledge helps build specialized and continuing markets for redwood lumber; and while there is a continuing market for redwood products, you can be sure that the mills here in the Redwood Region will keep running, and their people will stay employed and the communities will remain prosperous.

In addition to its activities with the RRCC, our Conservation Division undertakes certain forestry duties, principally in connection with the inspection and certification of tr"" farms, for among other things the CRA is the auth-