LUMBER: Needed: Paul & Babe
What the U.S. needed was a superman like Paul Bunyan. Paul did a lot of sizable things. He dug out Lake Michigan to mix concrete in so that he could build the Rocky Mountains. In the winter of the Blue Snow, when the Pacific Ocean was frozen clean over, he supplied the country with the standard grade of white snow hauled from China by Babe, his blue ox. But Paul was a lumberman at heart. One day while he was combing his beard with a pine tree, he invented mass production in the logging business.
The U.S., in the midst of its worst lumber shortage, was not able to use Paul’s fabulous devices. So last week OPA did what it could. It boosted manufacturers’ price ceilings up from 3% to 10%, on almost all lumber used in housebuilding. Would this turn the trick?
This year the U.S. needs an estimated 36 billion board feet of lumber, a production mark last achieved in 1942. Since then, lumber production has been falling steadily. The deficit has been made up from mill and retail yard stockpiles. But now stockpiles are down to only five and a half billion board feet (see chart), and even this small amount is badly distributed. More than ever before, the U.S. will have to depend on what it actually logs. And the industry, which last year produced only 27 billion board feet, is now plagued with a bewildering array of afflictions—strikes, bad weather, manpower troubles, inadequate equipment, maladjusted prices.
Heavy snows kept Oregon lumber camps closed during most of January and February. Strikes crippled production in the pine forests of the Pacific Northwest and the redwoods of California. Everywhere, lumberjacks grown used to soft city ways in high-paying jobs in war plants were none too eager to head back to the low pay and hard life of the woods. Those who did go back found a lack of portable sawmills, crawler trucks, etc., although lately the Civilian Production Administration has been handing lumbermen priorities to get them.
But price has been the biggest problem. Mills, caught between rising costs and OPA ceilings on rough construction lumber, were concentrating on finished wood, where profits were higher. Yet rough construction lumber is what the U.S. needs most. Housing Expediter Wilson W. Wyatt’s program to build 2,700,000 houses alone calls for nearly eight billion board feet this year.
In the face of all this, the mild price stimulants looked woefully inadequate. CPA Lumber Boss Mathias W. Niewenthous issued “a realistic forecast” of this year’s production. Said he: it will be only 30 billion board feet, far short of U.S. needs.
ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9taWxhaH5wuNSmmZ6qXaOyprDEnWSpmaWheqOtwZ5m