40 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



June 25. 1922 



National Reports on Washington Conference 



An intensely dramatic incident developed at the twenty-fifth 

 annual convention of the National Hardwood Lumber Asso- 

 ciation in Chicago during the closing session, June 23, -when 

 Ben C. Currie of Philadelphia, a director, and later elected first 

 vice-president, demanded an "expose" of the recent Washington 

 conference on lumber standardization and trade practice: "You 

 have had within the past month," Mr. Currie told the great con- 

 course of delegates, "a letter sent to the membership by your 

 president, outlining briefly things that have taken place which 

 seem to show that there was some element working for the under- 

 mining and the dynamiting of the work of this great association, 

 which has only been accomplished and made what it is after a 

 quarter of a century of work to build it up. I assume, gentlemen, 

 that this is a natural penalty of leadership. There is always a 

 penalty attached to leadership, regardless of whether it is an 

 individual, an organization or an association, and that is the out- 

 growth of petty jealousy ninety-nine times out of one hundred, but, 

 as I started to say, you are entitled to know what is going on. 

 This is the place for us to find out. This is the place where every 

 man ought to know what his association is doing, what is good 

 for it and what is lurking at the back door, ready to put a stick of 

 dynamite under the back stoop and blow it to perdition. 



We are gathered here for one purpose, and we will call a spade a spade. 

 We have no apologies to make to the world for the greatness of this 

 organization, or for what we have accomplished. If you will look through 

 the annals of all of the trade associations you will not find an associa- 

 tion confining itself to one object as closely as the National Hardwood 

 Lumber Association, and has attained that object and put it on a pinnacle 

 which no other association dares to assail. (Applause.) 



Mr. Chairman, I think that this is the proper time for the membership 

 of this asBCClation to be advised, and advised minutely, carefully, fully 

 what has taken place from the beginning of the call of this conference in 

 Washington, where outside influences seem to have gotten the ears of cer- 

 tain departments of the government and endeavored to put our association 

 in an improper light. 



Mr. Currie 's request was immediately considered by Horace F. 

 Taylor, the retiring president, who was in the chair. After making 

 a brief statement on his own behalf, Mr. Taylor called on the 

 members of the delegation, who, with himself, represented the 

 association at the conference. He also asked for a statement from 

 C. A. Goodman of Marinette, Wis., a director, who had attended 

 the conference as a representative of the Northern Hemlock and 

 Hardwood Manufacturers' Association. 



In part Mr. Taylor said: 



Says Peace Reigned on May 21 



What was the situation regarding peace or conflict in the hardwood 

 trade on the 21st day of May, 1922? (The date of the opening of the 

 conference.) On that day if we had taken occasion to analyze the situa- 

 tion, we would have found that the conflicts and the contests of several 

 years between the members and followers of this association and its 

 opponents had practically subsided and disappeared, and the peace in our 

 Industry, which then existed, was not supine peace, but it was a peace of 

 righteousness. If you will allow me to use that term, because everybody 

 was satisfied. You never can get absolute unanimity on anything. On 

 the day before the Washington conference we bad reached a degree of 

 peace and stability in the hardwood industry which was as much as could 

 be accomplished even if we were to go to the regrettable necessity of 

 having government control in our industry. 



Suppose, for instance, the industry had had imposed upon it by the 

 government a national offlcial governmental inspection. Do you suppose 

 that ninety-nine per cent of the lumbermen would abide by it without pro- 

 test? It is impo-ssible to think of such a thing. So I repeat, that in my 

 estimation, from my viewpoint, we had a practical and a very desirable 

 peace on the 21st day of May. Somebody called that conference. I am 

 not here to call names or start an,v contention, but since that time we have 

 had, from a source which I will allow you to measure yourselves as to its 

 character and extent, all the indications of conflict. They have not arisen 

 from this association. We have had ample evidence, gentlemen, that the 

 official authorities in taking into account the situation have not counted 

 all the perfectly obvious and salient facts which are known to you men 

 and are known *to thousands of other men who are not in this room. For 

 some reason, which I will have to allow you to surmise, many of those 

 facts have been ruled out of account, and your oflicers have repeatedly, and 

 with the utmost care, presented the facts and the situation to our rep- 

 resentatives at Washington. 



Gentlemen. I am speaking very temperately. I will not undertake to 

 tell you all that I could. I will not allow myself, perhaps through excess 

 of caution, to express my judgment and feelings in the matter. I think, 

 however, that this is a picture of the situation and will show the contrast 

 in the hardwood industry as the conditions were on the 21st day of May. 

 and a few days after, before this convention met and substantiated the 

 position It has always held. (.\pplause.) 



Secretary Fish Makes His Keport 



Secretary Fish ; Gentlemen, back in January of the present year an 

 officer of a national organization in the woodworking industry, an organi- 

 zation whose members are very large and very important buyers of our 

 product, was in Washington on the business of his association. While in 

 Washington, in conference with a gentleman very high in the councils 

 of the Department of Commerce, that offlcial of the Department of Com- 

 merce stated to this officer of that national woodworking association, that 

 the Department of Commerce hoped they would be able to help the fur- 

 niture industry by assisting them to get some uniform standard of meas- 

 urement and grades for their lumber. The furniture man replied that 

 they had standards which in his judgment, based on the reports of his 

 membership, were entirely satisfactory to a large majority. He stated that 

 these standards were the rules of the National Hardwood Lumber Associa- 

 tion. This adviser to a government official was evidently surprised, and his 

 reply was, in substance, about like this : "Oh, no. I am mformed by a 

 very prominent lumberman, wlio resides here in Washington much of the 

 time, that there is an alleged national association having to do with 

 inspection rules, but that nobody pa.vs any attention to these rules ; that 

 the manufacturer and the shipper of hardwood lumber, each individual 

 in the trade, has his own standards and that those rules are a good deal 

 of a bluff." The furniture man assured him that he had been misinformed 

 in his judgment and wrote to our office requesting that we send a letter 

 to him, which he might forward to this government adviser, to the end 

 that the error be corrected. 



In so far as we know, gentlemen, the conference referred to in this 

 discussion was due, in some measure, to that advice which was reported 

 by a friendly furniture official to us. We heard nothing in direct reply 

 to the letter which this association official sent on, and the next that we 

 heard and the next activity of the department was in connection with a 

 convention held in this hotel in April of this year, about the same time 

 that what is known as the American Lumber Congress was in session. 

 This association was invited to participate in the Fourth American Lum- 

 ber Congress and were represented at that congress. Your secretary was 

 one of the delegates appointed to that conference. It was planned that 

 the Secretary of Commerce would address the opening meeting, but it 

 appears that pressing business broke into the program as originally out- 

 lined, which contemplated an address from him on that day and that a 

 hurried conference was called here in the Oak Room, on this floor of this 

 hotel. I happened in at that conference. The officers had not had time 

 to serve notice of the change in program, which was no fault of theirs, 

 and I happened to go in when the conference was pretty well under way 

 and a lumberman was on his feet. Mr. Hoover was there occupying a seat 

 next to the chairman of the meeting. As I walked in I heard the lumber- 

 man say that there was a very wholesale tendency to invoice more lum- 

 ber than a shipment contained ; to sell one grade and deliver another, and 

 that the hardwood association were the worse offenders in that particular. 

 Inasmuch as I did not agree with the gentleman, and felt that he had 

 been misinformed. I req»iested one of our members, who was in the 

 audience, to so arrange that I might say a word in reply to the speaker 

 that I have just quoted. I was informed by him and by the chairman 

 very courteously that I might speak, but I was instructed that I must be 

 very brief and make it snappy, because the secretary was leaving within 

 a very few minutes. ' Whereupon I took occasion to state at that meeting, 

 at which Mr. Hoover was present, that I was very sure the speaker was 

 misinformed ; that there were standards in the hardwood trade that were 

 almost universally recognized ; and I then explained to that meeting very 

 briefly, as plainly as I could, the protection which is afforded all buyers 

 of hardwood lumber under this gtiaranteed, bonded certiflcate plan, which 

 we have been working on so many years ; and I stated to Mr. Secretary 

 that if any buyer came into the government with a complaint that he 

 was lieing imposed upon in his purchases of hardwoods, that I believed 

 the government might very properly inform him that it was in some 

 measure, in fact, very largely, his own fault, because if he would stipulate 

 "National Hardwood' Lumber .Association rules," and their official applica- 

 tion by a national inspector, he would receive absolute protection. 

 (Applause.) 



That terminated that particular conference, until our committee arrived 

 in Washington, on the 21st of May. Just another word. As this confer- 

 ence I have just briefly told you about adjourned one of the gentlemen 

 present asked Mr. Hoover if he would not invite the lumbermen to come to 

 Washington in conference, and Mr. Hoover replied that he would be very 

 glad to act on that suggestion and arrange a conference later on in Wash- 

 ington. The call, however, for this conference which was held on the 

 22nd and 23rd days of last month, as it reached your committee, did not 

 come from the Department of Commerce. The call came from the National 

 Lumber Manufacturers' Association. Mr. Hoover's department, in so far 

 • as our offlcial notice was concerned, did not issue that call and Inyitation. 



McClnre's Statement 



John W. McClure : Mr. President and gentlemen, in reciting the same 

 things that happened at the Washington conference, it will be necessary 

 to repeat, perhaps, or to emphasize certain things that were said by our 

 president in the very clear and lucid statement wliich he sent out to the 

 members of this association by letter. 



In the beginning of that conference Mr. Hoover opened the meeting 

 with a statement to which every business man could subscribe, a statement 

 setting forth clearly that the government, as represented by his depart- 

 ment, was opposed to any growth of bureaucracy in the government and 

 to government interference in business, and that the meeting was called 

 for the purpose of discussing in a preliminary way, among the lumbermen 

 themselves, the representatives of the industry, the problems which con- 

 fronted them, and to try to arrive at some solution of these problems in 

 a pniftically unanimous way. stating that his department would be very 

 glad to place its official sanction on any unanimous, or practically unani- 

 mous, action of the lumber group, representing the lumber industry. 



Following Mr. Hoover's statement, the chairman of the meeting, the 

 president of the National Lumber Manufacturers' Association, made a 

 statement outlining a plan for the conduct of the conference, and in his 

 statement a suggestion was carried, that perhaps the best way to get down 

 to business would be a separation of the hardwood from the softwood 

 industry. The hardwood industry was represented by committees from 

 sevornl" hardwood organizations. The National Hardwood Lumber Asso- 

 ciation was the only national body represented there, and presumably 



