August 25. 1922 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



21 



The Hoover Idea 



Telling the national lumher standardization conference recently 

 held by the directors of the National Lumber Manwfaoturers Asso- 

 ciation at Portland, Oregon, that simplified practice throughout the 

 lumber manufacturing and using industries could save a billion dollars 

 a year JV. A. Vurgin, special assistani to Secretary of Commerce 

 Hoover made what is perhaps the best presentation that has yet been 

 offered of the Hoover program for the elimination of waste in in- 

 dustry. 



According to Mr. Durgin a chief source of industrial wasite is "the 

 ■wniversal prevalence of enormously ezcessive varieties of goods. ' ' 

 He cited a number of stril'ing illustrations. There are 1,000,000 va- 

 rieties of sizes, styles, and kinds of shoes made in the United States; 



6,964 of axes; 7,362 of fire-arm cartridges; 289 of American flags. 

 The wa.'-te in six leading, industries was placed at 40 per cent. 



As the only one of the great basic industries and the giant of the 87 

 industrial groups that are now trying to effect economies in accord- 

 ance with the Hoover conception the lumber industry, as represented 

 by the Nation-il Lumber Manufactivres' Association, deems it a public 

 service to offer the text of Mr. Durgin 's address. He is a Chicago 

 business e~ecutive who has temporarily given up his private concerns 

 in order to assist Mr. Hoover for a time, in the stupendous simplifi- 

 cation problem, and in that capacity is acting as chief of the division 

 of simplified practice of the Department of Commerce. Mr. Durgin's 

 address follows: 



Secretary Hoover has expressed the purpose of the Department 

 of Commerce in these words: "The end that we seek is the end of 

 all Government and that is to improve the daily living of our people. 

 It is the desire of the Department to co-operate with you in your 

 attempts to solve your problems. ' ' 



This statement was made at the beginning of Hoover's adminis- 

 tration and the experience of the past year and a half has surely 

 gone far to prove the genuineness of the Department's desire to 

 serve and the capacity of the Department for service, if any such 

 proof were needed. But despite this record, it is perhaps inevitable 

 that even Department of Commerce men should be regarded at times 

 with suspicion. We Americans have had such an extreme over-dose 

 of the investigator, the Government expert and the Government tax 

 collector that many badgered business men insist that until he proves 

 himself innocent, any Federal agent is to be held a compound of all 

 three — a combined investigator, expert and tax collector. 



Gentlemen, for myself and the men of the Department of Com- 

 merce, I plead 'not guilty.' The sole interest of our Department 

 in these lumber questions now being so widely considered throughout 

 the lumber field is to help discover the bes; thought and practice you 

 have yet developed and to aid you in making that thought and prac- 

 tice effective for the betterment of producers, distributors and users 

 of lumber (which three groups, I take it, coniprchond just about the 

 total citizenry of these United States.) 



After all, this is no new conception of the function of National 

 Departments. Isn't it rather a direct return to the original concep- 

 tion of Democracy? Isn't it, indeed, the exact intention of the 

 founders of this nation? 



A hundred and twenty years ago, with the restricted territory and 

 the comparatively simple interests of the thirteen original states, 

 the easiest way to make our best thought and practice effective was 

 to send the leading thinkers as Federal officers to the National Capitol. 

 Alas! We have long since given up that practice. These early leaders 

 could comprehend our entire social and industrial structure in their 

 own personal knowledge and generally developed the best thought and 

 practice in their own minds. So perhaps, was born the insidious as- 

 sumption that the function of government is to orioinate rather than to 

 discover the best thought and to impose, rather than to help make 

 effective the best practice. 



Initiative Has Fassed to Industry 

 With such assumption, our department has no sympathy. Its 

 danger and absurdity are only too apparent in our present maze of re- 

 strictive legislation. In the last one hundred years, and particularly 

 in the last four decades of that century, the complexity of our in- 

 dustry and business has so increased that few men can be expert in 

 more than one field — none in more than three — while any given in- 

 dustry has from a hundred to a thousand experts to every one in 

 Government service. The day of Federal omniscience is long past. If 

 we of the Department of Commerce are to serve, we cannot originate. 



we cannot pose or impose as technical experts. Our service must be 

 through support of the real experts of business and industry, through 

 co-ordination of advance in all lines, through publication of the best 

 thought and practice as it is developed, through emphasis of the na- 

 tional viewjioint when local or sectional enthusiasm tend to retard the 

 larger betterment, through inspiration of industries and business to 

 that wise self government which alone can preserve our nation. 



Many of you will remember Secretary Hoover's first approach to 

 his new work. It was in the form of a direct question to business 

 and industry "What can the Department of Commerce do to help 

 you? Come to Washington and tell us about the things you need 

 most. ' ' That some help was needed was, and still is, evident to 

 all of us. 



With European workmen eager to accept any wage which will pro- 

 vide the barest necessities of food and shelter for their families; with 

 European Governments subsidizing industry; with the keenest Eu- 

 ropean commercial leaders directing the occupation of world markets, 

 we are threatened with invasions from which, as Hoover says. "No 

 tariffs, no embargoes, no navies, no armies can ever defend ua. " No I 

 gentlemen, industrial invasion requires industrial defense and the tre- 

 mendous hazards from witliout imposed upon us by the World War 

 can only be met b.v a thorough modernizing of our industrial fighting 

 equipment. And the hazards from within? Alas! These are still 

 more pressing and demand more insistently the same modernizing of 

 our industrial fighting equipment, if we are to survive. True, as 

 Hoover says, ' ' We are more disturbed than injured. ' ' But the dis- 

 turbance seems to grow and resistance to deflation to strengthen. 



Competition Demands Lower Costs 

 While raw materials are near the pre-war levels, finished products 

 are some hundred and fifty percent above those levels. In this enor- 

 mously increased spread, the principal iteins, such as wages, freights, 

 rents and taxes are the very ones which so vigorously resist reduction. 

 To meet both foreign and domestic hazards, we must have reduced 

 costs — we must have reduced prices, but there is little hope in the 

 apostles of return-to-former-levels. 



It is in this most serious situation that the Department of Commerce 

 hopes to be of vital assistance. Responding to Secretary Hoover's 

 question "What can the Department do to help?" many business 

 leaders have urged the great promise of material reduction of costs 

 all along the line through waste elimination, and the elimination they 

 have in view is quite a different thing from the ' ' conservation ' ' you 

 lumbermen have heard very possibly "ad nauseam." It happens that 

 this subject of waste has long been a primary interest to Hoover. 

 Some two years ago when he was President of the Federated American 

 Engineering Societies, the organization undertook a careful survey 

 of the wastes in six major industries — boots and shoes, clothing, tex- 

 tiles, printing, metal trade and building construction. The results 

 are published by the McGraw-Hill Book Company in Waste in In- 

 dustry and would well repay your detailed reading, but tlie outstand- 



