22 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



March 25. 1919 



HORACE F. TAYLOR, BUFFALO, 

 PRESIDENT 



J. W. McCLURE, MEMPHIS. 

 VICE-PRESIDENT 



HENRY CAPE, NEW YORK CITY, 

 TREASURER 



Meeting of Wholesalers 



The twenty-seventh annual meeting of the National Wholesale 

 Lumber Dealers' Association was held March 19 and 20 at Phila- 

 delphia, Pa. Exhaustive reports were made by most of the officers 

 and committees, outlining the work accomplished during the past 

 year and discussing plans and prospects for the future. 



President Horace F. Taylor in speaking of government control 

 of industries declared that to many of our lumbermen the regula- 

 tions adopted were actually ruthless. The policies were based on 

 theories which had not been tried out in practice. Continuing he 

 said: 



When the agencies of government began at Washington to assume con- 

 trol, and to do so in a manner which was in general so farsighted and 

 intelligent as to command the admiration of us all, and which taken as a 

 whole, proved so tremendously effective in the results achieved, many 

 policies were at the same time adopted which seemed to ignore the or- 

 dinary formulas worked out iu the peace-time experience of industry. 

 Some of these changes were undoubtedly sound. To take a charitable 

 vi^v of others, many were due to the hurried enlistment of an army of 

 individuals placed in positions of great authority, but holding abstract 

 or theoretical notions of business rather than the advantage of practical 

 e.vperience or technical knowledge of the worl; with which they bad to 

 deal. It is entirely fair to say that the national administration itself, 

 In its highest representatives, endorsed and promulgated, and insistj^d 

 upon methods for the conduct of Ijusiness that were the product of theories 

 too closely wedded to what was purely abstract, and devoid of the leaven- 

 ing effect of practical experience, without which the best of theories are 

 always full of danger. 



Theory ov Transpoktation 



One such theory was that products of field and factory should route 

 direct to the ultimate consumer, arbitrarily Ignoring the necessary de- 

 vices developed and approved under free operation of the law of supply 

 and demand, by which the function of distribution is carried out in econo- 

 mical practice. There are certain slogans that have an Immediate popular 

 appeal, and official endorsement of this half-truth, that all middle men are 

 parasites, became a golden text for our friends of academic mind, winning 

 a clamorous support from the many who are quite willing to have their 

 thinking done by other.s, to accept official approval as establishing fact, 

 and to believe that orderly industrial processes, for instance, though 

 sanctified by years of hard experience, can be discarded at will as unneces- 

 sary and out of date. 



One of the earliest results iu our lumber business was to put the whole- 

 saler definitely under the ban. The trying position in which many of our 

 mend)ers were placed appealed at once to the efforts of the National 

 Wholesale Lumber Dealers' Association, that the interests of the whole- 

 saler migUt be accorded the protection to which they were legitimately 



entitled. Your careful consideration of the work undertaken and accomp- 

 lished by this association is urged, and will, I am sure, be entirely con- 

 vincing that no other organization, whatever its claims may be, has ac- 

 complished in fact greater results for the wholesale members of the trade. 

 It would be impossible to recite at length, what has been accomplished 

 by j'our officers and trustees and your many conimittees, without making 

 this report inexcusably long. You have been advised by frequent bul- 

 letins of much of this work, but no display of cold type can express in 

 any adequate M'ay, the measure of individual and collective effort that has 

 been expended. 



Plan of Business Mobilization 



You are all familiar with the organization and the work of the lumber 

 division of the War Industries Board. The responsible heads of that 

 divisitm were selected as qualified to bring to bear upon the nation's lum- 

 ber needs, the broadest and most thorough intelligence and skill available. 

 This plan for the mobilization of our industry was a superb one, and this 

 is said without overlooking the universal frailty of human nature. The 

 members of this division were charged with a responsibility whose weight 

 is scarcely appreciated even by those who were brought into frequent con- 

 tact with the work, much less by the larger number whose relations, if 

 any, did not occasion their familiarity with the task in hand and its very 

 complex ramifications. 



Our army cantonments were built with lumber supplied as If by magic 

 and in quantities unheard of. Lumber and timber for construction abroad, 

 simply gigantic in extent, were supplied with dispatch. Material was 

 furnished for wooden ships, for the uses of our navy, and for the tre- 

 mendous requirements of our railroads whose upkeep and operation in 

 connection with the prosecution of war took on an importance, of which 

 most of us had not conceived. 



In all this great process, our wholesale members as a class were per- 

 mitted to take little or no part at all. Many of them were faced with 

 business ruin, and many others not so seriously affected in a material 

 way, felt that unnecessary ignominy was being imposed upon their re- 

 spectable branch of the hunber trade as wholesalers. The lumber division, 

 however, was charged with a task in which it achieved niKjuestioned suc- 

 cess when viewed from the standpoint of a united national purpose, and 

 now that the emergency has passed, and we arc enjoying the calm of after- 

 thought, I am sure we are all willing In spite of our individual hardships, 

 to accord to the chiefs of the lumber division, our generous credit for 

 wliat was accomplished in so masterful a manner. 

 Facing Difficulties 



The officers of this association were put in a peculiarly difficult posi- 

 tion, in that while they were most zealous in their desire that the associa- 

 tion should be enabled to support the wholesaler in every proper way, 

 their regard for the broad purposes of the authorities at Washington, 

 impelled them to avoid too great hostility to the policies of these same 

 authorities, who they were convinced were men of patriotic purpose, work- 



