ADDRESS BEFORE 



THE ORGANIZATION MEETING OF THE HARDWOOD 

 MANUFACTURERS' INSTITUTE, LOUISVILLE, KY., 



JUNE 16, 1922. 

 By Wm. A. Durgin. 

 Gentlemen : 



These are pregnant days for the lumbermen! The 

 recent disscussions of your various groups with the Nation- 

 al Lumber Manufacturers' Association at the Department 

 of Commerce, may be regarded as the first step in a move- 

 ment which, we hope, will co-ordinate all parts of the great 

 lumber industry in the development of essential unity in 

 standards of service, of product and of business ethics. 

 While these discussions were essentially preliminary in 

 character, the interest shown by producers, distributors 

 and users, and the almost unanimous determination to go 

 forward in straightening out the tangle of grades, names, 

 sizes and inspection rules which now exist, give most en- 

 couraging promise of the prompt formulation and adoption 

 of genuine correctives. 



Any one of these specific measures toward simplifica- 

 tion or standardization may well prove of great import, but 

 the underlying basis the development of wise self-govern- 

 ment under the inspiration of the industries' now leaders 

 is of far greater importance. The real question, we think, 

 is whether the lumber group can thus make effective the 

 wisdom and vision which some of its leaders possess in de- 

 terming a farsighted policy of high public service and of 

 fundamentally sound practice, or whether the lumber indus- 

 try and other great industries will permit the blindness of 

 immediate self-interest and of clique jealousies to so dom- 

 inate, that the great consuming public must, in self-defense, 

 insist upon Federal regulation as the only possible correct- 

 ive to the inevitable iniquities of an utterly self ish program. 



This matter of sound self-government, as repeatedly 

 emphasized by Secretary Hoover, is fundamental to every 

 great industry, but, gentlemen, it is of especial significance 

 to lumbermen. 



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