352 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



mills are running only 8 hours per day or 5 days per week. I am 

 endeavoring to get as much of a curtailment as possible but it is 

 pretty hard to hold some of them in line, as we have a great many 

 mills that through pure cussedness will not curtail, in fact, one or two 

 of them sawed more lumber in 1911 than they did in 1907. Then of 

 course we have a good many who are in such financial condition that 

 they are unable to curtail, but even with all this, at the present time 

 we are having a very large curtailment, which I hope will continue 

 until the first of July or until conditions improve."^^ 



A report of a mass meeting of shingle manufacturers held in 

 Seattle, December 19, 1905, appearing in the Pacific Lumber Trade 

 Journal of January, 1906 (p. 46), contained the following: "In 

 calling the meeting to order President Bass reported that out of 

 299 straight shingle mills in western Washington, 252 mills were then 

 cooperating in the close-down policy, and out of forty-seven mills 

 outside the fold, not to exceed twenty-five were able to operate steadily 

 owing to log jams, water conditions, and the car shortage. At the 

 meeting, five more mills signed up the closing agreement, making 257 

 out of the possible 299 mills to be secured. He also stated that the 

 mills had up $120,000 in cash forfeitures with which to bind their 

 agreement and the actual curtailment effected was not short of 

 36,000,000 shingles a day." 



Regarding the extent and effectiveness of this close-down, the 

 Pacific Lumber Trade Journal (February, 1906) had the following 

 to say: "The 'close-down' was an absolute and unqualified success. 

 Ninety-three per cent of the shingle manufacturers in Western Wash- 

 ington were identified with the movement, and not one broke the 

 agreement. As a result of this curtailment probably 5,000 cars of 

 shingles were kept off the eastern markets during a season when 

 shingles cannot go into consumption and when buying is of a purely 

 speculative nature. The benefit that this 'close-down' has been to the 

 manufacturer is represented in an advance of from thirty-five to 

 fifty cents a thousand on the several grades. If these prices slump it 

 will be the fault of the manufacturers, who now have the situation 

 well in hand, and, by cooperating, can eliminate many of the unneces- 



38 "Lumber Industry," IV, 467. 



