Popguns to the Rescue?

Is there going to be a shortage of lumber in the timber-rich U.S.? If so, why, and what will cure it? These were the crucial questions that the Senate's hardworking Truman Committee asked U.S. lumber authorities last week. The Senators got mostly equivocal answers but they brought to light a Washington wrangle that has been seething for months--and now has ended on the President's desk.

All Over Popguns. To the trade a "popgun" mill is a tiny sawmill largely supplied, and often run, by farmers and small-towners in their spare time. There are, according to the U.S. Forest Service, some 32,000 of these popgun mills in the U.S. but only a fraction of them now produce any lumber to speak of. For they are too small to be assured of any market in the midst of huge orders centrally placed, or to be able to cope with Federal regulations limiting prices, shipments, etc.

As long ago as last February the U.S. Forest Service foresaw trouble in lumber and began thinking about a plan to get the popguns into the war: they wanted to use $100,000,000 of Commodity Credit Corp. funds as a central pool to buy and sell whatever the popguns could be persuaded to produce. But when the plan was submitted to WPB's Lumber Division, under Masonite Corp. President Ben Alexander, it hit a don't-flood-the-market school of thought and bogged down.

Ben Alexander thinks--as he told the Truman Committee last week--that the only thing wrong with lumber is that the big mills and loggers are not working at capacity for lack of manpower and machines. Why help the little fellow when the big, efficient producer was not working full time? "Good God," he reportedly cried to one lumberman recently, "lumber will be coming out of our ears after the war."

To this the Forest Service replied that the little fellow subtracted nothing from the big producer, since popgun production involved part-time work by people who would not man the big mills anyway. Besides, popguns might add as much as six billion board feet to the total U.S. lumber supply.

Proof of the Pudding. There was no ready statistical answer to this two-sided argument. The bemused Senators last week heard estimates from the two camps proving a 1943 gap between all "essential" needs and total production of as high as 12.2 billion board feet (more than one-third of hoped-for production and imports) and no shortage at all for essential needs. But there was agreement on two central points: 1) there is no overall shortage of lumber for military needs; 2) but there is not enough lumber to fill all civilian demands. For wood is the last-gasp substitute for practically every other scarce material. Though production is 4% below 1941 levels, unfilled orders have skyrocketed to nearly 30% above last year (see chart).

In all this hullabaloo the Forest Service had one further talking point that may sway Layman Roosevelt to rule in its favor. The only obvious way to prove whether or not the popguns can rescue the nation from the threatened lumber shortage is to let them try. If a way can also be found to give the big mills more labor and machinery, that would be just so much more gravy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.