AMERICAN TIMBER

Hokitika Guardian, 24 December 1920, Page 3

AMERICAN TIMBER

A NEW ZEALANDER’S IMPRESSIONS.

A Wellington business man, Mr C. Odlin, who is connected with the timber trade, has returned to Wellington from a trip to America with a number of interesting points for New Zealand timber users. He says that enterprising Americans have now control over the majority of Canadian mills. In June and July this year the lumber trade was buoyant, due to vast demands from the East, largely from China and Japan, but in September the bottom began to fall out of the market and many of the big mills closed down. The object of this seemed to be to restrict trade and hold up prices rather than to go on cutting and bringing down prices. Some of the mills which censed operations were cutting as much' as from oOO,oooft to 000,000 ft per day, employing about 300 hands. Numbers of men were thrown out of employment. .Labour conditions were so vastly different there from here that such trifles as that would not be felt. The men would move out East to be absorbed in manufacturing industries there. Prices came down towards the end of September, but shortage of shipping made it difficult to take advantage of this. As far

as New Zealand and Australia were | concerned, there were practically no ships available. Mr Odlin secured the Union Company’s chartered vessel Rona for a cargo, but this boat was held up at San Francisco by a strike, the seamen refusing to sail unless they received an additional 25 per cent wages, because of benzine being carried. Oregon pine could be bought in America to-day at 35 dollars per 1000 ft and freight to New Zealand, when procurable, cost another 35 dollars per 1000 ft, making the landing cost about 70 dollars. “Before the war,” said Mr Odlin, “we used to buy it at from 8 dollars to 12 dollars and pay from 14 to 15 dollars freight.” . . Then New Zealand Customs duties added considerably to expenses. American doors, for instance —some factories were turning out as many as 5000 a day had to pay duty of 10s each. They were a good article, better, perhaps, than those made by hand, and were used largely in the cheaper class:'cottage in New Zealand. Three-ply panelling, also an American specialty used largely in the Dominion had to pay a duty of 'froffi 12s to 15s per 100 ft. They couid bo obtained from Canada at less duty, but Canada’s manufacturers were negligible.

“The American lumber forests,” said Mr Qdlin, “were really wonderful. 1 motored through one redwood forest in California for 150 miles, all the way on a concrete road. Our forests here could not compare with them. There is no replanting necessary, the firs replanting themselves. The greatest care, however, is exercised in their preservation, and tile utmost precautions enforced against destruction by devastating fires. The system they adopt shows the American mind. All through the summer aeroplanes wheel overhead, observing for fires. Should any. break out, extinguishing bombs are dropped. Along the roads and highways are posted conspicuous notices • informing the public that the law empowers foresters, of whom there are many, to call upon anyone at any time to assist in fighting fires if they occur.”