LUMBER MEN.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 March 1926, Page 1

LUMBER MEN.

|C A 1.1 FOR >7l AN VISITORS. CHRISTCHURCH, March 10. " Say. you people don’t know what you possess here; you don’t know you're awake! You have a regular little Garden of Eden, and you are not advertising it. You are saying nothing about it; maybe you are wise.” In this picturesque language an American lumber man answered the parting enquiry of a, representative of “The Press,” who elicited some facts from him yesterday about the timber industry of California. TJio lumber man was Air Hugh M. Cochran, of the Union I. umber Company, San Francisco, chairman of a Commission investigating ihe conditions for marketing Californian redwood (sequoia sempervirons) in Australia and Now Zealand. The other members of the party arc Messrs 11. E. Crawford (Pacific Lumber Company, Scotia, Cal.), IT. F. Faull (Hammond Lumber Company, Cal.), and .T. 11. Quill (Humboldt Stevedoring Company. Eureka, Cal.). They have already conferred with the timber interests in Auckland, "Wellington and Dunedin. and met local merchants yesterday, proceeding later to Wellington by the ferry steamer. I A! PROVING TRADE AfETHODS.

New Zealand is not a large consumer of redwood, said Mr Cochran, and was never likely to import very largo quantities, hut if there was any way in which they could serve the New Zealand trade, luev would ho glad to recommend any changes which might be defined advisable, and which would bo mutually advantageous through tile removal of emmomic waste. The redwood’s history was the same in every part of the world—no insect or other pest had ever been found to attack it successfully. Complete reports of its uses in South and Central America. China and the Philippines had been prepared. “Whatever amount of it you take,” said Air Cochran, “we want to deliver it under the host, possible economic conditions. We also want to see what you are using il for, and how you are

using it.” “ Do you regard conditions here as favourable Io reafforestation?” Mr Cochran was asked. “Yes, very,” was ihe reply. “ There are plenty of areas which could not ho used advantageously for other purposes. Afforestation must, he economically sound, and it will he so if based on the availability of land that can be devoted to that purpose to as good advantage as or better than for other purposes. In California the lumber interests set out about two million trees a year on well watered, shelving, but very broken country.”