The Sun SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1928. TIMBER TRADE’S S.O.S.

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 288, 25 February 1928, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1928. TIMBER TRADE’S S.O.S.

IF there were a prospect of a drop in building costs, the public of New Zealand would see at least one satisfactory feature of the parlous plight of the timber industry. But no such compensating factor is in sight. Hence the consumers’ lack of sympathy with those who suffer depression in the timber trade. Mills in the city are working on a five-day week; mills in the country are working with skeleton crews; and unemployment is hanging, like a spectre, above fifty per cent of the men employed in the industry. But there is no hint that prices are to fall. If anything, prices will rise. The tendency in that-direction has been accentuated by the extra 3s imposed on every 100 feet of imported timber by legislators professing an acute anxiety to help indigenous timbers to a wider market, Unfortunately, the duty intended <to keep out American timbers has had not the slightest effect in checking their flow into the country. Instead, it has tended to increase the price of building. There is so much to be said for American timbers that it is impossible to pen a sweeping condemnation of their use. At the same time the investigator must conclude that the increasing use of American timbers in New Zealand is largely the result of an artificial preference created within New Zealand itself. One active agent in the propagation of this popularity for an overseas product is the Auckland City Council’s by-law enforcing the use of only heart weatherboards. An increasing use of imported redwood and cedar is a notable result of the ban, which has amazed many students of industrial economies, and raised the price of building by that amount which millers have to charge for waste on account of the small percentage of heart in the average log. The Government’s demand for heart timber in Stateassisted dwellings has been another factor in raising a prejudice against the cheaper lines of New Zealand timbers. These are post-war measures, and dozens of the responsible legislators, civic and parliamentary, themselves dwell in houses of sap timber. Were it suggested that their homes were rotten, or in danger of rotting, they would bridle with indignation. Another queer feature of the timber industry is the embargo on exports. New Zealand can import to her heart’s content so long as her deluded people are willing to pay their money to Uncle Sam, but she is not allowed to return the compliment by marketing her own commodity abroad. As a result it is possible that formerly profitable export channels are now closed for ever. If they can be reopened there should be a good demand in Australia for the type of. sap rimu that the fastidious Auckland City Council will not have at any price. Given outside markets, the millers may be encouraged to introduce reforms in methods and improvements in plant. Reduction of waste would help the industry materially. In an investigation of the timber industry The Sun has shown that conflicting interests clash within and without. No two architects, builders, or timber-men think alike as to the virtues of this timber or that. Some architects, for instance, favour American timbers without being able to furnish very clear, practical reasons for their preference. Oregon doors are going into the homes of a number of people who do not know why they want them, and the doors are supplied by joiners who know quite well that at the same price the sap rimu door is a better and more handsome proposition. On the one hand an architect finishes his house with a little-known New Zealand timber; on the other another architect roundly condemns its use. If the Government be concerned, as it should be, about the plight of the timber industry, it should start by ascertaining beyond argument the serviceability of every New Zealand timber. It should be able to say what woods are suitable for interior decoration, and what may make fruit-eases. Moreover, the Government should insist on uniform by-laws among local bodies, and if there are fallacies it should explode them. Then it should, simply from the point of view of rational economics, allow New Zealand to capitalise its timber resources abroad, and finally it should inquire into the occasional mysterious ways of the timber ring, that powerful association of the merchant timber interests, which, when trade was good a few years back, piled up such riches that it is chiefly for the workers and small men that sympathy will be felt now that the timber trade is tottering.