Greetings.

Progress, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 1 December 1921, Page 88

Greetings.

As the Christmas season will be upon us by the time this issue appears, we take this opportunity of wishing our many sawmiller friends " A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year," and though the industry at present may be suffering from dearth of orders and general depression we hope those engaged in it will be able to cast off their cares for the moment and enjoy the brief holiday that is customary at this season. (Forget that bridge that wants renewing and the big bench which must have new foundations !) Also we wish them to "Be of good cheer," for though the worst effects of the present financial stringency may not yet have passed, we feel convinced that the depression so far as it affects the timber industry, cannot be of very long duration, and that there are better times ahead in the not distant future. Nothing could be more gloomy than the state and prospects of the industry in 1908 and 1909, but that storm was weathered, and sawmillers have travelled far along the path of progress and learned many lessons since then, and we urge them to "keep a stiff upper lip" and take no backward step, for we cannot allow the industry to revert to the state of things that existed in.those dark days. The time when the unfortunate sawmiller was earning for himself in most cases a return far below what he would have received had he been working for someone else, worked longer hours than probably anyone else in the country and lived in a "slab hut" in the backblocks absolutely lost sight of by the "passing world." At that time the merchant was the "top-dog" and took princely toll from the product of the sawmiller, had his suburban villa and every luxury of the time, while the sawmiller's "nose was too

close to the grindstone" to allow him to even see what was happening outside the bush clearing wherein was set his mill and "Little Grey Home in the West." Such days must not be allowed to return.