Job for Paul Bunyan

For the first time ever the U.S. faces a lumber shortage.

The U.S. needs four billion more board feet of lumber this year than it is likely to get--seven billion more than it has used in any year since 1929--37 billion in all. One reason is the switch from metal to wood forced by the metal shortages. Another is the vast expansion in construction since Pearl Harbor, now estimated to require 25 billion board feet. Manufactured articles will take 3.4 billion; crates and boxes, 7 billion.

With demand soaring, Pacific Coast lumber production (almost half the total) has lagged behind 1941 every month this year, mainly for want of skilled and willing lumberjacks. Last week Donald Nelson found the situation so critical that he named a West Coast lumber tsar, asked lumber workers to give up their vacations; operators to cut the best and most accessible lumber this year; State Governors to allow logs to be hauled on Sunday; draft boards to defer skilled lumber workers; all concerned to reduce labor turnover.

Lumber stocks on June 6 were only 2.6 billion board feet, against 3.1 billion a year before. Prospect now is that civilians will soon find lumber almost as hard to buy as rubber.

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