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About The news-review. (Roseburg, Or.) 1948-1994 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 1951)
4 Thi Nwi-RWtw Roieburg, Of. Tuts.. Nov. 13, If 51 Fulton Lewis Jr. In The Day's News ubllilio Daily Suneey b tin Newi-Review Company. Inc. lolonS e..O owM.r M. 1. im thj ',', "" " ...... nAaB. aniti Ml ! March ! IDWIN L. KNAPP Manaaer Member Hit Auocloroe' , Oreoon NiwiMH1 Pueltaheri CHARLES V. STANTON Editor AMOClOtlOH, TOO AUOIT BWUM WW ,ltu,,tl t, fV0r.BOl.LIBA CO. INC, otflr.t I. N.O I.rk. CUe.sO. tTBICRIPTION ATES-1. 0,.,..-BT "-". K,JlV2 ;.... I... Ib.o ... T..r. m; . O.I.M. Or.i..- Ml- POPE & TALBOT PLANS By CHARLES V. STANTON Would cooperative sustained yield contracts between agencies managing federally - owned timber and private operators reduce resource waste? We have contended in this column that they would. Small sawmill operators, through their association, say the contracts would rot benefit the waste situation and would be an invasion of free enterprise. The small operators won the first round in the coopera tive contract battle and have prevented to date the consuma tion of any such contract in Oregon. It appears, however, that the issue is not dead. We recently had a most enjoyable conference with Mr. Hillman Lueddemann. Mr. Lueddemann is a veteran tim ber operator. He is president of the West Coast Lumber men's association, and vice-president and general manager of Pope & Talbot, Inc. , Pope & Talbot operate the large mill at Oakridge. Ine company has made application for a cooperative contract involving a large body of timber on the Middle Fork of the Willnmette river. The working circle contains approxi mately six and one-half billion feet of timber, of which Pope & Talbot holds slightly more than one billion feet in inter mingled private ownership. . A part of the working circle reaches into the Umpqua national forest. We have previously mentioned the danger of losing a part of our national forest backlog of timber resource to Oakridge. Mr. Lueddemann contends that the proposed contract would be to our advantage, inasmuch as the working circle is designed to reach only to the top of the divide. This timber, he says, is tributary, by topog raphy, to the Oakridge operation and would be costly to transport into the Roseburg area. The cooperative contract, he declares, would confine Pope & Talbot to the working circle, taking it out of competition for timber on the Doug las county side of the divide and virtually sealing off the reserve we claim as our own from invasion from the north. Plan Full Utilization We questioned Mr. Lueddemann in detail concerning his company's plan for timber utilization. Ho .informed us that the Middle Fork stand of timber runs to about 40 percent defect. In other words, the com pany cuts 100,000,000 board feet of logs to obtain 60,000,000 board feet suitable for transportation to its sawmill. About 30,000,000 board feet of defective logs are left in the woods to be burned. Current regulations of the U. S. forest serv ice require transportation of a log to the mill if it is at least one-third merchantable. Thus the Oakridge plant brings m 10,000,000 board feet of unusable material in connection with its annual cut of 60,000,000 board feet. Given a cooperative contract covering the Middle Fork working circle, Pope & Talbot is prepared to invest im mediately in processes to utilize as much of this defective material us possible, Mr. Lueddemann reports. Within five years from the granting of the contract, he says, full utilization will be in progress. He estimates that utilization of the working circle's resource could be in creased at least 20 percent. The company plans installation of a pulp plant at a cost of from 12 to 15 million dollars. It also is considering hard and soft board production, together with veneer and plywood operations to permit extraction of the highest val ues from logs. Source of Supply Essential Should the cooperative contract be obtained, Bays Mr. Lueddemann, the company is prepared to invest many mil lions of dollars in its expansion program. Yet its total cut of trees will be no more than at present. Pope & Talbot, however, cannot afford to risk this sum of money unless guaranteed a permanent source of supply, he declares. Without arguing other factors connected with the issue. we cite the Pope & Talbot case in support of the argument we have previously presented that cooperative contract pro cedure will increase utilization and reduce the waste of our lorest resource. If Pope & Talbot succeed in the effort to obtain the de sired agreement, the company probably will spend in the iieigiiunruooa oi ?u,uuu,uuu witnin tne next five years in expanding its plant. It will utilize 20 percent more of the resource. It possibly will double the number of employes. If it fails in getting a contract, and has no assurance of a continuing supply of timber, the company probnblv will continue as at present with a 40 percent resource waste. 2 WASHINGTON President Truman put on a great act when he piously issued his recent statement that the col lector's offices in the bureau of internal revenue should be non-political. He acted surprised to find the bureau was loaded with political fixers, inefficient supervisors and small change thieves. ENDING BASKET Yesterday (he telephone rang at the Roberts home across hishway 38 and my neighbor, with perhaps no mure uioukhi man you or 1 as to who might be calling, an swered the ring. Her son, her only son, had been struck by a falling tree. . . she would heir his voice now only in memory. So the Roberts, little Bonnie too, nave journeyed sadly to the north ern city where the stricken family waits their coming. Sympathy of all who know the Roberts is theirs, without a doubt, this weekend, and the understanding hearts of other motners who have lost sons will go out to the newly bereaved one. One more life has been added to the toll taken by the woods that the world may have lumber lumber for the war in Korea, lum lumber even for new houses here. The woods do not yield their trees easily. To be sure, it It said, "Oh, life n the woods is easier than it used to be. Mechanized. Safety Erecautions. Not like It used to e-' But tell tjne, can on ever I pick up the News-Review without j reading another accident report of someone nun, oiten fatally, in the woods, or in the activities imme diately following the falling of the trees? There is talk about the "hlh price of lumber" these days. But there is a higher price not to be paid for in money. It is the price paid by the men who work in the woods, or with the logs, and their families who are bereaved when a tree falls. . . a log rolls. . . a Piece oi nimner flips uilHIv .nH destructively in the mill. The work in the wiwli l ImJ of service, too a hard, danger ous, also unpredictable service. And this week on highway 38, and wherever the news has reached the Roberts' friends, there is heartfelt sympathy over the loss of their son, loss of another man who has given his life in the woods, Mr. Truman has been aware since 1948 of exactly how badly some of his political henchmen have operated various collector's offices. The house appropriations committee that year conducted a lengthy investigation of the inter nal revenue bureau, unearthing waste, conniving and theft. There was adequate publicity at the time and it is unlikely that the President failed to read the charges. Chinging the status of collec tors from patronage payoffs to civil service will not cure what is wrong with the bureau of inter nal revenue. For insance, in one phase of the 1B48 house report, compiled by Robert E. Lee, chief clerk of the committee at the time, investigators discovered that doz ens of deputy collectors were little more than political haclt;. Here are a few samples of what committee Investigators found when they applied a simple test of training and experience to the collector's offices. Birmingham, Alabama, 35 dep uty collectors unfit; Little Rock, Arkansas, 16 unfit; San Francisco, California, 43 unfit; Los Angeles, 93 unfit; Hartford, Connecticut, 28 unfit; Chicago, 11 unfit; Balti more, Maryland, 13 unfit; Louis ville, Kentucky, 14 unfit. And those are just a few of the offices visited. And just to refresh the Presi dent's memory, here is a sample of what the house investigators had to say back in 1948 about how the collectors had been operating their offices: "The collector exercises certain patronage activities in that he frequently shifts employees and somcUmes releases them when possible to provide positions of responsibility for his friends in the office. Because of this situation employees in the 64 collection dis tricts must curry favor with each collector and this is frequently done to the detriment of the bu reau as a whole. In the interest of economy and efficiency the patronage system should be elim inated and all activities in the field consolidated under the collector." One of the worst offices the probers visited was in Boston. They grilled Denis W. Delaney, the collector, who appeared to function solely as a siphon for col lecting funds for the Democratic national committee. Delaney now has been ousted from his job, but it took from 1948 to 1951 for the President to make up his mind. Mr. Truman knew all along how Delaney was behaving and so did the President's top assistant, Mat thew J. Connelly. Here is a copy of a letter Delaney sent to Con nelly in October of 1947, which may explain why there had to be a long series of scandals bef ire Mr. Tru man acted: "Dear Matt: You may recall that I talked with you regarding Frank Kraemer, collector of in ternal revenue for Connecticut, and his difficulty. Frank called me this morning and informed me that the case has been referred from the attorney general's office to the office of the United States attorney for Connecticut who hap pens to be Adrian Maher. The federal grand jury has not con vened as yet in Connecticut and Kraemer thinks that Maher will present his case to the grand jury for indictment when and if it con venes. "I do not know what you can do, but it does appear a shame that one of our boys is being pen alized for doing what comes nat urally. Will you let me know what I can pass along to Kraemer?" The letter was signed by Denis Delaney. Kraemer's trouble was with the Hatch act, which prohibits political activities for certain government employees. He was eventually in dicted, and fined Jl ,000 the Hart ford office of the bureau tells me, but , stayed on the internal rev enue bureau payroll for another year. Hear Fulton Lewis Daily On KRNR, 4:00 P.M. And 9:15 P. M. The flrr ean.l nMiniotinif f Superior and Huron was built in nvi ay uia noruiwesi rur to. Let Big Concerns Develop Oil Fields, Old Timer Says ROSEBURG Your editorial in The News-Review of Nov. 1 about the drilling at Coles Val ley and the dilemma of Oil Devel opers, Inc., prompts me to reply. I am not a stockholder of the company so have no axe to grind one way or another. The oublished offer of a maior oil company to take over the jres ent wildcat development interests me for several reasons. Prior to coming to Oregon and changing professions, I had been, since quite a young man, connected with the oil business. First on producing wells, then on rotary drilling wells from a "roughneck" (a term ap- puca to me crew of a rotary string) to driller. Later, in a large refinery, eventually working up to foreman ot a 250.ooo,ooo gasoline cracking plant. I went all through the big boom of the '28s in south ern California Signal Hill, Santa Fe Springs, Huntington Beach, Torrance, to name a few. I've seen hundreds yes hundreds of small companies start up and have seen most all of the same hun dreds of small companies lost or swallowed up by the major ones seldom to the advantage of the original organizers of the s m a 1 1 companies. At Signal Hill, within a year or so of the discovery by the Shell Oil company, there were nearly 200 individual small companies op erating on the Hill. Two years later, few If any were left. The major companies had them all at least they had the wells and, I repeat, seldom to the advantage of the original organizers and stockholders. It is a fact that of the vast number of oil fields discovered in the U. S., almost none has been successfully developed by the small original operator. It is too big a job; too many ways a mil lion dollars can become necessary for successful completion of a wild cat oil project to make it feasible for any but the big boys to suc cessfully undertake the venture. There is a lot more to bringing in an oil well than punching a deep hole in the ground. For example: A modern rotary outfit carries what is called "open hole" for three or four thousand feet. That is, no pipe (casing) is used. The hole is held up by a hTavy clav mud circulated by pumps through the drill nine to the hnttnm nf ih.. hole, then back on the outside of the drill pipe to the survace again, thus "mudding up" the hole and preventing caving. Much water strata is passed through in drilling. This water has to be shut off from any oil sand, as water, being heavier than oil, would displace the oil. Thus many thousands of feet of heavy pipe must be placed in the hole and cement pumped to the bottom and up the outside of the casing for two or three thou sand feet. Then thhis cement plug is drilled out before drilling on into the oil bearing sand. More casing must be aet as the hole decpeni and the nit ot the hole decreases, necessitating perhaps two or three strings of casing be fore a well can he broight in. All this is very expensive. In a new, unproved field, many things can develop that can cost plenty. The deeper the hole the deeper the trouble you can get into fishing jobs: recovering drill pipe, drill collars, bits, etc., that can, and often do, twist off. Bringing the oil to the surface, the only place it is of value, in volves more expense than is ap parent to the eye. Getting it to the refinery, where it must be to be come petroleum products, is more expensive. It is unlikely that the major com' panics will lack a way to acquire most of the oil in any new Held, They ilwojs do. They know too many Iricks and have too much money for any minor organization to stop them successfully. I repeat, history shows few, if any, new fields to be brought in to being by a small company benefiting in the end. Making a favorable deal with a bona fide major oil company at the present stage of develop ment would, to my mind, be smart business; providing, of course, that such company guaranteed to drill at least two test holes to depth of nine thousand or ten thousand feet and that a reason able royalty be conveyed on all oil brought to surface on the lands under lease at the time the deal was consumated. It would be a noble gesture for these pioneers of possible oil de velopment in Douglas county to let the major companies carry the very expensive and very uncertain burden of bringing in an oil field, if one exists here.lt is safer, surer and, if oil is found, will bring a much greater benefit to this locality and reward to them selves than by continuing deeper and deeper with a hole in .the ground, in unknown formation, and perhaps deeper and deeper in the financial hole. These men of Oil Developers, Inc., are to bt highly commended for bringing the attention of a major company to the possibilities of oil in our county. I, for one, would like to see them rewarded. As for an oil boom here, oh, brother! It you think a tim ber boom, is rough, try an oil boom sometime. I went all through one. It's crazy, but exciting. But let the big companies de velop the oil fields. It is safer that way. It always has been. I be lieve it always will be. DICK FIRMAN Roseburg, Ore. Former Problem Child Sentenced For Holdup INDIANAPOLIS -(.fl -Thi only son of a problem child coun selor is going to prison for a liquor store holdup. inor Christian Gran Jr.. 27. Lan- non, Wis., pleaded guilty to an armed robbery charge, admitting he shot a clcrh In the face Aug. 29 and ran away with $32 from the till. He was sentenced to a term of 10 to 25 years. By FRANK JENKINS (Continued from Page 1) trees and oleanders. The oleanders are just passing the height of their blooming season. Alfalfa fields so green and lovely you look at mem ana say it cam De true, that nothing could be as green and beautiful as that. Grapefruit orchards, and orange and lemon trees scattered in the lawns just to look pretty. And lettuce fields stretching toward the horizon. And aU kinds of winter vegetables, now just getting good start., And, of course,, cotton. Cotton ai far as you can see. The fields of tender young vege table plants are bordered by what look like white cotton hose. You wonder what the heck, think maybe they're for irrigation, fi nally get out to examine them and find they're strips of paper. At the bottom or them, quicklime is scat tered. Then you begin to note that there are caterpillars, woolly ones. crawling about. They all crawl in one direction. The strips of paper, with the quicklime at the bottom, are fenc&s to keep the caterpil lars out of the vegetables. It works, too. That's American in genuity for you. And so on. mile after mile. At tractive, comfortable houses, bur ied in trees, for it's hot down here, and shade is salubrious. Bermuda grass lawns almost as green as the alfalfa fields. Glitter ing automobiles standing in the driveways. You know that if you went Into the houses you'd find electric re frigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, the hot country miracle of air conditioning in short, the American way of life. Then Practically without warning You come to the Mexican bor der. At the little town of San Luis. Half of it on the American side, the other half on the Mexican. There is the usual border gate. You pass through it. Doin so, YOU PASS INTO AN OTHER WORLD. No more graceful, lovely homes. Adobe huts instead. No green lawns. Just dust. You know that if you entered these bouses there would be no electric refrigerators, no dishwashers no gadgets of any kind to lighten the labors of housewives. No air conditioning. Bevond the borders of the vil lage are no lush fields. No green alfalfa. No cotton. No fat-backed cattle. No glittering automobiles. There are some cars, yes, but mostly they are battered old has beena. Only the dust and the cae. tus and the mesquite, as far as you con kc, Yet the soil Is the same. And the climate is the same. And there is even the Mexican canal, com ing down from the Colorado, and carrying Mexico's share of the wa ter for those who want to use it. You see its banks winding away in me aisiance. And the people on the streets? Well, they're Deoole and nn. pie everywhere are pretty decent if you treat them right, if you're as decent to them as you'd like them to be to you. Mexicans are really NICE people, innately irienaiy ana courteous. As a gen eral rute, mai is. Americana are generally nice people, too, but there arc some awful bounder among us. But the STANDARD OF LIV ING of the people of the Mexican village is atartlingly lower than that of the people of the Ameri can small town, 50 yards away and tuviaea omy oy an imaginary line. WHY? That's a tough question. Many prickly problems are wrapped up 1.. it D.it nflWDKTU L'UT K. lot to do with it. And schooling, which is provided or not provided by government according to gov ernment'! attitude toward the peo ple. UP TO NOW, at least, our gov ernment has provided FREE EN TERPRISE for our citizens, along with free schooling. Under the free enterprise system, you enjoy what you yourself produce. In our coun try, free enterprise has been FREE TO EVERYBODY. In Mex ico, again speaking in general terms, it has been free only to the BIG PEOPLE. That makes a lot of difference. Above all, in Mexico, TOO MUCH POWER HAS BEEN HELD IN TOO FEW HANDS TOO LONG. Much too long. CENTURIES too long. Up on our side, we've had the good sense, st far, not to leave too much power in too few hands TOO long. That accounts, in sur prisingly large measure, for the present excellence of our system. Anyway, If you ever get to feel ing low about our country, I'd ad vise you to go south to the in ternational border and step across and have a look at what you see. It will open your eyes to i lot of things you never thought much about before. i '.V I' - (Mt. For tht finttt txomplt of high way Mftty. t For courtoiy of tho rood. For highway old whon yoifro In rool dlttrtu. For attention to duty dUvor tag tho goodt'on timo. For httplng provido you with tho finest cottcurlina dittribo lion lytltm in tho Wott. to 'Ms 7 m)(IDID)(&IE "" MORE FOR YOUR MONEY In style, beauty, roominess, riding ease and dependability THE DOIX.i; "SHOW DOU Y WAY Where others give vou self . , . tho Dodga "Show Down Way" gives you PROOFI This fir booklet ulU oil -lets von com pare new con on specific frarurrs everyone wants in the car he buys. It gives you tho Towdown" - feature by feature on exactly wht you're getting when vou buy a naw ear. 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