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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1955)
0 Multi-Million Oollar Plywood Industry (Celebrates 50th 24,000 Pacific Coast Workers Employed in Fast-Growing Field ' The fir plywood industry, which in 1955 celebrates its 50- year spectacular rise as produc er of "America's Busiest Build ing Materia 1," had humble beginnings in a little box and drum factory on the banks of the Willamette River near Port land, Ore. A few hastily assembled pan els, manufactured for display at the 1905 Lewis and Clark World's Fair Exposition in Port land, marked the birth -jstf an Q industry which in the"hqrt space of a half century blossom ed into a $400,000,000 dollar annual business employing 24, 000 workers in nearly 100 ply wood mills in Washington, Ore gon and California. These are the plants which j compose the western fir ply- wood industry accounting for two-thirds of all the nation's ply wood and 95 per cent of all softwood plywood. During 1955, through their industry trade as sociation known as Douglas Fir Plywood Association, the manu facturers are maintaining a sales promotion program drama tized by the Golden Jubilee Anniversary theme. The industry highlighted 1955 commemorative events with its annual meeting in Portland June 19 through 21 when 50 "Golden Ideas" for building with fir ply wood were unveiled. Selection of Portland as the fecal point for many Jubilee year celebrations honors the city where in the turbulent days of 1905 a handful of wood workers turned out the first plywood panels. First Fir Plywood ' The birth scene was the Port land Manufacturing Co., owned and operated by Peter Autzen and Gustav A. Carlson. Its su perintendent was N. J. Bailey, a lathe expert hired from the mid-West. When World Fair of ficials asked the firm to come up with an exhibit, the three men went to work. Other woods had been used in making panels in the East and in Europe but fir plywood had never been tried. The panel crew at Portland Manufacturing Co. cut fir ve- neer on a crude-St. Joe lathe and drie the veneer for two weeks on a loading dock. Then th veneer was run through a steam kiln ordinarily used for regular lumber. The panels were placed to gether with the glue applied with a hand brush. Ten panels, 3-ply each, were in the first group to go into a home-made press built of planks. Regular house jacks were, used to set the. glue under pressure. But the crudely-made ply wood was a success at the Fair. Easterners asked about it; west erners commented on it. Port land Manufacturing Co. got its first orders soon after the Fair opened. Doors First Us Door manufacturers were the first buyers of the fir plywood and for years the first plants built were simply adjuncts to door firms. Five years after the Portland plant got underway, William C. Wheeler and George R. Osgood began making ply wood for their Tacoma door bus iness. Osgood's son, George J. Osgood, and Henry McCleary began a third plywood mill at McCleary, Wash., in 1911. A second Tacoma plant, Buffelen Manufacturing Co., began mak ing "panels in 1916 to become the fourth fir plywood manufactur er in the Pacific Northwest. By this time, the industry was making inroads into other mar kets. Besides a bustling door panel business, manufacturers began selling plywood for use as trunk stock and for drawer bot toms. World War I curtailed fur ther expansion but in 1920, Craig Spencer and Gus Bartells start ed Elliott Bay Mill company in Seattle, the first plant erected independent of a door panel con cern. In 1921, J. J. Lucas and E. E. Westman, a pair ofTacomans, organized the industry's first worker-owned plant at Olympia, one of the great success stories of the West. They sold $500 shares to 125 workers and started Olympic Veneer comp any. At first there were no pay checks and no profits. Workers lived together, cut each other's hair and cut corners on all oth er expenses. A year after it op ened, the firm was staggering but still on its feet, slowly for ging ahead.. A few years later, success was assured. Olympia Veneer branched out, bought two other plants and finally sold the original plant in 1946, chang ing the name to Associated Ply wood Mills, Inc. Only a few Medford Tribune Second Section MEDFORD, OREGON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1955 Pages 1-12 months ago the firm completed a full cycle of development when it was bought by United States Plywood Corporation. Significantly, about 22 per cent of all fir plywood is now produc ed by worker-owned mills. The roaring 20's saw plywood break into a new and expanding market. Detroit automobile manufacturers ordered hundreds cf thousands of feet of panel material for use in running boards and floor boards, as well as other smaller auto parts. In 1924, the industry produced 125, 000,000 feet of fir plywood. Need for Waterproof Glue But while the growing auto mobile business " provided a much-needed impetus in panel sales, it also pointed up fir ply wood's great early weakness the glueline. For years, animal glue -had been 'used. Later, an adhesive made from casein, a milk derivative, was developed and in 1924, a soya bean glue came on the market. Each was an improvement of the other but all had one draw-back none could give a fully water proof glueline, imposing a def inite ceiling on the industry's potential. . The stock market crash of 1929 was followed by hard times and the Jplywood industry was rocked with a! succession of bad fortune. Detroit slammed the door in its face and quit buying panels for automobiles. "The glueline won't hold up," the car makers said. Several mills closed their doors, temporarily, and one went into receivership. Others were forced to place their crews on a two-day-a-week schedule. Short rations and small pay checks were common but the industry dug in and held. Meanwhile, Harbor Plywood Corporation, a pioneer firm formed in Aberdeen, Wash., in the early 20's saw the hope of a waterproof glueline as the key to future markets previously un touched by plywood. The man agement team headed by A. R. Wuest made a far-sighted move when it set up a small laboratory to look into the problem. Wuest hired Dr. James V. Nev- in to direct Harbor's search for a water-proof glue that would be suitable for volume produc tion of fir plywood. Nevin, a tire less innovator in everything from 3-D screens to new uses for wood waste, was joined by Michael Pasquier, a young Uni versity of Washington chemical engineer at the time and Wil liam Martin, another young tech nical man from the University of Southern California. The trio went to work in the fall of 1933. Days blended into weeks as Nev in and his aides worked day and night. The year 1934 was ply wood's darkest as Nevin raced against contracting markets and falling prices.. In December 1935, Harbor Plywood announced that Nevin nad been successful. He had per fected an exterior glue suitable for production use on fir ply wood. In January 1935, commer cial production of exterior fir plywood began and a short time later, M and M Wood Working Co. at Longview began to pro duce a plywood with a syn thetic phenolic resin waterproof glueline. This development is the most important single technical ad vance in the history of fir ply wood's progress. It meant vast new markets in building, in boats, in farm structures, signs and industrial uses. Today, fully 25 per cent of all fir plywood is exterior type with waterproof glue and some industry leaders look for the day in the future when all fir plywood will be made with waterproof bond. Meanwhile, as the depression years wore on, the manufactur ers intensified their efforts to find a workable program of joint industry promotion. Pre vious attempts at joint promo tion begun in the early 1920's had lapsed or died. In ' 1918, there was another market turndown and the indus try again joined hands, subscrib ing a large joint promotion fund to be administered by Douglas Fir Plywood association. W. E. Difford was brought in to direct the program on the ba sis of his outstanding record as a leading sales promotion execu tive which had brought him an almost legendary reputation as a "healer of sick business." Dif ford brought a new concept to plywood promotion in a program that sparked the most spectac ular era of new growth in the industry's progress. Earlier concepts of quality based primarily on face grading were revised to emphasize the glueline as the key to plywood quality. Standards were set up, c 1 Fir IFlyuooti iepeffits Every tae ti - N iff sSssi JlJ&Ss' t Fifty years ago the first fir plywood was made at Portland, Oregon, and was exhibited that year at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland. To day, the fir plywood industry on the West Coast is a $370,000,000 giant and is still growing. ) . The importance of the plywood industry to the Rogue Valley area is great indeed. Our people are gainfully employed in the woods, in transportation, in the plywood mills and manufacturing plants. And many others benefit as suppliers of materials and services. So today we salute the plywood industry in its 50th year ... its Golden Jubilee Anniversary. J Tii Cross-bonded - 1 '-''w? I nmSm Panels of V . V,:.w. - ' - r. ' iV A V ' nvlli Large. Ught. . I BIG FREE SHOW Sm the big "circus-type" exposition com memorating fir plywood's golden jubilee. See "Golden-ideas" for outdoor-living! See how. plywood is manufactured! See the colorful menagerie of circus ani mals, all made of plywood! See all this, and more, at Medford High Stadium, Saturday and Sunday. TIMBER -PRODUCTS -COJ&PANY MEDFORD, OREGON field exposure studies begun and industry-wide quality control was based on a statistically random ized sampling program.' Difford put trained men in the field to render market level ad vice and service to plywood sup pliers, and users and to contact code officials and lending au torities. Emphasis in advertising was switched from the consumer to the specifier, the architect and builder. Simultaneously, the in dustry concentrated much of its effort on lumber dealers with the result that today they sell 50 per cent of total fir plywood out put. Basic research to develop engineering data on plywood was launched looking toward devel opment of plywood use in ad vanced construction techniques. The industry's product was carefully standardized and DFPA was the first trade association in the country to register an asso ciation grademark. The entire promotion program was keyed to the new grademarks as the banner of quality. With customer confidence in the product building in the field, markets again expanded, and by early 1939 the industry was back on its feet. When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, the nation plunged into war. Thirty-one plywood mills turned over their " entire output to government needs. Plywood built huts and offices and theaters in the South Pa cific and in the Aleutians. Ply wood PT boats staged the first forays against the Japanese dur ing the grim early days of the war and plywood assault boats carried troops across the crucial crossing of the Rhine in 1944. Plywood-made box cars and crates for airplane and ship parts. Plywood 30,000 feet of it went into every Liberty ship built during the war. In one of the great tributes to the soundness of the industry quality control measures insti tuted by DFPA, there was never a government inspector in a ply wood plant during the war. The graaemarK was all that was needed. With victory, tne mills re turned to peace-time production. No "war babies," plywood had not profited but had actually suf fered much from the restrictions of the war. It had to make a fresh start. .' As the post war housing boom hit the .nation, plywood was I peace-time housing. As fast as ready. Millions' of feet of fir ply- new families formed, homes had wood went into GI and other to be built. The lightweight, easy- o . i'rthtiay to-handle plywood panels proved (Continued on Page 3) Contributes to the Prosperity and Stability of Jackson County The fir plywood industry as a major payrdftl builder in this area is well known. In addition to direct wages, the industry also spends thousands of dollars yearly for supplies, services, taxes, licenses, fees. Every store, every office, every service station, every bank, every public utility in Jackson Courv---ty benefits either directly or indirectly from the fir plywood industry in our locality. " ' . ; The business of manufacturing fir plywood is 50 years old this year, so we are happy to join the Nation's salute to this $370,000,000 West Coast industry. And we have faith that as hew markets . . . new uses . . . are de veloped for fir plywood, our region will continue to grow and prosper. BIG FREE SHOW To commemorate fir plywood's 50th an niversary, a colorful circus-type exposition has been arranged, and will appear at Med ford High School grounds, Saturday and Sunday, Oct: 22 and 23. Hours 2 to 9 p.m. each day. This show will entertain, will in form, will show how fir plywood can add to your living pleasure when used around your home . . . indoors or outdoors. There's something of interest for all ages, so plan to attend. I TxWfl Cross-bonded S 1905 III 1955) T4 17 COOT HORBHAl. DAHtf MTOfOftO BRANCH UTS BUIIO OSEGON TOGfMEK TV ltlilkv if ff' jilt ! See new "Golden Ideas for indoor-outdoor living I. See sound-color movies on plywood manufacture. V See colorful "menagerie of fir plywood circus animals. l See dramatic displays ""TV depicting plywood industry's growth and importance. IN MEDFORD Hctoter 22-2 2 p.m.til 9 p.m. AT THE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL GROUNDS MEDFORD o 0
