BIG TIMBER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1937, Page 9

BIG TIMBER.

AMONG THE KAURI. MR. D. L. CLAYTON'S LIFE. OFFICE BOY TO MANAGER. The career of Mr. D. L. J. Clayton— "Daniel Clayton." as he would tell you —would make an excellent subject for one of those tales with a moral. He began with the Kauri Timber Company on September 1, 1892, as office boy, and he is retiring this week, 44$ years later, as managing-director. But Mr. Clayton would not like to be written up in that way; in fact, he had objections to-day to being written up at all. He had a tale to tell, though, and it came out. In the history of New Zealand 44 years is a long time. The 'nineties were the time when throughout the province : there were fine stan<l» of timber; thousands of acres of tall kauri and other natives; when the breaking of a north-easterly and of rain was the signal for the release of great dams of timber in the creeks and rivers, and when fleets of scows carried many thousands of feet of kauri into Auckland Harbwur. At that time his company was milling 80 to 90 million feet of kauri each year, and New Zealand builders were using it as fast as it was cut. . "It is amazing to think of it now," said Mr. Clayton, "but at that time the [ builders wouldn't consider using anything but kauri. The joiners made doors 'and sashes of it, and houses were built of it. Nothing but kauri was used in Auckland. Now we mill about eight or nine million feet of it a year, and it is used for vat-making, sink-tops, washingtubs and the like. Big Rise in Price. "It is astonishing, too, how the price has risen. I can remember a time when kauri cost 11/ a hundred feet—and that for the best* quality. Now it is 70/ a hundred.. Only as far back as 1910 the K.T.C. owned 130,000,000 ft of kauri. Now we are on the last of it. I doubt if, in three years, there will be a mill in New Zealand that will be doing any serious milling of kauri." Mr. Clayton pointed out that his company was now doing most of its kauri milling at the Great Barrier, where there was 10 or 11 million feet, and there was a small stand at Mata, near Whangarei, which had about 4,000,000 ft. There had been little serious thought given to the question of reafforestation, he said, and it still had to be proved that it was possible. Mr. Cheeseman, who used to be at the Museum, had held that it took from 500 to 1500 years to grow a "decent" kauri, but there was a lot of controversy on the subject. It was possible that one of these days the trees would be treated with something that would make them grow more quickly, but in the meantime it seemed that the day of the giant kauri was almost over. 56,000 ft in One Tree. At the time of the Wembley Exhibition, said Mr. Clayton, the Government had asked them to send Home a big log, cut so that the age could be seen. They had done 60, and had end-planed a log of about 17 or 18 feet girth. That kauri, it had been estimated, had begun growing in 100(1, the year that William the Conqueror entered England! The biggest tree, however, that he could remember being taken out during his years with i the firm was cut in the Kauaeranga

forest, Thames. It had a diameter of 84in, and had yielded 000 ft of timber. A board from that had been planed and sent Home to Cambridge University for the museum there. Mr. Clayton went through all departments of the company, and to-day he had stories to tell of days in the logging camps, when the forests used to echo to the thud of axes, the drone of saws and the crash of mighty trees. He recalled . how the logA used to be rolled or shot down into creeks that had been dammed up. Then when a nor'-easter had blown up and the rain had come millions of 1 feet of timber had been borne down the ' flooded creeks to the sea. In those day** . a fleet of scows had been used to bring . the timber to the mills, each scow carrying 40,000 to 100,000 feet of timber. It had been in later days that the timber , had been rafted in behind small i steamers. Colourful Days. They had been rich and colourful i days, and the men who were in the timber trade were branded with the same colour. Arguments used to arise as to whether the wood that had been cut for delivery was heart or sapwood, and the only way to settle it was to invite the objector to come and have a glass of whisky. "Then it was all J heart," said Mr. Clayton, laughingly. "It was just the same if an argument r rose as to whether the wood was rimu, ® totara or some other species. The glass of whisky settled them all." ) He had a tale to tell of an "expert," too. This nian had claimed that he I knew all there was to know about tim- ' ber, and could pick a species at a glance. , It happened that at that time the office had had a box built, after an American ■ style, to hold some valuable papers. The "expert" noticed this one day, and ' began to sing the praises of American woodworkers. That box, he said, was ' similar to ones he had made in America years before, and he named the two ! American woods of which he said it was made. They told him then, said Mr. Clayton, that it was made in their own factory, and that it was of kauri out- ; side and rimu inside. i Commenting on the changes that had ; come with the years, Mr. Clayton rei called that it had been traditional for i the men working in the bush to work ' anything from f>4 to f>(> hours a week, i and to have two holidays each year— • three weeks at Christmas, and three i weeks during the winter, "for the Steeplechase." That had gone now, and he wondered how the 40-hour week i would work out. "Now They Save." The men had changed, too, he said. They had been mostly a swearing, harddrinking crowd at one tiriie. Now. hardly any of them ever got drunk, a»d. instead of wasting their money on a riotous holiday, they were putting it in the savings .bank. Those in authority , had noticed the change coining about 1920, he said. Mr. Clayton commented this morning , that he had been congratulated by hundreds of men during the past few days on "having the pluck to retire." That was rather strange to him, but he , had no fears about being able to filljn his leisure time. His one great regret in retiring was that he was leaving the company of men, in all departments of his firm, who had always been his friends, and who had always been loyal to him. At parting, he said", the tributes he would like to pay were to them, and to Mr. Ted Phelan, who, as secretary of the timbermen's union, had always been very fair. "What about a photograph?" he was asked. "What?" said Mr. Clayton. "I haven't i had a photograph of myself taken in all i the years I have been here."