Idle Timber Mills

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 42, 12 May 1927, Page 8

Idle Timber Mills

Ancient Industry Totters

New Zealand’s oldest industry, and its largest, is hard hit by trade slackness, foreign competition, and building restrictions within the Dominion. The result is that from now on 445 timber workers in Auckland City will be working short time. Not since 1915 has a development so drastic occurred. Then the slackness was the upshot of war panic, and speedily passed, but this time it may be of*more lasting character. The three big concerns which have decided to cut down working hours have for months deferred the evil day, but now declare they can postpone it no longer.

TfANSHAWE Street is a fascinating 1 corner of Auckland, but a change has come over it. Still the fragrance of sawn timber lingers between its rows of lofty stacks, but the scream of the saws has not its former intensity, and timber wagons do not jam the roadway as in former years. “Look at it. . It might be Sunday,” said a timber merchant this morning, waving a hand toward the empty street in which not half a dozen carts were loading. DAYS OF IDLENESS

Next week the tranquillity, will be still more pronounced. On Friday and Saturday 260 men employed in the Kauri Timber Company’s huge mill —the largest in New Zealand—will not work. The Parker, Lamb Company, not such a big concern, will have 60 men affected, and the Leyland, O’Brien Company will reduce the working time of 40 men by Saturday mornings only. Further, the shorter week will extend to the Kauri Timber Company’s Mount Eden branch, where 50 men will lose time, and to its Papatoetoe branch where 15 more will he affected Beyond Auckland City the effects of the timber trade slackness are farreaching and Incalculable. Since the beginning of the year, realising that the outlook would not immediately brighten, the timber companies have been retrenching. On the Great Barrier Island the Kauiu Timber Co., in January, had 60 men working; there are now nine. Similarly it has only 40 men in the Thames district, where formerly there were over 100, and In the King Country big milling plants are standing Idle. Bush contractors are no longer hewing giants of the forest and their gangs are dispersed. Small towns dependent on the timber trade for their prosperity are in desperate circumstances. Just one instance is Raetihi, where the turnover of the tradesmen has fallen by hundreds jit pounds. The slackness is not limited to New Zealand. In Australia, South Africa, and even In America, the internal demand has fallen away. A READY-MADE MARKET Seeking a market for timber unsaleable in America the powerful milling concerns of the Pacific Coast turned their eyes to New Zealand and found a market made to order. Severe local building restrictions had made pasable o.b. timber a drug commodity here and the cost of producing heart timber soared when 50 or 60 per cent, of each log became difficult to sell. At the same time

railway freights on timber were rising, and eventually heart timber be came such a price that American tim ber was a cheaper proposition.

To buy cheaply is only human. The hofne-builder asked his architect and contractor for the cheapest dwelling consistent with the standards desired. To comply with his needs the builder ordered the cheap American timber. Right through the Dominion these processes were followed and the value of imported timber rose from £507.626 in 1922, to £1.176,492 in 1925. Freight alone, in the latter year, was £316,519 on the imported article. Yet timber can be taken twice across the Pacific for the same money as the Railway Department demands to rail it from Hangatiki (Main Trunk) to Eltham. Small wonder that the short RaetihiOhakune section of railway lias been the best paying line in New Zealand. ANSWERING THE DEMAND All the three Auckland firms which are restricting operations are big importers from America. The Kauri Timber Company, alone, imported 3,000,000 feet of Yankee lumber last year. But the firms say that they had to do it, to meet the demands of the builders. They did not create the demand, but as businessmen they had to answer it. While importations of timber have been growing, Board of Trade restrictions have made the Dominion’s export trade decline. Formerly steady and profitable, the Australian and Pacific trade is now only spasmodic. It is doubtless largely irrecoverable, but for the present the timber merchants, and the workers themselves, are more concerned about the internal market. Reduced railway freights, re moval of unnecessary restrictions on the use of o.b. timber, and a heavier duty on sawn timber from America, are measures which it is asserted, would conserve trade and keep out the outsider. In one direction the One Tree Hill Road Board has already given a lead Last night it agreed to amend its bylaws so that, under certain conditions, o.b. timber may be used for the outsides of buildings. At present, in Auckland city a fowlyard or a motor-garage could not be built of anything but heart timber, but- a proposal that the restrictions should be relaxed will be discussed by the City Council to-night. At stake is the prosperity of New Zealand’s largest business, which has an annual wage bill of over two and a quarter millions, and the councillors will find that the issues raised justify their closest attention to the problem.