EMPIRE TIMBER
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sni,—A recent luncheon party in the House of Commons, intended to promote a more extensive use of Empire timber in the British building and furnishing trades, brought out some rather startling and not over,creditable facts.
We use in this country about 150,000,000 of timber annually. Of this the Empire, though, immensely prolific in hard and soft woods of every kind and quality, supplies us with less than 10 per cent. The rest comes partly from Sweden and Finland but mainly, through the employment of semi-servile labour by the State to exploit a natural asset that has cost her nothing, from Russia.
Here is a gap in our Imperial economy that all the speakers at the lunch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the High Commissioner for Australia and the Agent-General for British Columbia agreed to be well worth filling. • To countries like India, Australia, New Zealand, British Honduras and West Africa the filling of it WOI Id be a highly profitable enterprise ; to British Columbia, where timber is a basic industry, it would be vital.
In no single department of Inter-Imperial trade is there room for such expansion as in this. On no single question that comes before the Ottawa Conference will the hopes and interests of so many Dominions and Colonies be focussed as on this.
The 10 per cent, preference that is now granted to all Empire-grown timber seems suddenly to have opened the eyes of Great and of Greater Britain to the fact that they have between them, but have so far failed to seize and hold, a market worth 150,000,000 a year.
Samples of nearly all the utilizable woods that are raised throughout the Empire can be seen in London ; a record has been kept of all the buildings, wharves, railway platforms and so on in Britain where they are in structural or decorative use ; the most painstaking scientific analysis of their various qualities are available ; and I am confident that British architects, builders, furniture makers, timber merchants, and our public authorities following the lead of the London County Council are ready and eager to co-operate in a "Use Empire Timber" campaign.
If any of your readers desire further information on this subject I shall be happy to do what I can to put them in the way of getting it.—I 8111, Sir, &C., ALFRED C. BOSSOM 5 Carlton Gardens, S.W .1. (M.P. for Maidstone).
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