THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



15 



produced in this country since the civil 

 war, and tliey bave certainly iirosporcil 

 amazingly. 



It used to be that the only way a man 

 could become wealthy was by thrift, econ- 

 omy and close application to business, com- 

 bined with great natural capacity. Sucli a 

 man would, in the course of a lifetime of 

 hard work, build up a great business, may- 

 be, and achieve a good-sized fortune by 

 strictly legitimate business methods. But 

 the new kind of financiers have a system 

 which beats that. 



The flrst of these to make a startling- 

 success was, I believe, a young man named 

 Villiers. He had by some hocus pocus or 

 another got control of a good little bunch 

 of money, and he was a very shariJ young 

 man. By some means his attention be- 

 came attracted to a solid, prosperous little 

 railroad. This road had had exceptionally 

 fine, safe and conscientious management, 

 and every man on it, from the president to 

 the section hands, took a personal pride in 

 it. It had paid good dividends, was free 

 from debt and had a fat cash surplus. 



As before stated, young Air. Villiers (I 

 believe that was his name) got his eye on 

 this tight, prosperous little piece of prop- 

 erty and conceived the bold project of 

 boarding it, just as the pirates of old 

 boarded the rich merchantmen of the Span- 

 ish Main, making its ofiicers and crew walk 

 the plank and gutting it of everything of 

 value. And he carried out his programme 

 to the letter. 



He took the good-sized bunch of money 

 which he controlled and began buying the 

 stock of the prosperous little road. When 

 the good-sized bunch of money was all in- 

 vested he took the stock to a bank and put 

 it up for collateral, and, it being such a 

 gilt-edged security, he had no trouble in 

 borrowing on it almost to its face value. 

 With this money so borrowed he bought 

 more stock, upon which he borrowed more 

 money, luitil finally he owned a controlling 

 interest in the road without having enough 

 actual cash invested to pay for five miles 

 of it. 



Then the bloody pirate went to work: 

 all the old, capable and honest crew hud 

 to walk the plank; the rich cash surplus 

 was transferred to the account of the bright 

 young Mr. Villiers; the road was bonded to 

 Its limit, the money from the sale going 

 to join the cash surplus; the equipment and 

 service were allowed to deteriorate and 

 take care of themselves, and finally, when 

 the once fine property had been looted of 

 everything of value, the bright yomig Mr 

 Villiers sold out, and, instead of being 

 merely a bright young man, controlling a 

 good-sized bunch of money, he was a great 

 financier, several times a millionaire. 



I believe that in some of his future deals 

 Mr. Villiers finally got into the peniten- 

 tiary, or something like that, his system be- 

 ing so new and all, but that was a little 

 slip that didn't really count and which the 



bright young men of recent years have 

 managed to avoid. 



But what Mr. Villiers did to that pros- 

 perous little road his host of imitators havo 

 done to every good property they could get 

 their hands upon. And after they had 

 gutted them and looted them and let them 

 run down, and had bonded them and got 

 the last possible cent out of them, they 

 would combine a number of them into a 

 trust and offer them for sale as something 

 great and new and wonderful, in order to 

 distract attention from the fact that they 

 were a lot of ruined, gutted and mortgaged 



properties. 



* * * 



And you do not want to delude yourself 

 with the belief that the condition result- 

 ing from a quarter of a century of such 

 manipulation is not a serious condition. It 

 is a good thing that the liquidation came 

 in a period of prosperity, for maybe we 

 can pull through without going all to 

 pieces. The trusts have failed and the 

 country will have to bear the shock of 

 having them taken to pieces. What will 

 be done with them I don't know. How 

 these consolidated, bonded, gutted and 

 looted properties are to be got back to a 

 solid business basis is a question the an- 

 swer to which lies in the future. 



* * * 



And I don't care how low these syndi- 

 cate stocks go. I hope they will go low 

 enough to break every member of the 

 pirate crew. We've got to get down to 3 

 solid, practical basis, and the sooner the 

 better. There have been some wonderful 

 advances made by the world in the past 

 few years in many directions, but don't 

 you ever let anybody make you believe 

 that you can take a dollar and by any kind 

 of hocus pocus make two dollars out of it. 

 I don't care how much you refund it, re- 

 issue it, bond it, mortgage it and consoli- 

 date it — it is still a dollar, no more and no 

 less. And there is the difference between 

 an industrial plant of any kind and a stand- 

 ard coin of the realm — the plant is dete- 

 riorating at the rate of 10 per cent a year, 

 and in many instances the basis upon 

 which this great fabric of credit is reared 

 has shrunk to nothing at all. 



What the end of it all will bo is hard to 

 say. IIow the American people are to 

 clean up after their pirates — how they are 

 to take their trusts to pieces and what 

 they are going to do with the pieces is 

 more than I can undertake to predict. 



The l'\ J. Blackwell Lumber Company 

 has sold to Col. E. B. Chester, lately of St. 

 liOuis and T.'nion City, 1.940 acres of timber 

 in the Hatchie and Forked Deer IJiver 

 counti-y and a few hundred acres addi- 

 tional in JIadison County, Tennessee. 

 Colonel Chester will erect at r.rownsville. 

 Tenn., a factory for the manufacture of 

 baseball material and other dimension 

 stock. 



BONSACK'S OPINION. 



One of the largest strictly hardwood 

 lumber firms in St. Louis is the Bonsack 

 Lumber Company. Mr. W. A. Bonsack, 

 head of the house, is responsible for an 

 opinion which is altogether fair and sound 

 and contains some new ideas on future 

 conditions. He is in accord with the gen- 

 eral view of present conditions, that it 

 is one of scarcity of dry stocks and a de- 

 mand that is difficult to meet, but he gets 

 in advance of the many in his calculations 

 on the future. They are in effect that novj 

 is the buying season; that while there 

 will no doubt be a considerably increased 

 pro<luetion during the next three months 

 or longer, the matter of shipping later in 

 the year is going to be a serious obstacle. 

 He predicts a car famine this fall to ex- 

 ceed anything in the past, and whether or 

 not demand is as great as it has been, the 

 ones that will do the business are the ones 

 that have the shipping facilities. 



Anyone in the hardwood business will 

 recognize the force of the suggestion, be- 

 cause they understand the profits in the 

 business do not altogether depend on 

 the question of supply and demand. On 

 the contrary, the facilities for doing busi- 

 ness is an Important part of the transac- 

 tion. This is more largely true, probably, 

 in the hardwood lumber business than 

 most any other line. 



SMITH'S BAY POPLAR. 



The president of the F. II. Smith Lum- 

 ber Company of St. Louis and the Hard- 

 wood Export Company of Mt. Vernon, 

 Ala., which is Mr. F. II. Smith, is not only 

 the original uniform inspection man, but 

 is also one of the very first to proclaim 

 the merits of tupelo gum, or, as Smith 

 calls it, bay poplar. About a year ago the 

 Record had an editorial on the manufac- 

 ture of gum, which was prompted by Mr. 

 Smith, and gave some of the methods of 

 handling same, which he had found best 

 in his experience. Lately considerable has 

 been said in the lumber press about tupelo 

 in general and Mr. Smith in particular. 

 On the occasion of a call recently Mr. 

 Smith told the Record man that there was 

 large quantities of tupelo in the forests 

 owned by his companies in Alabama, and 

 that within the last few months they had 

 slui>ped more than a million feet of the 

 manufactured article. He stated that it 

 was rapidly growing in favor and properly 

 timbered, manufactured and cared for it 

 would get the confidence of the buying 

 trade. 



In this connection the following item 

 from the New Orleans Lumber Trade Jour- 

 nal is of importance: 



The Joiu-nal is in receipt of various in- 

 (luiriis regarding tupelo gum or bay pop- 

 lar lumber and how it is graded. This in- 

 cident is es|)ecially significant as showing 

 an expanding interest in the subject. The 

 time is rapidly nearing when tupelo gum 



