THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



»3 



the year when hardwood stocks, taken iill 

 around. l5oth in city and coiintrj' yards, 

 wore ill sliortcr supply. 



SCARCITY OF GOOD BUYERS. 



There is any iiuml)cr oC men competent 

 to go through the country and take up 

 hardwood lumber, and quite a good many 

 good salesmen, but it is only once in :i 

 while that you come across a good buyer; 

 and wlien you come to consider the qualifi- 

 cations necessary to a good buyer it is not 

 surprising that it should be so. 



Two hardwood lumbermen, whom we 

 shall call Smith and Brown, tjecause those 

 are not tlieir names, mot at the railway 

 station in a city in the South, and being 

 well acquainted with one another fell into 

 conversation. 



Smith volunteered the information that 

 he was going to a certain town in Ten- 

 nessee, where a man named Jones can-iod 

 on a large saw milling liusiness, to see it 

 he could not make some purchases of 

 stock. 



This was sometliing of a shock to Brown, 

 as he was headed for the same place with 

 the same object in view; and when Smith 

 heard it he was inclined to resent it in the 

 unreasonable way that some people have. 



Brown is a very good-natured chap, 

 however, and it was finally agreed that 

 tlioy should go together, but that Smith 

 should have first chance at anything Jones 

 had to offer. They were to look the stock 

 over and get Jones to price the various 

 items. Then if Smith wanted it he was 

 to have it; if lie didn't want it Brown was 

 to have a show. 



They found Jones' stock badly broken, 

 but he still had quite a number of cars in 

 shipping condition — not much of any one 

 kind but quite an assortment of odds and 

 ends — a car of this, a half car of that and 

 a couple of cars of the other — just the 

 kind of an assortment, in fact, that a 

 buyer who thoroughly understands his 

 business likes to strike. 



Well, the stock was e.xaminod and priced, 

 and Smith, after a hard fight for lower 

 prices, announced that he couldn't see an.v- 

 tliing in it and refused to buy anything. 

 Whereupon Brown,' who had kept in the 

 background, came to the front and bought 

 seven carloads of various stocks at the 

 same prices at which the stocks had been 

 offered to Smith. And we have it on ex- 

 cellent authority that Brown made a clean 

 profit of over ^-SOO on the seven cars in 

 which Smith could see no profit. 



The difference in the two men lay in the 

 fact that Smith, while a good judge of 

 lumber grades and fairly well posted on 

 the market, was not nearly so well ac- 

 quainted with the selling end of the busi- 

 ness. When Brown looked at a pile of 

 lumber ho knew at once of some customer 

 whose requirements it would meet, lie 

 knew where each kind and grade could be 

 placed to the best advantage and what it 

 would bring. With him it was not so 



much a question of whether the stock 

 would grade firsts and seconds, or No. 1 

 commons or so on, but what Blank & Co. 

 would pay for about that kind of a run 

 of stock. In short, Brown thoroughly un- 

 derstood the business from one end to the 

 other and Smith only understood oue-half 

 of it. Consequently Smith was at a dis- 

 advantage and Brown could do business 

 whore he couldn't. 



The uses to which the various kinds and 

 grades of hardwood luiuber are put are so 

 various and one consumer will pay so 

 much moi-e than anotlier for exactly the 

 same stock tliat the sucessful buyer must 

 be one who thoroughly understands the 

 soiling end of the business. And a man 

 of Brown's equipment will grow rich 

 in the hardwood lumber business where a 

 man of Smith's equipment will starve to 

 death. 



ONLY A QUESTION OF COLLATERAL. 



There has been quite an agitation car- 

 ried on by certain of our financial interests 

 during the past year or so for a more 

 •'elastic" currency. A systematic cam- 

 paign has been carried on throughout the 

 country to work up a sentiment in favor 

 of a new banking law, the main feature of 

 which was to be that national banks 

 should be permitted to issue "asset cur- 

 rency" or currency secured by the assets 

 of the said banks. Uocontly scouts have 

 been rounding up the country and feeling 

 the pulse of the dear public to determine 

 how it felt about it. And within the past 

 fortnight a conference was held at Oyster 

 Bay, the summer home of our strenuous 

 I'rosident, to compare notes and determine 

 how tljo scheme was progressing. 



.Vnd th(^ daily press reports state that at 

 that conference "a blighting frost struck 

 the clastic currency scheme;" that em- 

 phatic opposition had developed in une.\- 

 pected quartei-s. It seems that the con- 

 servative business interests have been 

 hoard from and that the prospects are that 

 tlio eminent "financiers" who are pushing 

 the scheme for au "elastic currency" will 

 not soon get favorable action from Con- 

 gross. 



The cry for an "elastic currency" is an 

 old ciy, coming from an unexpected quar- 

 ter. When, ten years ago, the liard-pressed 

 and heavily mortgaged farmer got the idea 

 into his head that there wasn't enough 

 money in the countrj', and was inveigled 

 by the owners of the silver mines to in- 

 dorse "the free and unlimited coinage of 

 silver at the ratio of 10 to 1," there was no 

 section of our population so full of vir- 

 tuous indignation against him as that very 

 olomont of our citizenship that is now 

 clamoring for an "elastic currency." And 

 yet the two demands have their origin in 

 a desire to alleviate the same complaint. 

 You see, ten years ago it was the farmers 

 who wore hard up; now it is Wall street, 

 and it makes all the difference in the world 

 whose bull Is being gored. 



The demand for free coiuaui- <,C silver 

 came from a class of people that was 

 desperately hard up and could bon-ow no 

 more money on the collateral it had to 

 offer. The cry for au elastic currency 

 comes from another class, similariy situ- 

 ated. And as the silver mine owners were 

 to be the direct beneficiaries of the farmer's 

 plan for getting cheaper money, so the 

 national banks are to be the direct bene- 

 ficiaries of the "financier's" plan for secur- 

 ing the same end. Therefore, while the 

 owners of the silver mines were sti-ong 

 supportei-s of the free silver movement, it 

 was expected that the national banks 

 would be unanimous in support of the elas- 

 tic or asset currency plan. 



But they are not. Not by a whole lot 

 The banks in the large cities, where the 

 speculators make a profitable market for 

 all the money that can safely be loaned 

 them, favor the scheme for an elastic cur- 

 loncy, but the country banks, which at 

 liresent have more funds on hand than 

 they can find a market for, oppose it. 

 1'hey naturally fail to see the need of any 

 more money. 



To our thinking and to the thinking of 

 most consei"vative business men who have 

 given the subject thought, there is more 

 danger to the legitimate business interests 

 of the country in the scheme for an "asset 

 currency" then there over was in the 

 scheme for the free coinage of silver. 

 Such a scheme enacted into a law would 

 load to an immediate and monstrous in- 

 flation of our currency, which, while It 

 might give us a brief period of fictitious 

 prosperity, would most certainly end In 

 widespread disaster. 



There is money enough in the country 

 for all legitimate purposes and it can be 

 boiTowod by the right kind of people at 

 a moderate rate of interest. The banks 

 want security, of course, and just at this 

 particular time Wall street is a trifle shy 

 on security. There has, in the past six 

 months, been several hundreds of millions 

 of dollars' depreciation in the collateral 

 Wall street is accustomed to offer for se- 

 curity for loans, which means that Wall 

 street's working capital is reduced by just 

 that' many hundreds of millions. 



There are two classes of borrowers who 

 ask accommodations at the banks. One is 

 the good "moral risk," the merchant, manu- 

 facturer or farmer of good business stand- 

 ing and reputation, who wishes to borrow 

 money to invest in merchandise, material, 

 live stock or engage in some other legiti- 

 mate business transactiou. The other is 

 the bad "moral risk" who wishes the 

 money that he may engage in speculation. 

 At this time there is no complaint from 

 the first class of scarcity of money. Mem- 

 bers of that class can get all the money it 

 is good for them to have, with or without 

 collateral, and they can get it at a very 

 reasonable rate of interest. With the sec- 

 ond class everything depends on the col- 

 lateral, and conditions are such at the pres- 



