February 10, 1917 



Hither and Yon 



If every consumer of nortliern liarjwood lumber were to spend ten 

 days among the producing centers of Wisconsin and Michigan ; if these 

 men who buy the lumber that is to go into furniture, into doors, into 

 automobiles, into boxes, would come North with an observant eye 

 and an open mind they would obtain an entirely different viewpoint 

 of what they have been pleased to regard as the limibermau 's attempt 

 to bull the market. 



In viewing the other fellow 's performance much depends on whether 

 we see it from the front or from the wings. If you ever get the 

 chance to see a girl show ' ' from behind, ' ' you want to do it — it 's a 

 great glamour dimmer. Gold turns to tinsel. Dainty laces show soil 

 and silk becomes cotton with many a mended rent. The peach- 

 blow complexion and cherry lips that tempted you from out front 

 are but a cubist's mess of rouge. The blond — the third one on the 

 left — that made you dream dreams of what might have been if you 

 weren't married, turns to clay with, "My Gawd, Maybelle, let's 

 me 'n you hit a ham-and soon's the show's out. I ain't et since 

 noon. ' ' Yes, sir, it may be iconoclastic, this viewing things from 

 the other side of the footlights, but it's mighty good for one. It 

 proves to you as nothing else can that wliat looks like easy money is, 

 after all, hard 

 earned; that there is 

 no more enchant- 

 ment to the other 

 fellow 's job than 

 there is to your own. 



And it's not such 

 a far cry from a girl 

 show to the lumber 

 business. I just wish 

 that I had a bunch 

 of you lumber buy- 

 ers, whom I know, 

 up here in this Nortli 

 country for a week 

 or so. I'U gamble 

 you would get a new 

 viewpoint. From 

 ' ' back stage " you 

 would see that the 

 bank roll you have 

 been accusing the 

 lumbermen of mak- 

 ing off of you is 

 chiefly stage money. 

 The roll is bigger 



than it was, but it's mostly ones and twos, not the "yellow boys" you 

 thought you saw from ' ' out front. ' ' 



For more than a year now every lumber salesman who called on you 

 buyers has been asking an advance of from fifty cents to a dollar over 

 his previous quotation on nearly every item of northern stock. You, 

 with your customers calling for their goods, have, perforce, paid him 

 his price, calling him betimes a thief and a robber, and with the mental 

 reservation that some day the shoe would be on the other foot and you 

 would dictate. 



But come up here with me. Your lumber is costing you on an aver- 

 age twenty per cent more than it did a year ago. On the other hand, 

 the cost of logging has appreciated nearly fifty per cent. Labor here, 

 as with you, has gone up, but in a far greater degree than in the fac- 

 tory centers; its quality has depreciated, so that with the added 

 investment there is a lesser return. The railroads are doling out 

 cars and there is not a mill man getting the equipment necessary to 

 bring to his mill the logs he had planned on putting in. Instead of 

 making a greater profit the lumberman is making less than he did a 

 year ago. In the majority of instances he is little more than trading 

 dollars. The local manager of one saw and veneer mill told me that 



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he had advised his employers that they would save money were they 

 to shut the plant down entirely. 



I have no axe to grind. As far as possible I have been trying to 

 judge conditions in the North from an absolutely unbiased stand- 

 point and I want to say to you that if I were a buyer of hardwood 

 lumber I would cover on my year's requirements just as soon as I 

 could. Prices have not reached their zenith — they are certainly going 

 higher. War, or no war; peace, or no peace, it will be many a long 

 day before northern stock will sell for less than it is today. For the 

 first time in the history of the lumber business manufacturers are 

 learning to figure their costs. Heretofore their profits have been 

 largely fictitious, based on stumpage that was put in next to nothing. 

 Now they are beginning to see exactly where they stand; they know 

 that in ten years at the outside this country will be practically cut 

 out, and with present taxes and interest charges they cannot afford 

 to reforest; they know today what their ekn, their basswood, their 

 birch is costing them on cars ; and in the future they are going to de- 

 mand and get a reasonable profit for their goods. 



Antigo 



The little town of Antigo, which for a number of years has lived 



the quiet life of a 

 farming center, has 

 suddenly "perked 

 up ' ' and is begin- 

 ning to call itself the 

 lumber center of 

 Wisconsin. The old 

 established plants of 

 the Kellogg Lumber 

 and Manufacturing 

 Company and the 

 Wolf Eiver Lumber 

 Company are in full 

 operation. The new 

 mill of the Langlade 

 Lumber Company, 

 which was completed 

 and sawed the first 

 log less than a month 

 ago, is working 

 smoothly and turn- 

 ing out a fine grade 

 of hemlock and hard- 

 wood. This mill is 

 well worth a visit, as 

 it embodies the very 

 latest in sawmill equipment. Though it is a double mill — rotary and 

 band — with slab resaw, it is operated with a smaller complement of 

 men than is usual, and, withal, is light and roomy. 



The logging operations of the Langlade Lumber Company are par- 

 ticularly large, as twenty-eight camps are being run, employing some 

 eight hundred men. Not all of the timber is cut at the Antigo mill, 

 however, a part being disposed of in the log. 



The active personnel of this company is made up of George Foster, 

 tlie managing director, who spends a part of each week at the plant; 

 ' ' Jack ' ' Mylrea, the resident manager ; George Hale, woods man- 

 ager ; Leo H. Schoenhafen, sales manager ; Win. Tom, who looks after 

 the piling department; and H. E. Smith, who has charge of the cost 

 and accounting departments. It is a well balanced organization and 

 one that may be looked to to " deliver the goods. ' ' A little later 

 Hardwood Record hopes to be able to give its readers an illustrated 

 story of this newest of Wisconsin's great sawmills. 



As many readers of this paper know, Antigo is to have still another 

 large mill. The C. W. Fish Lumber Company will in the spring 

 erect an up-to-date plant that, with its new mill at Elcho and re- 

 modeled one at Birnamwood, will enable it the better to put on the 



TIlIUTy-I'IVK DEGREES BELOW AT PLANT OF THE KNEEL.VND McLURU LUMBER 



COJIPANY, PHILLIPS, WIS'. 



