T ? careaama5ia6;L«;m«stm!;i*BiTOiJiWi;ti.H^^ 



Tales of the Trade 



GOT EVEN 



A St. Louis lumberman is ajipreriative enough of a joke on him- 

 self to recite it even if it were an expensive luxury. One of his 

 inspectors was sent to a little local station down on the Iron Moun- 

 tain some months ago to take up a quantity of cypress lumber. The 

 inspector was warned that the millman was a pretty hard propo- 

 sition to do business with, and was especially cautioned not to get 

 done up in the transaction. The inspector apparently followed 

 instructions and loaded out a dozen or more cars of lumber which 

 was dry, and shipped it to St. Louis. When the freight bills 

 came in they showed an average overweight of fully 2,000 pounds 

 to the thousand feet, and the consignee presented a claim and his 

 evidence to the railroad for a rebate. In due course the railroad 's 

 claim agent reported that there was nothing wrong with the weights, 

 as he had evidence that the stock was not dry, as represented, but 

 dead green. 



The St. Louis man appealed to the millman for evidence of the 

 condition of the stock to enable him to press his claim for over- 

 charge against the railroad. In the meantime, he discovered that the 

 lumberman was also the local agent for the railroad company. All 

 the satisfaction he got out of him was expressed in a brief note : 

 ' ' I figgur that the dam thief you sent down to my place to 

 tak up my lumber stol 13,000 feet off of me. I reckon you'll find 

 the weights on these cars .jus about balances up. ' ' 



The buyer acknowledges that the weights did just about "balance 

 up." 



STEALING A SAWMILL 

 The Adams County Eecord reports that one John Willis, a prom- 

 inent captain of industry of Buena Vista, Ohio, recently stole a 

 whole sawmill, and somehow got away with it. It is believed to be 

 the first time in histor.y that such a feat has ever been performed 

 by an individual, although the Adams County Eeeord insists that 

 the lumber trust is said to have made quite .a record in similar 

 accomplishments, and states that the judiciary seems to have absent- 

 mindedly labored under the impression that it was dealing with a 

 great corporate interest in allowing Mr. Willis to enter a plea of 

 guilty to petty larceny. 



Mr. Willis of Adams county should also have the added distinc- 

 tion of probably being the most thoroughly crazy man in lumber 

 history, as it is a cinch that any man who even buys a sawmill 

 surrounds himself with a lot of grief, and when he goes so far as 

 to steal one he is multiplying- his troubles. 



A HAPPY COLLECTION EXPEDIENT 

 It is well known that members of several lumber associations are 

 frequently asked by their secretaries to communicate a history of 

 their commercial experiences with sundry lumber buyers. This 

 information is also often asked for by lumber commercial reporting 

 agencies. 



One astute wholesaler in referring to this system of collecting 

 information about buyers says that he has found it of excellent 

 use in making collections from slow-paying customers. When he 

 gets an inquiry of this sort, and finds that it refers to one of his 

 clients that is badly in arrears in his settlements, he makes a 

 circumstantial record of the dates of the individual purchases, the 

 dates of the i)aynients, and winds up by stating that he purchased 

 one or more carloads of lumber on a specific date, and that the 

 account is now thirty to sixty days past due, etc.; that the man 

 is a very nice fellow, but he is notoriously slow in his settlements, 

 etc., etc. 



Before forwanling tliis report to the lumber association or com- 

 mercial agency, he sends his carbon to the man about whom the 

 report is being made, and advises him that such-and-such an agency 

 or such-and-such an association has asked for this information, 

 but before forwarding it to the inquirer, he would like to know if 

 there is any statement made therein which is unwarranted by the 

 facts; that he does not want to injure the customer in anywise or 

 to make any false report about his method of doing business, etc. 



The jobber says that these letters always have a good effect, 

 and that the customer invariably comes back with a check in full, 

 accompanied by an urgent request that the report be amended to 

 state that while he is a customer of the jobber in question, that he 

 does not owe him a dollar. 



This is a scheme worth working on a lot of lumber buyers, espe- 

 cially at the present time. 



"THE WOOD ETERNAL ' 



Current cypress magazine exploitation, lOpy for which is supplied 

 by a professional publicity promoter, is reminiscent of an old 

 California story. 



An over-zealous timber salesman was attempting to interest a 

 buyer in a tract of redwood timber. He argued on the w-onderful 

 fire-resisting qualities of the wood, and said it was impossible to burn 

 a house built of redwood. He offered in evidence of this the fact 

 that San Francisco was built largely of redwood, and that its fire 

 loss was very low by the very reason of the non-inflammable and 

 fire-resisting qualities of this marvelous wood. 



"Then," continued the timber salesman, "after you get your 

 saw timber off of this tract, look at the immense quantity of limbs 

 and low-grade timber that will be left in the woods. You will get 

 a very handsome profit by converting this offal into fire-wood, because 

 redwood makes the best fire-wood in the known world. ' ' 



Just as a suggestion to the cypress advertisers, it might be wise 

 to append to the statements that it is "the wood eternal," and 

 "defies all rot influence," that if anyone can use a few million 

 feet odd lots of peeky cypress, they know places where it can be 

 secured at reasonable prices. 



'l iM^aSMiaOiTOiroOTStTO^^^ 



The Mail Bag 



B 130 — Seeks Birch Dimension 

 Chicago, Dec. 2, Editor Hardwood Record : 

 We are in the market for several cars of clear 

 birch dimension stock. If you know of any 

 one that manufactures stock of this char- 

 acter, we would be much obliged if you would 

 furnish us with their names and addresses. 



FURXITUE6 COMPAXY. 



The foregoing letter is from a leading Chi- 

 cago furniture manufacturing institution, and 

 it has been supplied with H-\rdwood Eecord 's 

 present list of birch dimension manufacturers. 

 Any others who would like to communicate 

 with this buyer on the subject in question can 



have the address by writing and referring to 

 B 130.— Editor. 



B 131 — Further Discussion of Log Cut in 

 Memphis 



Memphis, Tenn., Dec. 1, Editor Hardwood 

 Record ; We have read with a good deal of 

 interest your article under the heading of "Log 

 Cost at Memphis" that appeared in a recent 

 issue of your good paper, and also your more 

 rcccnc article under the heading of "Hardwood 

 Cost and Supply at Memphis." The trouble 

 with saw-milling in Memphis Is that a large 

 number of the operators are inexperienced men 

 from the North. We do not mean inexper- 



ienced In the operation of sawmills, but inex- 

 perienced as to the quality of southern timber. 

 We do not believe that out of the twenty-nine 

 mills in Memphis there are over five that are 

 making any money. These live mills are oper- 

 ated by people who bought timber years ago. 

 I know of one concern which, at the present 

 time, is cutting on land that cost it $4 an 

 acre ten years ago. This same laud could 

 now he sold at from $30 to $35 an acre. When 

 this concern figures what its timber is worth 

 on the open market, it surely cannot show 

 very much profit in the manufacture of its 

 iiardwood logs into lumber at ttie ipresenc 

 range of prices. 



A good many operators agree that Memphis 

 sawmill men have been paying too much money 

 for logs, and we believe that your calling at- 

 tention to this matter has been a good thing. 

 A sawmill man will read a criticism in a 

 trade paper, and take it with much better 

 grace than if he were told the same facts by 

 a competitor who absolutely knows that the 



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