1 6 



THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



to deduct $10 from the invoice. Tbe dealer 

 trusted tliat tUe settlement would be satis- 

 factory, and tliat he wouUl continue to 

 ship, being a little more careful in the fu- 

 ture. 



Immediately upon receipt of the letter, 

 the mill man went to Chicago and called 

 on the dealer and was received very cor- 

 dially. 



"I see." said the mill man, "that my 

 last shipment was not entirol.v satisfac- 

 tory." 



"Well." said the dealer, "not entirely. 

 Not entirely. Very good lumber, as all 

 your stock is, but a trifle short in meas- 

 urement and some boards that were un- 

 mistakably culls. I looked the stock over 

 myself and it was just as I tell you " 



"Are you certain it was my lumber?" 



"Oh, yes! Saw it taken out of the car 

 myself and noticed the car number." 



"Well." said the mill man, "it's funny, 

 for the car is still standing on my switch. 

 When they went to pull it off the side- 

 track it broke down and is still there." 



There wasn't much more tO' be said. It 

 seemed the dealer had, after several years' 

 e.Kperience with the shipper, gained such 

 confidence in his methods that he had 

 formed the habit of deducting as much from 

 the invoice as he thought the shipper would 

 stand, and sending him balance without 

 measuring or inspecting the stock at all. 



The man telling tlie story said that the 

 shipper then and there made the dealer 

 pay him for all the reductions made since 

 their dealings began. 



Knowing the old-time dealer as I do. 

 however, I hardly think that probable. 

 * * * 



"That reminds me,"' said another, "of an 

 experience I had when I was an inspector 

 on a Chicago yard a good many years ago. 

 We had a customer in the factory ti'ade 

 whose inspector would always, no matter 

 how good a gi-ade you sent him, send back 

 a few pieces from every load, pid it to 

 make a showing, I suppose. 



"We got an order one morning to de- 

 liver him 100,000 feet of common oak. It 

 was a fine lot of stock, well manufactured 

 and bone dry, but when the first wagon 

 came back there was the usual amount of 

 ten or a dozen pieces sent back. 



" 'I'm not going to stand that,' said the 

 foreman, 'that lumber is all right.' 



"So he told me to mix the boards sent 

 back through the next load. This I did, 

 marking them in a way that I would know 

 if they were returned. 



"When that wagon came back there was 

 the usual number of pieces returned, and 

 only two of the marked pieces in the lot. 



"We kept that up all day, and along late 

 in the afternoon the boss came out. A 

 wagon was just pulling into the yard with 

 al)out a dozen boards upon it. 



" 'Where does that come from"/' he asked. 



" 'It comes from So-and-So,' said I. 'He 

 always sends back about that much. He's 

 been at it all day.' 



"The boss began to get mad. 



"'Where are you putting it?' he asked. 



Col. Dutton Takes To the Lakes Again. 



The cut herewith is from a poi-ti-ait of 

 ('ol. W. B. Dutton, the well known Racine 

 hardwood lumberman, as he appears as a 

 member of the governor's staff. Ret-ently, 

 however, he appeared in another capacity 

 which the picture does not tell about. The 

 first of the month the schooner Ottawa 

 made her first trip of the season. She 

 was chartered to the Colonel to bring over 

 a cargo of lumber from Frankfort, Mich., 

 but only on the express condition that he 

 \\ould sail on the ship as first mate. Thirty 

 years ago the Colonel was a sailor and 

 navigator of some note, and being anxious 

 ti> receive the lumber, he agreed to enact 

 the old role once more. When the boat 

 cleared there was a number of friends ou 

 the dock to bid him good-bye. They foiuid 

 him attired in the ordinary togs of an old 

 salt, assisting to hoist the sails and giving 

 orders the same as any old tar. The Col- 

 (inel made the round trip without beaching 

 the vessel and returned home within a 

 Axcek witli his cargo, feeling the better, for 

 the C-Kperience. 



" ■\\'e are putting it back in the next 

 load." I said. 'He has been sending a little 

 jag back on every load, but those few 

 boards on the wagon are all that is left, 

 and they'll go ou the next load. When the 

 order is all hauled out we will probably 

 have a dozen boards left and I don't know 

 what we will do with them." 



"Then the boss got mad and did what I 

 have always considered a foolish thing. 

 He went to our customer and told him the 

 whole transaction and .said he wanted such 

 child's play stopped. 



"Tlie balance of that order went through 

 all right, but one result of it was that the 

 customer's inspector got fired and the man 

 who took his place attended to his busi- 

 ness right up to the handle and there 

 wasn't near so much profit in the business. 



"I have always thought the boss made a 

 mistake. You always do when you go to 

 educating people. 



"The thing was working all right, and 

 when a thing is working all right, let it 

 alone, say 1." 



* ^= :i: 



But the stories were not all on the deal- 

 ers. The Tv-orst in thx? lot was on a saw 

 mill man. I cannot vouch for its truth, 

 because I had heard it before and it was 

 located at a different market. It probably 

 has some foundation in fact, however. 



In a certain large manufacturing center 

 in the South, where a great number of logs 

 comes down the rivers each season, there 

 operated a certain manufacturer of lum- 

 ber. He made contracts with loggers up 

 the river, for logs at a ceitain price deliv- 

 ered in his boom. When they were so de- 

 livered the manufacturer always scaled 

 them himself. They always fell short of 

 what was expected, but, watch the scaling 

 how they would, the loggers could never 

 see but it was perfectly fair. Until, after 



a number of years, in a nt of absent- 

 mindedness,, the manufacturer gave him- 

 self away. 



It was all in the rule. The manufac- 

 turer had a specially constructed log rule, 

 the hook of which was arranged with a 

 spring. In measuring logs in the level, 

 where the hook was e.xposed, it measured 

 like any other rule; but in measuring logs 

 in the river, where the hook was stuck 

 down under the muddy water and conld 

 not be seen, a steady pull would cause the 

 spring to stretch an inch or two, enabling 

 the manufacturer to gain that much ou 

 every log so measured. It was an ingen- 

 ious device and this is how it was discov- 

 ered: 



A ri.se in the river brought a fine lot of 

 logs into the manufacturers' boom and 

 with the logs came the logger. This log- 

 ger had done business with the manufac- 

 turer for a number of years, and on tliis 

 occasion, as was their custom, the two 

 men got into a skiff and rowed to the out- 

 side of the boom to begin scaling. 



The current was swift, and as the skiff 

 did not come up to the logs as the manu- 

 facturer wished, he caught the hook of his 

 rule in a log and gave a pull to bring the 

 boat alongside. 



As he pulled, the spring worked, and 

 about two inches of well-oiletl brass 

 showed between the hook and the rule. 

 He hastily disengaged tlie hook, the spring 

 closed up, and he turned to see how much 

 of the performance the logger had seen. 



He had seen it all. 



"I rt'skon," he said, "we had better go 

 baclv to the office." 



So they went back to the office and the 

 logger estimated his shortage for several 

 years back— a good, liberal estimate, too — 

 then tacked on a right smart of money he 

 thought might come handy some time, and 



