THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



17 



invitation is stating- the case conserva- 

 tively. 



JI.v friends were there, but they thought 

 better to hold still and let nature take its 

 course. There is no doul)t in the world 

 but that at that time Defebaugh had the 

 hardwood lumliermen of Chicago "bluffed."' 

 He had shown liimself so utterly unscru- 

 pulous, so lost to all sense of justice and 

 fairness, that it was pretty generally un- 

 derstood that no lumberman who resisted 

 his dictation, or incuiTed his enmity, was 

 safe from a scuiTilous attack upon his 

 liusiness and personal character; and the 

 other lumber papers were so afraid to say 

 their souls were their own that it is not 

 at all suriirising that my invitation to 

 them to cast their fortunes in Avith tlu; 

 new paper was not enthusiastically re- 

 ceived. It involved a serious financial 

 risk. If the new paper should make good 

 and show itself competent to take care of 

 its friends, all well a«d good; but if a 

 book had been made on the spot no sane 

 bookmaker would have rated the new pa- 

 per, as against the field, at better odds 

 than 500 to 1. I believe that most of 

 those present sympathizetl with the move- 

 ment and wished the new paper success 

 most heartily; but a 500 to 1 shot was too 

 much. So my iiroiwsitiou fell with a dull 

 thud and I retired to the next room. 



I li.stened until I got the earache bat 

 couldn't understand what was said. I 

 waited until the meeting adjourned, Init 

 those present did not press around me and 

 offer the glad hand and tell me what had 

 been done. So I can't make much of :i 

 I'cport on that meeting. 



* H: * 



A meeting was held a week later, how- 

 ever, in which some progress was made. 



I lind a report of that meeting in the 

 first issue of the Hardwood Record, pub- 

 lished in October 17, 1895, from which I 

 learn that a committee, consisting of Fred 

 W. T'pham. R. T. Witbeck, H. S. Hay- 

 den and E.' F. Dodge, w.as appointed to 

 confer with the AVisconsin Hardwood 

 Lumbermen's Association on the matter 

 of securing uniformity in inspection rules. 



Another thing which was exercising the 

 hardwood trade of Chicago at that time 

 was the lumber yard license ciuestion. It 

 seemed that a number of years before 

 some of tlie lumbermen of Chicago had 

 been very prominent In attempting to se- 

 cure some legislation at Springfield which 

 was aimed to do hurt to the liquor deal- 

 ers of Chicago. In return for this action, 

 the liquor dealers, having control of the 

 City Council of Chicago, imposed a license 

 fee of .'JSIOO a year on lumber yards, and, 

 1 lielieve, a fee of ¥25 a year on lumber 

 de.-ilers not having a yard. That ordi- 

 nance is still in force, and the lumber- 

 men are still being punished for iiresum- 

 ing to interfere «-ith the liquor trattjc. 

 Thus is virtue rewarded. 



At the time of which I write, however, 

 a niinibor of the yards and dealers were 



escaping the tax, and in order that all 

 might suffer alike, a committee, consisting 

 of L. B. Lesh, Geo. Thamer and M. X. 

 Vlnnedge, was appointed to ferret out 

 those delinquent members of the trade and 

 see that they paid their proportion of tho 

 tax. 



This committee came to be called, in 

 a spirit of derision, the "smelling com- 

 mittee," and faded away after a while. 

 I'nder conditions as they exist in Chicago 

 to-day, if any lumberman can succeed in 

 dodging the license fee, his brother lum- 

 bermen are glad of it. 



There was also a committee on railroad 

 rates appointed, consisting of R. T. Wit- 

 beck, E. Harvey Wilse and II. S. Hay- 

 den. It was the intention of this com- 

 mittee, and they were so instructed, to 

 proceed immediatelj- to get more favor- 

 able railroad rates for the Chicago lum- 

 bermen. Everything moved favorably iii 

 the meeting of the lumbermen, and the 

 sentiment was unanimous in favor of 

 lower rates; in fact, the lumbermen were 

 enthusiastic in the matter, and the com- 

 mittee met no obstacle at all until it eanu; 

 in contact' with the railroads. Then it 

 fell down. 



The principal work of the committee 

 was, of course, on the matter of insiJpc- 

 tion. The hardwood inspection of the 

 Lumbermen's association had become an 

 object of contempt and bitter derision 

 throughout the length and breadth of the 

 land, "a thing for fleers and sneers and 

 jeers." That inspection was not a fair, 

 hispection, being altogether under the con- 

 trol of the Chicago lumbermen, but it w.is 

 not nearly so bad as was generally be- 

 lieved. I believe that, under conditions 

 as they were at that time, no system of 

 inspection wjiich could have been devised 

 would have given anything like general 

 s.-itisfaction. The inspection rules of the 

 Chicago market were much more severe 

 than they are at present, and so great a 

 percentage of the hardwood lumber com- 

 ing to tliis market was .so mismanufac- 

 tured and badly cared for that a close and 

 technical application of the rules on al- 

 most any lot of lumber would throw 

 nearly all of it Into the cull grade. Un- 

 der such conditions no system of inspec- 

 ion. no matter how fair and equitable its 

 provisions, would have given satisfaction. 

 And the inspection system of the Lumber 

 men's association was not nearly so fair 

 and equitable as it might have been made. 



In the first place. It was an entirely 

 one-sided inspection, the shippers having 

 no voice whatever in its control or ar- 

 rangement. This, however, was unavoid- 

 able at that time, as the manufacturers 

 had no organization to act for them. 



In the .second place, the licensed inspect- 

 ors were dependent entirely upon the good- 

 will of the lumber dealers of Chicago for 

 their living. They had no compensatiou 

 for their services, except the fees; and, 

 if tlii'ir iiositiuns were to be reniunera- 



tive, their work must please the lumber 

 dealers. 



For all that, however, the chief trou- 

 lile with the system was the spirit in 

 ■which it was applied. Any system of in- 

 spection will fall into disrepute if it is 

 not strongly and carefully protected, 

 which the system of the Lumbermen's as- 

 sociation was not. The Lumbermen's as- 

 sociation was a pine association, with a 

 sort of a hardwood tail. Xo one took any 

 pride or interest in the hardwood inspec- 

 tion; in fact, nearly everybody was 

 .ashamed of it. And it was pretty rotten, 

 and that's a fact. 



The first and most serious work of the 

 hardwood committee was directed toward 

 improving and safeguarding the inspec- 

 tion. With their inspection rules as they 

 were, and with the sentiment against Chi- 

 cago as it was, there was not much they 

 could do, but what they could do they did. 



They had the licenses ot all the old 

 inspectors revoked, and employed a chief 

 inspector on a salary, so that he might 

 be financially independent of the hard- 

 wood dealers and responsible only to the- 

 hardwood committee. 



They made one of the inspectors of each 

 yard that applied a licensed inspector of 

 the association. This step was severely 

 criticised by the Timberman and hooted; 

 at by the trade generally, but it was in.. 

 fact a most excellent move. Bad as conr- 

 ditions were at that time on a large ma- 

 jority of the consignments received at the 

 Chicago yards, there was no trouble about, 

 the inspection, and it -was the idea of the 

 committee that by giving the assoeiatiou; 

 the benefit of all that Inspection over 

 which there was no controversy, by issu- 

 ing association certificates for everything,, 

 the inspection of the association wouM 

 grow in favor with the shippers. And the 

 inspection of the yard inspectors was in 

 no .sense final. If that inspection dif- 

 fered materially from the shipper's in- 

 voice, the buyer had to hold it intact for 

 10 days for the shipper to demand a re- 

 inspection by the salaried chief inspector. 



The greatest change, however, was the 

 spirit in which the new system was ap- 

 plied. Tlie committee was thoroughly in 

 earnest and thorougEly determined that 

 theinspccticn should be fairl.v done antl 

 all parties thoroughly protected. 



The new system was a great improve- 

 ment over the old in every way and the 

 ; was done in the sincerest good faith, 

 but. chiefly because of the attitude 

 of th'._' lumber press (aside from the 

 Record, which at that time cut but 

 little icei. the trade had no confi- 

 dence in it. Defebaugh knew that 

 the new system was a great advance over 

 the old, and knew that it had been 

 adopted in a sincere attempt to protect 

 the shippers to this market; knew it as 

 well as I knew it, or anyone else, and yet 

 he deliberately and wilfully niisrepre- 

 st-nted both the system and the motives 



