4i^ 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



N". CodrEI!, ASHEVILLE, NORTEI CARO- 

 LINA DIRECTOK 



NIGH. IRONTON, OHIO DIRECTOK 



F. A. KIRBY, SCRANTON. PENNSYLVANIA 

 . DIRECTOR 



The idoas you wisli to inject into yovir maximum possible public should 

 b;ive a certain haunting; quality 'which will not be realized when it enters 

 the reader's consciousness, but will linger there and express Itself 

 without any conscious process of his own mind — without any definite 

 argument with himself — without any definite decision of his own to go 

 and get action — and will yet, inevitably, sooner or later, induce action, 

 to your projit. 



The quolation uf prices and the publishing of business cards is easy; 

 anybody can do it. Advertising is a science, an art, and a profession — 

 not a Ijindergarten pastime — and, considering what it confers upon its 

 clients, it is the most underpaid of all professions. In view of the 

 fundamental error of the basis of compensation to those who place adver- 

 tising for others, the wonder is not that there are, or have been, so many 

 abuses, but that there arc not more. Most advertising agencies of the 

 ordinary type and methods derive all their compensation from com- 

 missions received from publishers, which renders it almost a superhuman 

 exaction that no bias whalcver should be felt or shown in the selection of 

 mediums which pay higher commissions over some other mediums which 

 look just as well to the outsider. All advertising agencies, even those 

 which command superior fees from those desiring superior service, derive 

 a part of their compensation jn the form of commissions. It is about 

 the same as the attorney for the plaintiff receiving pay from the defend- 

 ant in the same case. 



In every advertising situation there exists a triangle of interests — the 

 advertiser, the agent and publishers as a class. The interesting question 

 in every such case is based upon the fact that in every such triangle 

 there is always an alliance of two. more or less avowed. This alliance 

 of any two of the three within the triangle may not signify abuse of 

 the third factor, but that does not diminish the interest as to which two 

 within the three are coupled together, the advertiser and his agent in the 

 interest of the advertiser, or the publishers and the agent in the interest 

 of the publishers. These allusions are not in any way a disparagement 

 of either pnlilishers or agents in general, and do not indicate that there 

 are not many cases wherein all three parties within the triangle may he 

 striving for the same object, namely, the greatest development of the 

 success of the advertiser. There are many publishers whose vision has 

 comprehended the wisdom of this sort of co-operation, just as there are 

 many advertisers w-hose horizon is so small that their methods become 

 exasperating and thereby increase the temptation to publishers and agents 

 to leave the advertiser the isolated third party. 



There may be some who would object to the description of advertising 

 service as professional, but they should remember two things : First, that 

 distorted ethics are less likely to obtain where a high conception of pro- 

 fessional fidelity enters a case, than where there is nothing to it but 

 bald-headed "modern business" ; and second, that so far from the words 

 "professional service" indicating any lack of straight-out business ability 

 and of definite commercial sen.se and precise commercial practice, they 

 indicate the merging of all these abilities, and conse.iuent benefits to the 

 client. The hot-air legal advocate, s\icking a lemon between paragraphs 

 of his oratory, cuts small figure these days ; a big lawyer nowadays is not 

 only a master of the technique of his own profession, but he also must 

 have a comprehensive and masterly grasp of every angle of commercial 

 practice — he must be a business man who is a lawyer besides — and an 

 advertising counselor nowadays must be first a business man, who then 

 adds to that the mastery of a special psychologic science. 



You, as hardwood manufacturers, whoso annual production is approxi- 



mately one-fourth of the total of all woods, and w-hose stumpage is 

 approximately only one-eighth of the total stumpage remaining, have 

 before you the problem not of how to sell your product — that is no 

 problem — it will all be sold anyhow — but of the price you are going to 

 get for what you have left. 



Although in the past ten years hardwood prices have shown a heavy 

 average rise, the advance has not been, in my judgment, in proportion to 

 the advances in other things when considered in relation to the actual 

 utilitarian value and the indispensable character of wood to humanity. 



Hardwood prices, and soft wood prices, too, are still (speaking in 

 general terms, of course) much under the cost to the consumer of avail- 

 able or desirable substitutes for wood. 



The only excessively high prices for wood that I have any knowledge 

 of are those which are in some places exacted by the intermediaries be- 

 tween yourselves, as producers, and your ultimate customers. 



The amount of money you can get for your product, while you remain 

 in business, will be determined by the extent of the demand for it. The 

 demand upon you comes chiefly from retailers or their equivalent. The 

 only reason they demand it of you, and the extent to which they demand 

 it of .vou, is determined by the demand upon them for your product — ■ 

 by whom? The ultimate consumer, of course; it answers itself. 



No one will deny that every dollar you ever get through the sale of 

 your lumber is the dollar of the ultimate user, which percolates to you 

 through any kind, or any number, of intermediaries. The consumer's 

 money is the only money that ever buys anything. The consumer is the 

 last man. There is no one to get behind him. He "pays the freight," 

 and in every ultimate analysis he determines the salability and consequent 

 market success or failure of everything that is ever sold. 



It is highly pi'oper, courteous, "good business," and in every way de- 

 sirable, to convert the intermediary between the producer and the user ; 

 but the only logical motives sufficiently strong to induce an intermediary 

 dealer to dig up and hand out a particular article is a positive insistence 

 upon that and nothing else by this same "last man" — the ultimate user. 



This is so entirely beyond debate the moment we make a careful survey 

 of the commercial world, that it seems hardly to need assertion, yet there 

 still are advertisers confining their energies and salesmanship upon the 

 intermediary who, in the final classification, is a dignified and highly 

 cflicient development of a delivery boy, who, to quote a recent editorial 

 in a prominent lumber journal, "only recently awakened to the fact that 

 the selling of lumber is something more than loading up a customer's 

 wagon." 



You want the good will and confidence of those charged with delivery 

 of your goods to your customers, and your logical point of contact with 

 them is through the lumber trade press. 



There is no greater value, within an essentially restricted field, than 

 the trade paper. It is a guide and reference invaluable to those whose 

 particular interest it avowedly serves to the exclusion of all other in- 

 terests. 



Your lumber papers are supporting your interests to the best of their 

 abilities, in some cases very high abilities, and you in turn should sup- 

 port them. 



To increase consumption advertise to the consumer, through the chan- 

 nels which his patronage proves to be his favorites. 



To est,iblish and sustain sincere and intelligent team-work between 

 your distributors and yourselves, advertise in the lumber press. Tell 

 your distributors through their own distinctive trade papers what you 



