Dect-mbcr 10. 1917 



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Hitting the Saw dust Trail 



The organization at Alexandria, La., on November 17 of the South- 

 western Hardwood Manufacturers' Club was a step in the direction 

 of gaining the information that comes out when local manufac- 

 turers get together and not only discuss their selling problems, but 

 get a clearer idea of what each one is doing in manufacturing hard- 

 woods in the same section. For years the conferences of the Michi- 

 gan manufacturers have been very beneficial and other local orjraui- 

 zations have assisted materially. Now, then, this southwestern asso- 

 ciation will not only properly affiliate in the open price confer- 

 ences, but will have an organization to work out other plans neces- 

 sary for its prosperity. 



The getting together of twenty manufacturers as members of 

 this new association in a section where manufacturers are scattered 

 as they are in those two states is a mighty good omen of the need 

 of the organization and of its future success. 



Albert Deutsch, who is president of the Sabine Logging & Lum- 

 ber Company, San Antonio, Tex., and Oakdale, La., and S. O. Davis 

 of the Sabine Tram Company, Beaumont, Tex., are both pro- 

 gressive factors and must of necessity present a formidable pair of 

 officers if you are not a member and live in that section. 



B. B. Burns of the C. L. Ritter Lumber Company, Huntington, 

 W. Va., president of the Hardwood Manufacturers' Association of 

 the United States, and Treasurer M. W. Stark of the American 

 Column & Lumber Company, St. Albans, W. Va., a leading apostle 

 in the open price plan, and Frank Gadd, assistant to the president 

 of the Hardwood Manufacturers' Association, assisted in the 

 formation of this organization by suggestion and co-operation, as 

 well as explaining in detail the efforts made by the manufacturers' 

 association to get sectional organizations within its fold, and which 

 Secretary Gadd visits each mouth and compiles the results and 

 experiences of the past month, the sales, stock reports and other 

 data that make the intelligent marketing of hardwood products 

 more intelligently done because the facts are before the men co- 

 operating. 



These men also attended an open face watch meeting at Memphis, 

 where a good, big delegation and reports indicated that interest 

 had been lacking in some sections, at least, in the past. There are 

 men in every craft who are backward about telling their com- 

 petitors about what they are doing for fear that the other fellow 

 will learn something. There never was so much team work in 

 Memphis as there is today, and their influence and that of the 

 membership in the Mississippi valley in this open price proposition 

 is bringing out an interest that foretells more intelligent valu- 

 ations on hardwoods than ever have existed before. 



Along this line of talk, while riding in from an interesting golf 

 game with W. A. Ransom the other day, he harked back to a dis- 

 cussion we have been holding for several years now about how- 

 much it costs to cut, skid, load and haul logs, and what the cost 

 of the haul-up end of the mill is, and how much money had gone 

 into the material at the tail end of the mill. I notice in visiting 

 the boys in this section that they all have the matter in their 

 minds because there are so many angles of cost that you hadn 't 

 counted on in the old days that it is a matter of necessity rather 

 than wish, perhaps. But, as Col. "Wick" says: 



"There is no use fooling about the matter. You have got to get 

 next to it and fight it. I was impressed and edified recently by 

 one of my friends in Louisville who showed me how an auditor 

 had dropped into his office and eliminated leaks that amounted to 

 considerable sums that hadn't been going into the cost except as a 

 liability. It is my impression that all of us should keep up-to- 

 date along this line. It is more important now than it has ever 

 been. ' ' 



When "Wick" gets serious he always brings out something, and 

 reminded me of the first yarn he had ever told me of the shipment 

 of cold storage chickens to West Virginia, and said that "if the 

 new members of the Southern Hardwood Emergency Bureau would 

 take a few weeks off and make some of these speeches on chickens 



and would be sure to get all of the dope it would surely wake us 

 up from our lethargy on the subject of cost." 



Ransom just returned from Washington and New York, and, 

 while he enjoyed the big city, he said he simply had to leave town, 

 and the president informed him and other good citizens of America 

 that they had to turn the lights out. He got so used to those elec- 

 tric light signs in Memphis he got homesick if he didn't see them in 

 New York. 



Incidentally I am reminded of his brother, Charlie, who has been 

 working very seriously and very hard while W. A. was east. His 

 work was well attended to. He reported that logging crews were 

 somewhat depleted, but they are getting out their logs just the 

 same. Thej' had shut down their mill at Blaine because in that 

 cotton section every stray negro was out with his whole family pick- 

 ing cotton, and because flat cars didn't come in in sufficient num- 

 bers to keep both mills running, so they concluded to run the more 

 important one at Memphis and shut down the other. 



One of the men who visited with the members of the hardwood 

 trade in Memphis was N. H. Walcott, president of the Crittenden 

 Lumber Company, Providence, B. I., and Crittenden, Ark., had been 

 spending some time at the mill. He entertained us the other night 

 at Memphis with yarns- about some of the eastern boys of the 

 olden times — men who have gone before us and are now home — and 

 some are still at the rudder of some of the successful concerns in 

 the East. His eastern concern is known as the L. H. Gage Lumber 

 Company, but in going through Indiana and back to Yankeedom, 

 and then to Arkansas, he still has a keen interest in all branches 

 of the hardwood trade because that is his business. His comment 

 about embargoes was something worth while listening to. W^hile 

 like every other good American he is in sjTnpathy with the govern- 

 ment's needs and is only too glad to help in co-operation with it, 

 he thinks the railroads' handling of the car situation in the past 

 few years has added a burden to every business man, and this word 

 "embargo," which was unknown up to a recent period, is a mis- 

 nomer in several ways. It might be called a "stopper," for it 

 practically puts the industry out of business if a man needs lumber 

 in Massachusetts and the lumber is in the yards at Cincinnati. 



Embargo 



The big embargo menace in Cincinnati is still "embargoed." I 

 notice George Cox of Ohio recently appointed our old friend Major 

 Stubbs, who for many years was with the Southern Pacific lines 

 and is now retired, to investigate the cause and remedy. We be- 

 lieve the major will assist the situation and his long experience 

 should be beneficial, but in the long run this embargo proposition 

 is going to be like a stepchild — never with us — until the whole 

 business machinery in embargoes is dumped into a tumbler and the 

 wind and water all shaken out of it. We must accept scarcity of 

 flats, scarcity of box cars, scarcity of any kind of a darn, old car, 

 embargo and all the rest, during the next six months. If that 

 doesn't raise the price of lumber five dollars a thousand and put 

 many a consumer in the ninth hole, I will be surprised. 

 Specifications 



There is more or less comment on specifications for government 

 business than we have mentioned heretofore, and a letter before me 

 this morning reminds me that there arc others feeling the wave 

 caused by the president's and Uncle Sam's cabinet. Our friend 

 who always could express himself says, in referring to specifications 

 from Washington, that "they make them or adopt them to the 

 book No. 79 of the issue of 181.3, and 'they would make God sit up 

 and take notice of his shortcomings to be able to make trees grow 

 that will make such lumber." ■ 



I can hear some fellow bob up now and say: "This lumber 

 trade is pro-German and it is not backing up the president." For 

 their benefit let me remind him that the quotation given above is 

 from a rock-ribbed Democrat with a thirty-third degree and sixty- 

 four years old in the cause, and the reddest-blooded American citi- 



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