HARDWOOD RECORD 



December 10, 1917 



zen both in private and business life, and a thorongh supporter of 

 knocjcing "h — 1 out of the kaiser," and all th<*e who are against 

 the present commercial policy of the United States. 



And that ceminds me. There have been some heads of depart- 

 ments and special oflScers at Washington, who have written a lot 

 of fool letters along that same line. If a man wanted $105 for oak 

 on a special grade to fit some particular bill, some secretary at Wash- 

 ington would write him that he wasn't patriotic, and it was his 

 duty to sell lumber to the government for less than it cost in order 

 to show his patriotism. To relieve the mind of some of you fellows 

 who think everybody is a hypocrite but himself, I have two thoughts 

 in mind. I have seen letters of that kind written by prominent 

 men in Washington, supposed to be holding up the hand of tha 

 President. 



I also learned of a new experience in one of the departments in 

 Washington. It seemed that they needed munitions. They got a 

 man they thought was best equipped to buy the materials and get 

 them. He said he wouldn't take the job unless he could eliminate 

 the red tape and either buy what he needed or take it up with 

 another fellow that day and not wait for three weeks to have it 

 go around to the various departments, and when he received an in- 

 voice for a car that was according to specifications, it would be 

 paid for promptl.v. He acted in good faith and he was given the 

 power to do things, and he did them. The first thing was to employ 

 a system of modernizing the records and methods of the oflSce he 

 went into, and he did it so thoroughly that there is a clean desk in 

 that office every night. And the fellows who sell him, sell Uncle 

 Sam through this $50,000 man, who is giving his services for 

 nothing, and is only too glad to do it, and would be working twenty 

 hours a day if he hadn 't systematized his office. He has the good 

 will of everyone of the fellows that take contracts from him, be- 

 cause it is a business proposition, and he even has his job down so 

 fine that if they weren't up-to-date he taught them how to be up- 

 to-date and gave them the name of a superintendent who would 

 be sure to deliver the munitions quickly. 



To show you the folly of the government specifications — I learned 

 of a recent purchase by Uncle Sam of thick red birch, to be prac- 

 tically one face red, 14 feet and 16 feet. Xow, you know what 

 thick red birch costs. Very little of it cuts over four, six or eight- 

 four. This was to be used for ladder stock for ladders going over 

 the side of the boat to let off passengers where there wasn't a dock, 

 or for sailors to go overboard into the dinghy, or whatever they 

 call those row boats. Why, most any four or five-inch hardwood 

 strip could be used to good advantage. The ship carpenter who in- 

 vented that ship specification years ago was all right, although 

 he wasn 't very well acquainted with how true the trees grow, and 

 the further fact that the Lord only makes one almost clear log 

 in 10,000. 



It isn 't in the spirit of criticism that we talk about these things, 

 but they show that the men we have down there on the new com- 

 mittee (and these are all practical men) have further access to the 

 councils of the bureaus that have been formed, and more of them 

 will be sent to Washington, and, while down there they know more 

 about the possibilities of the various trees and how they grow and 

 what they could be cut into, it would be a good thing if specifica- 

 tions would be amended so that they would be practical. And still 

 at the same time they would meet the conditions of the ship car- 

 penter and lumberman who has the tree. 



Open Price Meeting 



The November conference on the open price plan at Cincinnati, 

 Tuesday, November 20, was a bully meeting and at each session 

 there seemed to be more enthusiasm about the data that comes 

 from the individual. 



West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky were all repre- 

 sented. Ohio, too. One of the subjects up for discussion at this 

 meeting as well as other sessions in the last week in the South, 

 has been a strange coincident that all the log rules that have been 

 built in the past years do not provide for the half inch which the 

 present rules provide for, and the orders will be made in future 

 rules to meet that condition. 



Ed. Eobinson of the Mowbray & Bobinson Company in speaking 

 on the subject said that an error in measurement both over and 

 under where there was a shortage of several hundred feet came 

 out in a big car from the fact that the inspector's eye is not 

 always true or his method of not endeavoring to get the exact 

 amount in the car brings about a thoughtlessness that means 

 misunderstandings and besides a loss of 300 or 400 feet and $80 

 or $150 in a car. He said it is not a good thing to have occur 

 because the carelessness in accounts is just as unfortunate as in 

 cuUage. He stated further: "I would think that every man can 

 afford to check this up as a natural leak as any other that he may 

 have, because we are very careless of our methods. I heard from 

 some men that they are absolutely perfect, but the majority of 

 people in handling lumber do not feel as good in the morning as they 

 do in the afternoon, or vice versa. So the grade or quantity might 

 vary because of this, and it is well to take it up in time." 



Ralph McCracken now lives in Lexington, Ky., being sales man- 

 ager of the Kentucky Lumber Company there. He has lived in 

 Kentucky a long time, but at present is in a bad fix. He has one 

 neighbor who likes his mint toddy pretty well, but he hasn't a 

 mint bed. He has another neighbor who has a large and luscious 

 mint bed which seems to be at the disposition of his left-hand 

 brother. So Ralph has a hard time with his garden in the summer 

 because of his friend's paths across the back yard. Fortunately 

 it is a sociable neighborhood because the three live in unity to- 

 gether. The middle man caring little for Kentucky brew or mint, 

 while his neighbors are both interested in the mint particularly, 

 and he of course has to be neighborly and furnish the liquor 

 occasionally as well as the path. Speaking of the lumber busi- 

 ness, Mr. McCracken said that "we have about all we can take 

 care of this year. Stocks are pretty well broken," and President 

 Delaney thirty or sixty days ago stated that he didn't care if he 

 got another order this year or not. He would just as soon add it to 

 the lumber pile. The sales manager is still in close touch with the 

 situation and gets the orders as usual. 



Benefits from Co-operation 



The announcement that the American Oak Manufacturers ' Asso- 

 ciation and the Gum Lumber Manufacturers' Association would be 

 consolidated at the annual meeting of the two associations January 

 17, was no surprise to the operators of this section, but it means 

 a step to bring about one association covering the manufacture 

 of hardwoods in the Southland. The probabilities are that the 

 sooner all the boys get together under one roof, the greater the 

 possibilities for future work, adding greater efficiency to the pres- 

 ent efforts in exchanging information concerning the manufacture, 

 sale and consumption of hardwood lumber. 



A manufacturer speaking of the benefits derived from the Mem- 

 phis Lumbermen's club stated that there probably wasn't a mem- 

 ber who could not credit to the work of this association at least 

 $10,000 a year because the men in this local field all have shown 

 the spirit of co-operation better than ever in their history. The 

 telephone is used to better advantage and the exchange of informa- 

 tion is more frank, thus eliminating the jotkeying that has pre- 

 vailed' in some parts of the industry by the lack of frankness, ex- 

 change of costs, values, stock figures, etc. The probabilities are 

 that this step wiU lead to less animosity and more intelligent co- 

 operation between aU branches of the hardwood industry. Mem- 

 bers of the various clubs were enthusiastic about the future efforts 

 to add another leaf to their history. 



I met W. H. Dick of the Tallahatchie Lumber Company, Phillip, 

 Miss., the other day. He is both lumberman and farmer — and some 

 farmer, by the way. He came to Memphis to sell 50,000 or 60,000 

 bushels of corn raised in the Mississippi bottoms. The price is 

 about $1.65. He said, "You know Mississippi is a very productive 

 state and the more we grow into knowing its possibilities, the more 

 our ground will be cultivated, and the first thing you know the agri- 

 cultural production of the state will bloom out to an Illinois or an 

 Iowa. E. H. D. 



