HARDWOOD RECORD 



35 



A Man of Strong Prejudices 



I knew the late W. W. Cummer of Cadillac 

 and Jacksonville for many years, and while 

 he was a man of remarkable acumen, force- 

 fulness and integrity, he had one marked 

 peculiarity, and that was the violence of his 

 prejudices. He might forgive an injury, but 

 he never could forget one. 



Years and years ago, in the early days of 

 the Northwestern Lumberman, a little news 

 item crept into that paper which Mr. Cummer 

 imagined reflected on his attitude in a suit in 

 which he was involved. The item was of no 

 particular moment and entirely escaped both 

 the attention of W. B. Judson, the owner of 

 the publication, and the copy editor, but from 

 that time on for a period of a quarter of a 

 century, Mr. Cummer absolutely refused to do 

 any business with the Northwestern Lumber- 

 man or its successor. It was only about ten 

 years ago that he permitted the resumption 

 of business relations with the American Lum- 

 berman, and still that three-line paragraph 

 rankled in his mind. 



Years ago a brother of Mr. Cummer's be- 

 came entangled in the gear works of a Shay 

 locomotive, and was so badly injured that he 

 died as a result. Mr. Cummer immediately 

 ' ' scrapped ' ' every Shay locomotive in his 

 operations, and would never knowingly per- 

 mit the use of one of them in his works. 

 Some years ago, unbeknown to him, his asso- 

 ciates in the Cadillac operation purchased and 

 used several locomotives of this type, but they 

 were kept carefully out of his sight when Mr. 

 Cummer visited Cadillac. 



The Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company 

 had a similar experience long years ago with 

 Mr. Cummer. Some friends of the eminent 

 deceased lumberman had a controversy with 

 this company and he considered that his 

 friends' position was right, and although at 

 that time the Lidgerwood logging equipment 

 was the only one manufactured that had any 

 particular value, he got along with make- 

 shift skidding appliances of one sort and an- 

 other for years. It has only been of recent 

 date that he again became a patron of the 

 Lidgerwood company. 



When Mr. Cummer built his big sawmill at 

 Jacksonville he made a tentative arrangement 

 with one of the leading trunk lines to build a 

 branch road connecting their lines with his 

 timber in Alachua county, Florida. The com- 

 pany dilly-dallied along with the proposition 

 to such an extent that Mr. Cummer eventual- 

 ly became annoyed at its delay in fulfilling 

 its obligations, and in an interview with an 

 officer of the road expressed himself quite 

 forcibly on this subject. 



The railroad magnate evidently did not 

 know Mr. Cummer very well, or he wouldn't 

 have had the temerity to do what he did, for 

 he reached over and patted Mr. Cummer on 

 his semi-bald head with the observation, 

 "Don't get sweaty, sonny!" 



Mr. Cummer left the railroad man's office 

 in no enviable frame of mind, and within the 

 hour put plans under way for securing a right 

 of way for an independent railroad line run- 



ning for a distance of something like one 

 hundred and twenty-five miles to connect his 

 timber with the Jacksonville plant. The re- 

 sult was the building within a few months of 

 the Jacksonville & Southwestern Railroad. 



The big railroad system treated the matter 

 as a joke at first, but eventually becoming 

 convinced that Mr. Cummer was going to at- 

 tempt to build the line, bethought themselves 

 of a scheme to balk the enterprise. Cabals 

 against the enterprise were put out in financial 

 circles of New York, which advised against 

 the purchase of any bonds on the property, 

 on the ground that the road could never earn 

 its dividends. As time progressed it was 

 found that the entire road was being paid for 

 in cash and no bonds were ever issued. It 

 was this same system that eventually took 

 over the Jacksonville & Southwestern Rail- 

 road, paying Mr. Cummer its entire cost and 

 interest, together with a bonus of more than 

 . $400,000 in prepaid freight receipts, appli- 

 cable to his log freights. 



A Good Story if Not True 



I don't want to vouch for the following 

 story, but it is being told about a lumber in- 

 spector who buys stock for a northern house 

 among the small hardwood mills of Tennessee. 

 One day in a little town down in the moun- 

 tains, a half-witted and more or less whiskey- 

 befuddled mesmerist encountered the inspector 

 among a group of friends and discoursed on 

 his abOity to perform wonderful feats of mes- 

 merism. He alleged that he could mesmerize 

 the inspector. The lumberman was a good- 

 natured chap, and so he professed his willing- 

 ness to pose as a subject. 



The mesmerist made sundry passes with 

 his hands over the lumber buyer's face and 

 said to him : ' ' Now you are mesmerized. You 

 wUl believe anything I say to you. Now you 

 are fully under my control." 



The inspector fell in with the humor of the 

 situation and said, "Yes, that's true." 



' ' You are a hardwood lumber inspector. ' ' 



' ' Yes, ' ' assented the victim. 



' ' You are a good and honest lumber in- 

 spector. ' ' 



"Yes," again came the assent. 



"When you buy lumber of these little 

 raillmen in this country you always give them 

 full measurement and a straight grade." 



' ' Yes, ' ' still acknowledged the subject. 



Thereupon the mesmerist straightened up, 

 and said to the buyer, "Now if I didn't snap 

 my finger and wake you up, wouldn't I leave 

 you in a h 1 of a fis?" 



Maligned Chicago 



I found a story in an English periodical a 

 short time ago which is a base slander on Chi- 

 cago. Supposedly, it was told to illustrate a 

 type of American humor. 



It happened, so the story ran, in Chicago. 

 The man who had lived there, no better and 

 no worse than any others, soon after his death 

 woke up to a new life in the other world. 

 "Within a short time he met a man from his 



own city, who took him around for his first 

 walk in his new surroundings and showed him 

 all there was to be seen. After a while the 

 new arrival said: 



"Yes, all this is not to be underrated, and 

 at any rate, it is ten times better than Chi- 

 cago. But I can 't deny that I expected some- 

 thing .still better in heaven." 



His companion's eyes grew larger as he 

 looked at him in astonishment and exclaimed: 

 "What do you say? Do you think this place 

 is heaven! We are in hell. Don't you know 

 it?" 



The Old Woodpecker Story 



About once in so long the lay jircss re- 

 vamps an old woodpecker story of bird 's-eye 

 wood being produced by the aid of sapsuck- 

 ers. The latest is an alleged telegraph dis- 

 patch printed in the Chicago Inter Ocean 

 from Bangor, Maine, and recites that after 

 spending more than sixty years and more 

 than $10,000 in hunting bears and studying 

 the ways of wild creatures, Greenleaf Davis 

 of Mount Katahdin has begun to raise tame 

 woodpeckers for the purpose of using them 

 to convert ordinary rock maples into the rare 

 and costly woods known as bird 's-eye maple. 



The dispatch alleges that Mr. Davis is em- 

 ploying redheaded sapsuckers which pick 

 round holes in the bark of the maple, and thus 

 produce the scars that eventually heal and 

 produce the bird's-eye marks. There is a lot 

 more "rot" mixed up with the article 

 which is indicative of the paucity of real 

 news and the fertility of the imagination of 

 the associated press correspondent ' ' down 

 Bangor way." 



The Great Success of Big Splash Dam 



In last issue of Record were related the details 

 of the construction of the big splash dam of the 

 Yellow Poplar Lumber Company erected above 

 the "breaks" of the Big Sandy river, built to 

 drive the company's logs through the five miles 

 of rocky and tortuous channel of the cleft of 

 the Cumberland mountains, which it passes. 

 Even to the minds of the investors in tbis very 

 expensive concrete dam, the result of this ven- 

 ture was considered conjectural. Therefore the 

 Record is very glad to receive a communication 

 from C. 11. Crawford, secretary of the company, 

 stating that at 4 :30 on last Friday morning the 

 fifth splash of this dam was let off with a 

 twenty-two-foot head over the toemill. accompa- 

 nied by a large number of logs. 



The river is now clear of logs to Elkhorn 

 City, although about 6,000 sticks are lodged in 

 Elkhorn ford. It is estimated that about .30,00fi 

 logs have passed below Elkhorn City, and that 

 there is about three and one-half feet of water 

 in the river at that point. 



On Friday, Mr. Crawford did not know how 

 far down the Sandy the splash has taken the 

 logs, but he judges quite a distance. The result 

 means that 36,000 of the Yellow Poplar com- 

 pany's logs are being rafted In floating water 

 and will come out to Its harbor at Coal Grove on 

 small rises in the river. Naturally he feels very 

 jubilant over this. The dam has done even more 

 than was expected, and seems to have solved the 

 problem of getting out timber above the breiiks 

 of the Sandy. 



Mr. Crawford and his associates are to be 

 heartily congratulated. 



