82 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



quest you to publish this letter, and will be glad 

 to extend to you every facility to enable you to 

 prove to your own satisfaction that all we 

 stated in our literature is absolutely true. 



Yours very truly, 

 North American Hardwood Timber Company, 

 Per E. L. Temple, Vice-President. 



Without even verifying the statements 

 made in the above communication, the 

 Record sees no reason for making any altera- 

 tions in its previous analysis of eucalyptus 

 or the prospective profits in eucalyptus cul- 

 ture. Attaching the term mahogany to euca- 

 lyptus is so far-fetched as to be no authority 

 at all. The various types of California grown 

 eucalyptus bear no resemblance in structure, 

 character or botany to mahogany. 



The Kecord does not want to be responsible 

 for any foolish statements about the imme- 

 diate extinction of American hardwood growth, 

 whether promulgated by the Forest Service 

 or others. The Forest Service has very justly 

 seen reason to amend the prophecy since it 

 was issued. From the evidence at hand, the 

 Record cannot admit that there is a practical 

 lumberman or expert of forestry pursuits who 



is engaged in the exploitation of lands for the 

 growing of eucalyptus. 



It is a pleasure to note that even the North 

 American Hardwood Timber Company has 

 failed to approve of the literature of the 

 Eucalyptus Mahogany Growers, Inc., and has 

 abrogated its contract with it. Regardless of 

 what the North American Hardwood Timber 

 Company "holds" in the matter of profits 

 from eucalyptus growing, the Record contends 

 that there is as yet no evidence that will con- 

 stitute proof to demonstrate it. 



Every eucalyptus promoter in the land 

 recommends eucalyptus as a finishing, cabinet 

 and carriage and wagon material. California 

 eucalyptus growers have repeatedly sub- 

 mitted specimens, and doubtless good ones, of 

 California eucalyptus to the furniture and 

 carriage trade of the Middle West, and in 

 every instance the wood has been tested and 

 declared so unfit for the purposes recommended 

 as in no wise to compare with the lower- 

 priced and plentiful lumber at present em- 

 ployed for these purposes. 



Advertising and Progress 



Advertising and Selling is the name of a 

 New York publication largely devoted to the 

 advertising of advertising. Right now lum- 

 bermen are apparently awakening to the fact 

 that they can contribute to the ease, forceful- 

 ness and economy of marketing lumber by ad- 

 vertising who they are, where they are and 

 what they have to sell. Advertising and Sell- 

 ing recently printed the following editorial 

 on the sub.ject of advertising, which is wor- 

 thy of perusal: 



Several of the articles relating to tech- 

 nical advertising in this issue touch ably 

 upon two most important issues; quality 

 circulation as compared with mere bulk, and 

 the misuse of space by advertising of the 

 standaid card variety. 



This is the age of big things, circulations 

 included. Magazines with a million, or 

 closely approaching that figure, are no longer 

 a curiosity. Hundreds of thousands are the 

 ordinary terms in which circulations, are 

 reckoned. Rates soar in proportion, or out 

 of proportion. 



The trade and technical publisher must 

 talk of thousands instead of^ hundreds of 

 thousands. He is expected by advertisers to 

 fix his rate with relation to his circulation 

 numerically considered, as the magazines do; 

 not with relation to quality, as he should do. 



Quality means the need for an article and 

 the power to buy it. 



Suppose that a technical paper goes to 

 5,000 manufacturers who buy one of a cer- 

 tain type of machine, costing $500, every 10 

 years. That represents a buying power, for 

 that one article, of $50 per year per sub- 

 scriber. If the advertising rate is $50 per 

 page, it costs the maker of the machine in 

 question 1 cent to tell his story one time to 

 each of these possible buyers. 



Suppose that, in order to "cover the coun- 

 try," or something equally hazy, the manu- 

 facturer advertises in a general magazine of 

 500,000 circulation, at $500 per page. To be 

 generous, we will assume that this general 

 magazine also reaches 5,000 prospective buy- 

 ers of the manufacturer's machine. The cost 

 of reaching them will be 50 cents per time 

 per man, instead of 1 cent, to say nothing of 



the higher value of reaching a man on a 

 technical proposition through a technical 

 paper rather than through a household me- 

 dium. 



Yet the advertiser, because of the high 

 cost of his space in the general medium, will 

 spend a vast amount of care and thought on 

 his copy — and send any old thing to the 

 technical paper, because the space doesn't 

 cost him much. 



Bear in mind, too, that for the $500 paid 

 for a page in a general magazine, 99 per 

 cent of the circulation of which is waste, the 

 manufacturer could buy 10 pages in his tech- 

 nical paper, tell his whole story — almost in 

 catalog form — and make a most powerful 

 and striking appeal to 5,000 buyers, with no 

 waste whatever. 



Considering quality, as above defined, the 

 rates of trade and technical papers are too 

 low. If they were higher, they would com- 

 mand more respect and cause the advertiser 

 to take real pains with his copy and hence 

 secure many times greater results. 



Argufication is not in the dictionary; it 

 should be, for it fitly expresses the chief 

 curse of salesmanship. The idea of the aver- 

 age salesman, to judge by the way he argu- 

 fies, is merely to get the name of his victim 

 on the dotted line, regardless of anything 

 except his credit rating. Volumes of thrill- 

 ing literature, mostly fiction, have been 

 printed in "business" periodicals, devoted 

 to colossal feats in salesmanship — stories of 

 triumphs over apparently insurmountable 

 obstacles, the "cleaning up" of territfo- 

 ries, the sandbagging of stubborn non- 

 customers into line, and all that sort of 

 thing. These tales are supposed to fire the 

 ambition of the salesman, and to awaken in 

 him the determination to go and do likewise. 



It is a poor sort of a triumph to sell a man 

 something he doesn 't want. A customer 

 made against his will remains a non-custom- 

 er still. Trade won by an assault with intent 

 to kill is mighty unreliable. An order se- 

 cured by argufying until the victim signs up 

 because he fears he will never look upon the 

 faces of his loved ones again unless he does, 

 is a setback instead of an advantage. 



The real salesman, who makes good year 

 after year, is the man who studies the needs 

 of his customer and tries earnestly to help 



him. A hypnotist can sell a man something 

 he doesn 't want, but that is trickery and 

 not business. Every dealer has problems; 

 very real and serious ones. The salesman 

 who helps him solve them and is able to 

 furnish both the goods and the selling plans 

 which will enable him to do more business 

 and make more money is his friend indeed. 

 The smart fellow, shallow but ingenious in 

 argufication, who succeeds in loading him up 

 with a lot of goods that he can 't swing 

 when he gets them on his shelves, is no 

 friend of his, and he knows it. 



There are four questions which the adver- 

 tiser has a right to ask of the publication 

 which seeks his patronage. They are these: 



1. What is your circulation f 



2. Does, it go to the people I want to 

 reach ? 



3. Do they actually subscribe for it, pay 

 for it, and read it? 



4. Why do they read it? 



If the volume of circulation is satisfac- 

 torily large; if the publication goes to the 

 right people; if they subscribe for it, pay 

 for it, and read it for reasons which connect 

 up with your line of business, it is the me- 

 dium for you to use. 



A New General Iiumber Tariff 



Hardwood Record is just in receipt of the 

 1910-11 edition of the General Lumber Tariff 

 showing the rates on ash, basswood, beech, birch, 

 chestnut, cottonwood, cypress, elm, gum, hem- 

 lock, hickory, maple, oak, poplar, spruce, syca- 

 more, white pine, longleaf and shortleaf yellow 

 pine from the entire southern producing field — 

 Virginia to Texas — to all eastern, northern, west- 

 ern and Canadian consuming points. 



By an original, yet simple method of tariff 

 construction, all of the rate information which 

 is carried in 2,000 railroad tariffs is clearly 

 shown in the 370 pages of this publication. The 

 railroads in constructing through rates from the 

 South to the East, North and West have adopted 

 certain logical junctions — the Missouri River, 

 the Mississippi River and the Ohio River, cross- 

 ings together with the Virginia gateways as bas- 

 ing points. That is, the southern lines have 

 established basing rates up to these junctiona 

 and the northern lines basing rates beyond and, 

 generally speaking, through rates are combina- 

 tions of these factors. 



The compilers of the general lumber tariff by 

 an exhaustive study of the subject have deduced 

 all of these basing rates and by combining these 

 In the proper way, more than 200 million 

 through rates may be constructed. To find the 

 rate from any producing point to any consuming 

 point, it is only necessary to determine the '"bas- 

 ing rate up to" the gateway from the producing 

 point, and add thereto the "basing rate beyond" 

 the same gateway, using the gateway which 

 makes the lowest combination. 



The General Lumber Tariff is published by 

 The Lumbermen's Bureau, Inc., who are located 

 in Washington. D. C, and have access to all 

 the files of the Interstate Commerce Commission. 

 The two previous editions have achieved a repu- 

 tation for accuracy, and the book Is now the rate 

 authority of thousands of lumber concerns 

 throughout the country. It costs $10.00 per 

 year and is kept revised by a monthly supple- 

 ment. 



Under the interstate commerce law there Is 

 no possible way to hold a railroad company re- 

 sponsible for an erroneous rate quoted by its 

 agent and as it is absolutely impossible for a 

 lumber company who buys or sells over a wide 

 area to maintain a complete file of tariffs, a 

 check such as is afforded by this work has be- 

 come a necessity in guarding against losses aris- 

 ing from this source. 



This tariff can not fail to have a large In- 

 fluence in facilitating the extension of trade and 

 is an economy as well as an insurance against 

 loss which every lumberman will welcome. 



