LANDOWNERS COOPERATIVE FORESTRY SOCIETY. 23 I 



21. Landowners' Co-operative Forestry Society. 



I. Speech Delivered at the Annual General Meeting 

 BY Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, Bart., Chairman. 



The Reports show an advance in every direction, which 

 reflects great credit on Mr Leslie and his staff and on our 

 committees. The success of our undertaking cannot be 

 entirely gauged by its financial results, but it is dependent, like 

 other undertakings, on finance, and it is important to know 

 that our financial position shows steady improvement. We 

 shall not be satisfied till our trading account is self-supporting. 

 Up to now it has had to borrow from the subscription."^, which 

 ought to be free for other purposes, but this necessity will 

 disappear with an increased turnover. This year the turnover 

 has increased by 170 per cent., from ^^4000 to over ;j£, 10,000, 

 and Mr Leslie reckons that when it reaches the figure of ;^25,ooo, 

 which it may easily do this year, the trading account will be 

 self-supporting. The main thing to note is that as the business 

 expands the profit is increasing more rapidly than the expenses. 

 In the year under review the profit increased by 130 per cent., 

 the expenses of management by 52 per cent. The business has 

 now reached a point where the committee has found it 

 necessary to abandon the provisional arrangement under which 

 Mr Lesfie has provided the office staff at a fixed sum, and the 

 Society will henceforth have its own staff. This will entail no 

 change in the personnel, in which we have been extremely 

 fortunate. Before leaving the question of the trading account, 

 I should like to point out that many of our members make no 

 use of the Society. In some societies no members are so 

 valuable as those who pay their subscriptions and ask no 

 questions. This is not one of them. I believe some members 

 refrain from employing the Society from a feeling that their 

 small sales or purchases will give more trouble than they are 

 worth. They forget that transactions which give a gieat deal 

 of trouble to a private individual or his estate office give scarcely 

 any trouble here where all the year's information is at hand, 

 and where business is transacted by those who have daily 

 experience of precisely similar transactions. This is where 

 the advantage of co-operation comes in. The more our 



