232 TRANSACTIONS OF KOYAI. SCOTTISH ARBOKICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



business increases the more our position is strengthened, with 

 advantage both for our own members and, I may add, for those 

 with whom we are dealing. No member need therefore scruple 

 to entrust business to us or to ask for advice and quotations. 

 On the other hand, members who are content to sell timber, 

 as some do, for less than its value are not only losing money 

 (which is their own affair) but are also undoing the work of 

 the Society. . 



This brings me to the wider objects of our Society, which 

 aims not only at the assistance of individual members but also 

 at the revival of an industry which on nineteen estates out ot 

 twenty is worked at a loss when it might be worked at a profit. 

 It is not a simple case of protecting ourselves from robbery. 

 I remember pointing out when the Society was first started 

 that we could not make a greater mistake than that of regarding 

 the timber merchant and the nurseryman as our natural 

 enemies. They are really our natural allies. When an 

 industry is at a low ebb and utterly disorganised, as forestry is 

 in this country, every one engaged in it suff'ers. Every one is 

 suspicious of the other, but we all suffer together. In other 

 countries, where forestry is better organised, not only does the 

 producer of timber make good profits, but the nurseryman and 

 the timber merchant also do a thriving and necessary business. 

 The baffling uncertainty which now overclouds all their 

 operations is happily absent. The reorganisation of an 

 industry is a very slow business, but even in these three years, 

 and working on a modest scale, we have been able to prove that 

 it is not only possible for the producer of timber to make a better 

 bargain with the nurseryman and the timber merchant than he 

 had usually done, but to make a bargain which is more 

 profitable to both sides. One-sided co-operation is not likely 

 to lead to much in a big and complicated business like this. 

 The conferences which have been held regarding the prices 

 of home timber as compared with those of imported timber, 

 and especially of railway sleepers, prove beyond a doubt 

 that co-operation between the producer of timber and the 

 timber merchant will be profitable to both, and will lead 

 to a great deal of business being done where now none is 

 done at all. 



It is pitiful to think how much timber in Scotland is felled in 

 a hurry and sold below its value to merchants who scarcely 



