BUSINESS PEINCIPLES INVOLVED. 473 



large quantities of wood, and especially of valuable timber, are 

 in question, especially in forests with a small local demand, 

 the wood, for the most part, would rot in situ if wholesale 

 timber-merchants did not undertake its sale and distribution 

 in distant districts, which are densely populated and poorly 

 supplied with forests. Forest-owners and wholesale timber- 

 merchants must therefore work hand-in-hand ; good business 

 relations between them are entirely in the interests of forests, as 

 long as only through the latter the distribution and conversion 

 of the raw material into marketable produce can be effected. 



Under present trade conditions, so changed compared with 

 the past, it would be a serious injury to a forest-owner were 

 he to refuse to acknowledge the necessity of the middleman ; 

 on the contrary, he must endeavour constantly to improve his 

 relations with him. For it is the timber-trader who endeavours 

 to extend the present market and to open out fresh ones and 

 improve the means of transport ; who invests a large capital 

 in buying timber and establishing sawmills ; who follows with 

 attention every change, however small, in the price of wood ; 

 who is constantly posted-up in all industrial changes in the 

 conditions of transport or the incidence of taxes, and who is 

 vigorously engaged in pushing on the timber business. All 

 this energy of the timber-merchant, even though it is in his 

 own interest, should be acknowledged thankfully by the forester. 

 But if these desirable relations in the interests of both parties, 

 between the forest-owner and the timber-merchant, are to bear 

 useful fruit, the latter must also be more ready than is often 

 the case to meet the former half-way. 



6. Modes of Sale. 



Public auction of converted wood should be considered as 

 the regular, though not exclusive, mode of sale, for it is suit- 

 able only when free competition of purchasers may be expected. 

 In slack times of trade and when markets are overstocked, and 

 in the case of very large fellings, sale by sealed tender, by unit 

 of produce or by private contract, may yield better financial 

 results than auction sales under such conditions. Wherever, 

 business being very slack, large quantities of wood must be 



