12 



SELLING LUMBER 



Mr. Keith 

 Talks on 

 Organization 



The Purpose 

 In Organizing 

 The Southern 

 Pine Associa- 

 tion 



The Task of 



Educating 



Ourselves 



gentlemen here, that there is where the greatest need of our trade 

 rests today. I want to call your attention to the fact that many 

 of us have reached the conclusion that our loyalty rests more with 

 our trade than it does with our company; but I think our loyalty 

 rests with each. 



I sometimes think it a disadvantage to which the lumber sales- 

 man is subjected,, that he has no knowledge as to what the lumber 

 he is selling costs. His employer has no knowledge of that. We 

 know what it costs to produce a thousand feet of lumber, but 

 we do not know what it costs for the various items we are sell- 

 ing; and consequently we are in competition, selling our product 

 on the representation which our trade makes as to what someone 

 else is willing to sell it for. 



The Southern Pine Association was organized for the purpose 

 of educating ourselves and the public. We were confronted with 

 a situation where everybody believed there existed in this coun- 

 try a lumber trust, though each one of us knew that in tfce past 

 ten years, had we properly accounted our costs, there was not a 

 man in the business who had made a dollar. 



So, the first thing we had to do was to undertake to con- 

 vince the public that there was no lumber trust. That we under- 

 took to do in a campaign of publicity and advertising, and by 

 presentation of the facts of our industry before the Federal Trade 

 Commission, bringing out in detail, clearly and plainly, the eco- 

 nomic condition of our industry, and we have accomplished that 

 purpose; we have not seen anything in the papers now for over a 

 year of the lumber trust. I think we have educated the public, 

 and I certainly believe that we have succeeded in impressing the 

 Federal Trade Commission with the facts concerning our in- 

 dustry. 



Along with this work comes the question of educating our- 

 selves ; educating the manufacturer, and through the manufacturer 

 educating his salesmen. We did not know the volume of business 

 that was done, the amount of lumber that was manufactured, nor 

 any of the economic conditions of our business. Today we have 

 that information; not as fully as we would like to have it, but 

 at the same time more fully than we have ever had it before. In 

 the future, instead of representative information, we hope to 

 have accurate and full information. There is a distinction between 

 the two. For instance, in our Association today we have manu- 



