SELLING LUMBER 37 



Mr. Stevens : I think the traveling salesman who writes on 

 the front of his order, "Must be good stuff," is either playing a 

 favorite of one among his many customers, or is trying to leave 

 that customer under the impression that he is going to get some- 

 thing a little out of the ordinary. I don't think that any sales- 

 man, at least in my territory, puts "must be good lumber," be- 

 cause we all ship it good ; some of them ship it a little better than 

 the other fellow, and we all scratch our heads when we see it. Do Salesmen 

 I think Mr. Nelson is absolutely right, and that no two cars of Favorites"? 

 No. 2 shiplap can be shipped out alike. It is owing to the tim- 

 ber out of which you get that stuff as to what the variety may 

 be ; it may be a little higher or lower. You have to do the best you 

 can. But as a rule we have mighty little trouble on grades. 



The Chairman : Any other comments on this question ? 



Mr. Nelson: Regardless of how many grading rules we 

 ever establish, in my opinion lumber will always be bought and 

 sold largely on comparison. But we want to get the dealer away 

 from the belief that one manufacturer is shipping his lumber 

 above grade, and that he is accustomed to buying a grade of lum- 

 ber and getting a * better grade I mean to say, better than the An Erroneous 

 Association grading rules specify. There are any number of deal- Be^ e f me 

 ers who are of that opinion that the grades that are shipped them Have 

 are better than the Association grading rules permit; and we 

 should get those dealers into the correct way of thinking; that the 

 reason one shipment of lumber looks better than another is that 

 the trees out of which that grew didn't have as many defects in 

 them as the other. 



Mr. Beebe: We are here in the interest of co-operation. It 

 seems to me that no salesman should write on an order that this 

 must be particularly good stock, because, as somebody else pointed 

 out over there, if you do, it is a special contract. I think that 

 in the interest of co-operation we should not put anything further 

 on an order except to say: "This must be strictly up to Associa- 

 tion grade in every case/' (Applause). 



Mr. Wilhite: I wish to say that when you get an order that 

 says, "Must be good stock" on it, there is a reason for that man 

 putting it on there, because the ordinary salesman doesn't put any- 

 thing on the order unless he wants to mean something. Now, a 

 good many times a salesman puts that on there because he has 

 had trouble on a previous order or two, and the dealer will prob- 



