SELLINGLUMBER 75 



The bottom of the posts were thoroughly decayed for at least a 

 foot, or a foot and a half. The heart was perfectly sound, but it 

 was 95 per cent sap. I asked the man to saw off a foot from that 

 rotten piece. He looked at me queerly for a moment, but he sawed 

 it off, and I lugged off this rotten wood. Now, gentlemen, that 

 was a splendid illustration of the unfitness of the lumber material. 

 The man ought not to have used the material in that form. "Yes," 

 you lumber salesmen say, "but if it rots out in a few years, we will 

 sell the fellow another stick." Yes, but the American people are 

 accustomed to buying good stuff for their own buildings, and what 

 is liable to happen is that unless they buy good material, they are 

 going to get tired of the whole 'business and buy something else. 

 It is not so much the waste, however, as it is disrespect for the 

 material which you are asking the public to use, and the first thing 

 you have got to do is to erase that disrespect by pointing out the 

 elementary facts. Take porches ; many of you have seen a porch 

 where the earth or sidewalk bumps right up against it, and it 

 will rot off in two or three years ; and then another man who 

 sells cement comes around and tells him, "Yes, I told you that. a ti v e Treat-" 

 Our stuff doesn't dn that." The same is true for a thousand and mentof 

 one applications. Instead of sticking it down into the soil where 

 the moisture will attack the grain, either creosote the piece on the 

 bottom, or put it up where it has a foundation with good ventilation. 

 I could give you a host of everyday uses. On a larger scale, com- 

 ing to a rather brand-new field, which I want to call your particular 

 and careful attention to, is the question of the artificial preservation 

 of wood. In the United States, as far as the lumber industry 

 is concerned, that is a brand-new field. Some years ago I was 

 standing in a hotel on the Strand, in London, and asked the porter 

 to wrap up a parcel for me. I found him poring over a pamphlet. 

 I looked over his shoulder and found it was a pamphlet by a. creosot- 

 ing company on the east coast of England advertising creosoted 

 fences, posts for barns and cribs, and so forth. I asked him, "What 

 are you doing?" He said, "We have a little farm up in the country, 

 and my father and I have a little fence to build and I was look- 

 ing over this catalogue." And I looked over the catalogue and 

 promptly swiped it. That manufacturer was advertising fencing by 

 the yard, including 2 by 4 posts and pickets. How many people 

 in the United States ever heard of such a thing? I warrant, very 

 few. I want to tell you of another instance. A friend of mine in 



