132 



SELLING LUMBER 



What a School 

 of Salesman- 

 ship Should 

 Do 



No Book Tells 

 the Story 

 of Lumber 



The Goods 

 the Essential 

 Thing in 

 Salesmanship 



! 



Now, what should a school of salesmanship do? If a man 

 is short on memory, then we should give him exercises to 

 strengthen his memory. If he is short on imagination, get the 

 imagination limbered up through playing with the babies and 

 I say to you retail dealers, and to the wholesalers and salesmen, 

 so that you can get it across to the man that you instruct, that 

 women are going to be more and more customers of the retail 

 dealer. We are not going to have lumber yards ; we are going 

 to have lumber stores, and the women will come in there and 

 see lumber in a way she never saw before. 



Then I might take up the goods; and what an enormous 

 field that is ! I have written thirty-two textbooks on merchan- 

 dise. I have written one on shoes, for instance, and that book 

 contains all the points known about shoes. What is known can 

 be found out by research; and the man that goes through that 

 book from cover to cover, 600 pages, he has obtained the sum- 

 total of human knowledge up to date on shoes, and he knows 

 his goods and becomes enthusiastic on them. I don't know one 

 book that contains the story of lumber. The story of lumber 

 is a marvelous story, stretching down through history, connected 

 with the palaces of the powerful as well as the hovels of the poor ; 

 and the story of lumber, if that were written as it might be, with 

 illustrations, would be one of the most interesting of 'books. I 

 have books in my library on the various woods ; yes, and it is 

 exceedingly interesting; and the beauty and utility of these things 

 is something I could become enthusiastic over. I would like to 

 have time to write such a book as that. I love lumber as it stands 

 in the forest primeval, and after the work of art of some genius 

 puts it where it ought to be put, to fit in with some things to 

 produce the unity from which we live. It is great to have some- 

 thing to become enthusiastic over. It is marvelous to me that 

 salesmen who live by selling anything don't see that the essen- 

 tial thing in salesmanship is not the salesman, neither is it the 

 customer, but it is the goods. It is the goods that we talk about; 

 and if the salesman could stick himself out of sight, and make 

 the customer see the goods, he is the finest of salesmen, just as 

 the preacher in the pulpit, if he holds up the cross and makes his 

 listeners forget the preachers, they say he is a fine preacher. 

 He hides himself behind the goods. I know a girl up here at 

 Galesburg who became enthusiastic over a can of beans. One 

 day a man, well dressed and prosperous looking, came in and asked 



