SELLINGLUMBER 203 



terior walls are placed on heavy timber mill construction buildings, 

 and in all of these situations wood should be recommended only 

 where it is best, and the salesman should know where this is, and 

 why. 



By 



Judging the Order 



Frank R. Watkins 



General Sales Agent, Missouri Lumber 



and Land Exchange 



Kansas City, Mo. 



Lumbering, the second most important elemental world's indus- 

 try, combines its producing and selling departments into closer 

 relationship with each other than any of the other three fundamental 

 industries. It is not customary for farmers to complete and finish 



their products ready for the market, or to deal with the grocery- How the 



1 AT # Lumber 



man or the consumer. Not many mine owners are to be found industry 



who transform their ore through all processes into stoves, steel Differs from 



rails, or silver dollars. A number of the various functions between 



the raw material and marketable product, including selling, are in 



the hands of middle men or other parties not directly interested 



with the securing of the raw material in agriculture, mining and 



fishing. 



It is practically the universal practice, however, in the lumber 

 business that every step between a tree and finished lumber is within 

 the control of the same men, and this includes the actual selling 

 process. The lumbermen's own sawyers fell the trees in the woods, 

 their own streams transport them into the sawmill, their own saw- 

 mills 'work them up into suitable rough sizes, and the further stages 

 of manufacture are carried on under their own supervision and in 

 their own plants until it is ready for use. 



It is strange, with this perfect line from production to dis- 

 tribution, that lumber markets should suffer such violent fluctua- 

 tion ; but we will all have to admit that the path must have been 

 too smooth in the past and we failed to provide ourselves with the 

 heavy soles of education for modern roads. 



The man who sells machines or typewriters knows a surpris- 

 ing number of facts about the minute details of manufacture, and 



