SELLINGLUMBER 209 



comes to their stock sheets, they are all in the same boat with you; 

 they have stock on which they are putting special stress and trying 

 to move, and some other stock they are not so anxious to sell. Let's 

 assume that one of these competitors is making a special drive on 

 an item of standard stock on which his sales department considers 

 the mill is carrying too large a surplus. We will say their supply 

 is five hundred thousand feet, but it so happens that this very item 

 is the one on which your mills are somewhat short. If this com- 

 petitor could have the freedom of the road until he moved his 

 five hundred thousand feet of surplus, we would have in the mar- 

 ket just the actual normal stock of five hundred thousand feet; but 

 instead of that, generally the way it works out is that you and 

 others come along ahead of him and take a lot of orders during 

 ten or fifteen days, aggregating a total of forty or fifty thousand 

 feet of this item; notwithstanding the fact that your mills are a 

 little short of it. You figure that you can afford to put in five or 

 six or seven thousand feet in an order, even if your mills are 

 short. It seems reasonable to suppose at the end of that time, how- 

 ever, instead of carrying just five hundred thousand feet the market Better If 

 bears the weight, not only of the five hundred thousand feet of sur- ^ ( 

 plus manufactured and in shipping condition, but fifty thousand feet Have the 

 more not yet existing, or five hundred fifty thousand feet because 

 you fill the demand which your competitior with his over-supply 

 should be allowed to fill. It certainly looks like an economic waste 

 of sales effort. Of course, it doesn't always work out that your 

 shortage is somebody else's surplus, but we have compared general 

 stock sheets with other people enough to know that there are plenty 

 of instances where it does happen to make it a pretty serious ques- 

 tion ; and I shouldn't be surprised if it could be checked up to find 

 that a good many millions of feet of stock were actually duplicated 

 in this way. Now, if we would only let this competitor go his way un- 

 molested with his five hundred thousand feet of surplus, he would 

 get a natural market price dictated by the law of supply and demand 

 for his surplus, instead of a price dictated by an unnatural supply of 

 five hundred fifty thousand feet ; and besides, our customers would 

 not be inconvenienced by having to wait for us to accumulate our 

 fifty thousand feet shortage, and it looks like everybody ought to be 

 better satisfied. Instead of spending our "steam" selling a shortage, 

 we ought to be working on something else which perhaps our com- 

 petitor does not want to sell. Circumstances alter cases, and I pre- 

 sume there are times when all of us think it is necessary to accept 



