SELLING LUMBER 213 



In laying out your route for the month, it is well to keep in 

 mind that certain towns and certain sections of your territory are 

 more busy than others. Iron might be booming another town 

 might havea lot of busy glass factories or be making bowie knives 

 or bayonets, or a certain section may be opening up coal mines. 

 It would be well to take in portions of territory like this every two 

 weeks, and you can arrange this without much trouble or much 

 additional cost for railroad fares. 



We will suppose you have reached your first town as a 

 stranger. You know from your red book that there are two or 

 three yards, a planing mill, a buggy factory, and perhaps a factory 

 making churns. You might have noticed, as your train was pulling 

 into the town, that you passed a couple of pretty large brick plants 

 of some description. It will pay you after you have called on the 

 different concerns in your book, to walk back on the railroad track 

 and see what these factories are making. One might be making 

 incubators and the other tin cans. If this is the case, you will find 

 they both use lumber and buy same in carload lots, and you might 

 be fortunate enough to make a sale. I once walked out to a large 

 hot house in Jamestown, New York, to see if I could work off 

 a car of pecky cypress, the only thing in lumber I supposed they 

 used. Well, bless your hearts, I found that while they bought 

 three or four carloads of pecky cypress during the year, they bought 

 about two cars of mill cull 4-4 poplar a month, D 2-S and resawn * 



to make boxes of, and they were not well posted as to prices. New Busi- 



They did not subscribe to the "Lumberman." Had I been more ness 



interested in yellow pine at the time, I think I could have per- 



suaded them that, while perhaps they could not ship red roses in 



yellow pine boxes, it would improve the color of their Marchael 



Neils, and might put a delicate yellow blush on the faces of the 



pure white roses they were shipping, and I might even have told 



them that, if they would ship roses in yellow pine boxes, the 



odorous pine would keep out all bugs in transit. This thing of 



keeping my eyes peeled on pulling in and out of a town I find 



about the most useful accomplishment I have. The railroad tracks 



of a town are the short cuts always to factories. Those of you 



who work Detroit will bear me out in this. Now that all the hash 



houses in the country are getting to be Metropolitan Hotels, you 



will find a telephone in your room, they charge you ten cents to 



use the 'phone, but make no charge for looking through the 'phone 



guide. This usually has in the back of it a list of the town's in- 



