SELLING LUMBER 



215 



there are perhaps others waiting to see him. So, as they say now- 

 adays, "Sit down, but don't intern until the war is over." 



When you reach a town work it. In addition to the yards 

 you know about, you will see factories along the railroad tracks 

 as you pull into the town, and it will pay you to look them up and 

 see what they are doing. I once found a box factory that I was 

 told only used hard woods, making automobile bodies and using a 

 good deal of yellow pine in them. I also drifted into a small fac- 

 tory in New York State that was buying first and second basswood 

 to cut up into fan handles. This party cut up a car or two a month 

 into little stock. Well, I persuaded him that the best adapted 

 stock for this purpose was basswood lath. I saved him some 

 money, found a place for something that was hard to sell, and 

 raised the selling price $1.50 per thousand for basswood lath. An 

 iron foundry or a rolling mill would seem a poor place to sell yel- 

 low pine. Foundries still use some wooden flasks, usually 2xl2's, 

 and all large iron works have to use a good deal of lumber. All 

 iron pipe stored in foundry yards you will find is piled on 2x4's 

 or 4x4's, mostly of oak, but the time is coming when they can't get 

 oak for this purpose. I saw a few days ago a mill making sheet 

 iron, as I left the town, and I noticed that they piled all this ma- 

 terial on 2x4's, first a layer of 2x4's then about eight or ten inches 

 of iron, another layer of 2x4's and so on until the piles were ten 

 feet high. I will see these people the next time I make that town. 

 All iron plants, especially the large ones, have a great deal of 

 crossing plank to furnish. This is also usually oak. There is no 

 reason why good heart long leaf won't fill the bill, unless some 

 fellow with sap pine gets a car in first and queers the game. 



Call on your architect friend some day when you have the 

 time. Get him to smoke a good cigar with you and find out how 

 much he knows about yellow pine. You can help him out with 

 suggestions, and incidentally help out the whole lumber industry, 

 especially that portion cutting yellow pine. 



One reason why I advocate a small territory was demonstrated 

 a few days ago to my entire satisfaction. I had been trying to 

 move a small bunch of No. 2 common car decking for thirty days 

 without much success. Last week I was in a small town for the 

 first time in ninety days. I saw a foundation for a steel plant 

 going in, which they were building of concrete that from the car 

 seemed to be about eight by ten feet square. I had a talk with 

 the lumber dealer and found that this was the case. My decking 



Finding 

 Markets in 

 Unexpected 

 Places 



The Advan- 

 tage of a Small 

 Selling 

 Territory 



