SELLING LUMBER ^289 



When a child enters school he is examined to determine 

 his mental efficiency or deficiency and is graded according to the 

 degree of intelligence and knowledge he possesses, and he is given 

 a card which discloses his percentage of efficiency in his various Good Sales- 

 studies. The main difference between this "school of salesman- men Should 

 ship" and the ordinary school is that we have only two subjects Lumbermen 

 for study, viz: "Yellow Pine Lumber" and "Salesmanship." But 

 to master these two great subjects we will have to acquire a vast 

 amount of collateral and specific knowledge, as well as many of 

 the personal and business virtues which contribute to success. To 

 be a first class lumber salesman you should also be a first class 

 lumberman. 



To be a first class lumberman is to be a broad guaged man 

 who is closely identified with the progress and development of his 

 community or state. The lumber business, in fact, can almost be 

 said to be the pulse- of commercial industry, as it indicates the 

 ebb and flow of prosperity and depression quicker than any other 

 mercantile or manufacturing pursuit. 



A thoroughly first class lumberman knows the lumber busi- 

 ness from A to Z. He knows the history of his product in its 

 natural state, the method of manufacture, the various classifica- 

 tions, grades, brands, etc., and should know the various purposes ' . 

 for which certain kinds or grades are best suited. He should also Class 

 know the commercial game in all its relations to competition, 

 finance, credits, investment, supply and demand and the general 

 conditions which effect the prosperity of the country and busi- 

 ness and he should have judgment, intelligence and industry in 

 order to know how to play the game to win. 



But it has not always been thus; as the centenarian would 

 say, "Times has changed." The good old days of our forefath- 

 ers when a retail lumberman could sit in a chair at the front of 

 his office and get all the business he wanted, or the business of 

 a sawmill w r as limited only by the capacity or its output have 

 passed into sweet memories. In those days a "board was a board." 

 Nos. 3 and 4 went to the slab pit and No. 2 was in disfavor. The 

 present day standard specifications would then have been looked 

 upon as the height of ridiculousness, and to have spoken to anyone 

 about "density rules," "structural strength" and other modern classi- 

 fications would have sounded like Greek to the old time lumber- 

 man. 



