SELLINGLUMBER 353 



God knows he has his rights as well as his difficulties but 

 this other man also has his rights and he performs a greater 

 service to this nation than the other one. (Applause.) 



Now, you are the men that can mold public opinion. You 

 can do more in the dispelling of false ideas touching the lumber 

 industry than any other one influence. Why, my friends, you 

 visit the people, and that is where public opinion resides. Become Salesmen 

 familiar with the history of the tree, know the spread of the man- p^iic*^ 

 ufacture thereof, master the details of grade and density rules, Opinion 

 make the public understand, as you are talking to it, the value of 

 the industry to the people, and that the thing the industry needs is 

 less competition, and not more competition. You can do this, my 

 friends, if you will be but equal to your own abilities. You 

 men, bright, keen, alert, on the firing line, have the thing in your 

 own hands. You have not always been helped as you should have 

 been helped. The manufacturer out here is to blame when you 

 sometimes are criticized because you can't get the right boards 

 and the manufacturer has gummed the cards by dumping into 

 the market an overburden of boards. (Applause.) You can't 

 always get the price unless this co-operation back in the woods 

 is working with you ; and that is where this wonderful associa- 

 tion, the Southern Pine Association, is doing a great service to 

 the men for whom you work and with whom you work. This 

 Association is bringing together these manufacturers ; the men 

 that make the boards that you sell. Now, we can't agree upon ^ Southern 

 prices back there at the mill; that is against the law. We can't PineAsso- 

 say, we will depress the output so as to make a rise in the p'rice. Clatlon 

 That is against the law. But we do know this, and this Association 

 through the genius of its secretary knows it, that if men get 

 together and talk about their business intelligently, sympathetically, 

 understandingly, they will make boards in harmony with market 

 needs, and this without agreement, because, knowledge begets 

 common sense. (Applause.) And there is not a farmer, there 

 is not a dairy man, there is no one in this nation that would 

 deny the lumberman that privilege if they but understood our 

 problems aright. Now, through the medium of this Association 

 we are going to work out that problem. For the first time in 

 the industry, it is awakening. Men are coming in from the hills 

 where they have been sitting in the shadow of the somber forests 

 and are coming into the light, and they are Couching elbows with 



