354 



SELLING LUMBER 



What the 

 Association 

 Is Trying 

 to Do 



their competitors. They are all making boards out of trees. They 

 want to conserve those trees. They want to get a fair profit 

 from their lumber. They can't do it unless they touch shoulders 

 with each other. Why? My friends", do you know people seem 

 to forget. You go down to your home tonight on the railroad 

 train, to various places, you take one road, and you take another. 

 You pay the same price, don't you? Exactly. Any agreement 

 between the railroad companies on that proposition? No written 

 agreement, no. But the law says that they have a right to 

 charge for service, and as the service is uniform it is no violation 

 of the law if the price is uniform. Every railroad in this country 

 is under the shadow of the Sherman law and yet every railroad 

 in this country charges alike for the same service. 



Now, what we are trying to do is this : We are taking a 

 tree growing out here in the virgin forests. We want to make 

 that tree adaptable for human needs. We want to make it serve 

 the values of life, serving children, serving men and women, 

 serving the forward vision of a nation. We have to cut it, 

 we have to bring it into the mill, we have to cut it up into 

 various dimensions ; we have to put it on a car ; we have to 

 deliver it to a market; we have to sell it to a distributor in that 

 market, and then we lose track of it, because we don't sell it to 

 the ultimate consumer. We sell to the man who sells to the 

 ultimate consumer; and, my friends, we are just now realizing 

 this, and the law is realizing it, the people are realizing it that 

 where these manufacturers are cutting each other's throats by 

 putting cars in transit (prolonged applause) by overproducing 

 the market I say, my friends, when these men are doing this 

 they are not getting cost for service ; they are selling their labor, 

 they are selling these trees that it took the laboring years cen- 

 turies to mature, that were given for the need of all, selling those 

 to the retail trade not to your farmer, not to your dairyman, 

 not to your house builder but to the distributor of lumber, at a 

 cut price. My friends, that is going to stop, because men do not 

 throw their pearls before swine. Men don't give their title deeds 

 away for nothing. These men who own trees through the sane 

 common sense methods of the Southern Pine Association are 

 going to give you men a fair chance to make records, and you 

 haven't had it before. (Applause.) Somebody has said you 

 must not be content with being an order taker; you must sell not 



