358 



SELLING LUMBER 



A Tribute 



to Mr. Rhodes 



The Lumber 

 Industry 

 Asleep at the 

 Switch 



Contrasting 

 the Past With 

 the Future 



Knowing so well the personnel of the officers of your organi- 

 zation, and having had many years' experience with Mr. Rhodes, 

 your most active and efficient secretary, through his and my con- 

 nection with the Northern Pine Manufacturers' Association, for 

 which he served as secretary for many years, I appreciate that 

 the work is in excellent hands and that the yellow pine interests 

 have awakened to the necessity of doing something to elevate a 

 great industry to a plane to which it is rightfully entitled. 



The lumber industry as a whole has been "asleep at the 

 switch," so to speak, and in my judgment, they are alone largely 

 responsible for unfortunate conditions. Yellow pine has been 

 especially unfortunate. I believe fully 75 per cent of the entire 

 production goes to a territory where it has no competition with 

 any other wood, but simply competes one yellow pine manufac- 

 turer with another. Certainly that condition furnishes much food 

 for sober thought and consideration. So in that large proportion 

 of the sales end of the business, they have the remedy in their 

 own hands. 



As I stand here today my mind goes back to my first ex- 

 perience in the lumber business some forty years ago. When I 

 ponder a moment and attempt to picture, judging from the past, 

 what changes will occur in the next forty years, I can but feel 

 that many of us here today will not be present to witness the 

 greatly changed conditions that must come; changes of a decided 

 character, advanced, I trust, and much improved. It is well in 

 trying to judge the future and to make reasonable provisions for 

 it, to take somewhat of an inventory of the past; to go back and 

 study conditions, then take up one by one the changes that the 

 industry has undergone. A diagnosis of the causes that have 

 changed the conditions in the lumber business discloses a remark- 

 able evolution in every department of our great industry, and 

 especially so in the sales department. 



In the early 70s and '80s, Northern pine was practically the 

 only wood for building material that could be obtained in that 

 great consuming territory known as the Middle West, bounded on 

 the east by the Allegheny Mountains, on the north by the Great 

 Lakes and its tributaries, and on the west by the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. Nature had well provided ways and means of transporting 

 the logs from the tree to the sawmill at comparatively small costs. 

 In the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota there were 



