362 



SELLING LUMBER 



Mill Men 



Finally 



Awake 



Boat Shipping 

 to Wholesalers 

 Finally 

 Stopped 



Shipping 

 Lumber at 

 Fifty Cents 

 a Thousand 



As time went on the mill men began to realize how one- 

 sided and unjust the selling methods were, and naturally sought 

 some practical means of correcting the existing abuses. Some 

 few far-sighted manufacturers first conceived the idea of securing 

 ground adjacent to their sawmills where the lumber was assorted 

 in reasonable separate widths, lengths and grades; an estimate 

 was made of about what an average cargo of mill-run stock 

 would be worth, in order to ascertain and tell their asking price, 

 and thus the first departure from the older selling methods was 

 inaugurated. 



From that time on there was a gradual improvement in 

 selling agencies. Some manufacturers went further and tried 

 to reach the yard trade, and the large manufacturing trade direct, 

 and discontinue the shipping of their product in this unselected, 

 crude manner, to the wholesalers, endeavoring to obtain more 

 nearly the actual value of their product in the markets where it 

 was ultimately used. From such methods developed the yarding 

 of the lumber at Saginaw, Bay City, Muskegon, Menominee, 

 Marinette, etc., by the well-known firms of Kirby-Carpenter Com- 

 pany, Eddy Brothers, Pitts & Cranage, Bliss & Van Auken, Saw- 

 yer-Goodman Company, Hamilton Merryman Company and num- 

 erous others, finally discontinued entirely the shipping of their 

 stock by boat to these wholesale markets. 



In the late 70s and early '80s Chicago was the largest lumber 

 market in the world. Conveniently located at the foot of Lake 

 Michigan by water, the cheapest of all transportation means, trib- 

 utary to all the lumber manufacturing points on the Great Lakes 

 and the Georgian Bay district of Canada, enabling them to trans- 

 port rough lumber, and in many cases, green from the saw, at a 

 nominal cost. I have seen lumber transported by boats many 

 times from Muskegon to Chicago at the rate of $1 per thousand, 

 when the labor for the loading and unloading would amount to 

 50 cents, leaving the boat about 50 cents for transportation 

 charges. Compare today's freight charges on your product by 

 rail, rough from mill points to Chicago 24^ cents east, 26^ 

 cents west, about $10.00 per thousand and you have to load it 

 a difference of 1,000 per cent in transportation charges. 



Centrally located, reaching by railroads the entire territory 

 from the Allegheny Mountains to the Rocky Mountains and the 

 Ohio River, favored by great railway facilities where cars could 



