SELLING LUMBER 



363 



No Car 



always be had, due to the unusual incoming freight from the 

 South and West, in those days practically all grain and stock came 

 to Chicago cars were always available for lumber shipments out. 

 In those days there were upwards of sixty distributing yards 

 located in Chicago, all doing a wholesale shipping trade. I have 

 within my experience seen lumber shipped in train loads from 

 Chicago to Texas, right through yellow pine forests ; have seen 

 long joists, etc., kiln-dried in Chicago (and put lengthwise into 

 a kiln in order to dry them), shipped to the Tabor Opera House shortage 

 at Denver, Colo., taking a 71^4 cen t rate. Consider how vastly Then 

 different are present-day conditions. Fir from the coast reaches 

 that market on favorable freight rates; yellow pine and white 

 pine from Idaho; pine from Montana, and your yellow pine from 

 the South are all factors. As many of you gentlemen who have 

 had experience in the early days know, Chicago was practically 

 the only market that supplied for a long time very largely the 

 great prairie states of Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, 

 Indiana and Ohio. Compare the then prevailing conditions with 

 those of today. The former great water receiving centers of 

 the United States, like Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo and Chicago 

 are receiving lumber daily, and in many cases in train loads from 

 Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, Geor- 

 gia and Florida, in fact, more yellow pine is coming into Chicago 

 today than any other wood. I mention this to^call your direct 

 attention to them as a foundation for my remarks and to show Yellow Pine 

 how evolution has wrought great changes in the methods, par- 

 ticularly of selling lumber. This should awaken in you a deeper 

 sense of your obligations and your duties, and awaken in you a 

 new interest in the problems you are here to discuss and consider. 

 You are the veritable eyes of the industry, through which the 

 manufacturers must look to see the light of day in solving these 

 troublesome and vexatious problems. 



In the early '90s the sawmills located along the Mississippi 

 River from St. Louis north to Minneapolis, and those located 

 throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin were each making separate 

 grades, known by the particular mills that cut the lumber. Each The Birth 

 manufacturer was making his own prices, based on what he felt 

 his particular grades were worth. The manufacturer making 

 better grades than his neighbors would come in competition in 

 the selling price with the one making the poorer grades, and better 



