BUSINESS PRINCIPLES INVOLVED. 467 



tenders the forest owner may invite competition from distant 

 purchasers in order to paralyse the coalition of local traders ; this 

 remedy may, however, prove to be only of a temporary nature. 



(c) Sale by Private Contract. — The sale of wood by private 

 contract is employed when the demand is slack. There may 

 often be only one or a few purchasers, and it is then pre- 

 ferable not to auction the produce, but to deal directly with 

 the purchasers ; the best price possible wall thus be obtained, 

 Avhich would not result from selling to the highest bidder, where 

 competition is so restricted. In this case also, the lots should 

 be large, and the purchasers men of means. Sometimes the 

 whole produce of devastated forest- areas are thus sold; some- 

 times an entire assortment — round billets, charcoal-wood for 

 smelting-furnaces, large quantities of railway- sleepers, telegraph- 

 posts, merchantable timber, &c. ; sometimes large lots of con- 

 verted wood, for which at an auction the bids were too far below 

 the proper prices. 



Sale by private contract has recently been extending in a 

 remarkable manner, especially in North Germany, and desires 

 for its further extension have been expressed. This may be 

 justifiable for certain districts, but in most cases, and especially 

 in sales of State forest produce, it should be considered rather as 

 a necessary evil, enforced by a limited demand in slack times, 

 than as an even tolerably regular mode of sale, for where trade 

 is brisk, no forest owner w^ould wash, by private sales, to reduce 

 the competition at auctions.* 



Section III. — Business Principles involved in the Sale of 

 Wood. 



1. General Account. 



Owing to the moderate net revenue resulting from forests, 

 .and the considerable amount of invested capital which they 



* [In Britain, coppice is generally sold at so much an acre, or the wood felled 

 .and sold in assortments after conversion. Standards over coppice are sold at 

 fixed prices per cubic foot which increase with the girth of the tree ; only the bole 

 is cubed, and the crown given-in to cover cost of felling. In beech selection 

 forests, the marked trees are usually felled by the owner, and the logs and faggots 

 sold as they lie in the forest, and this is also the case with oak and Scotch pines 

 in the Crown forests, the price being fixed by private contract. — Tr.] 



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