Millwork Man Prescribes For Ills of Industry

(Editor's Remarks: Here is the best article on creating business for sash, door, and millwork houses, fhat has ever come to our editorial desk. It was written by one of the thinkingest young mill men in the whole country, Mr. A1bert Steves, Jr., General Manager of The Steves Sash & Door Company, of San Antonio, Texas, and was delivered to a meeting of The Southern Sash, Door & Millwork Association at Hot Springs, Ark., convention.)

It is a great pleasure to appear before the Southern Association at any time. To appear before them, however, to cliscuss what I consider an ill of t'he business, takes lrerve. Of course, I want to say at the outset that I do not feel that I am trying to tell you how to run your business. I am only explaining my own meager opinion on a subject that I have thought of a great deal, h,owever. I saw the following the other day, and thought it good enongh to quote:

"We are paid wages for muscle ; salary for time, but the big profit comes from THINKING. It will pay us well, standing' as we are ,on the br.ink of a new year, to do some thinking about our thinking. Take the thinking we did last year. How many constructive IDEAS did we contribute toward the grorvth of the business? Did we think stright, or did we allow our thinking to carry us off the main highway and up a blind alle.v ? Did lve c.oncentrate on problems related to our daily work, or did we just think at random mostly, about matters that concerned ns not at all ?"

I.et me tell you first what I consider wrong with the various parts of our industry, and then let me tell you what I consider a rernedy. X{y candid opinion is that the greatest trouble that you and I and every one of us is en'countering in our daily tasks is attributed to the fact that we, as an industry, have never ADVERTISED. Of course, you and I and et,ery one of us, have run little cards in our local papers but that was n,ot advertising, that was nor publicity; that .ivas merely beating Uncle Sam ,out of a little additional inceme tax you would have had to spend had you not rulr such ads. That's all that amounted io.

Then, we lack COHESION.

We come to these meetings and Charlie Harman tells us this and that and something else that we should do, and rve clap our hands and say: "Charlie, you're right." And then we have a'nteeting of the Spiders, and arfter that everything is forgotten again, and we go home and say: "Old NIan Abeles is a fine old fellow, and so is McBroom." "Isn't Hot Springs and its environments beautiful?" "Atlanta is certainly a busy metropolis." Th,ose are the kind of things we say and think. Do we ever sit down and write letters to the mills from whom we buy lumber, telling them we want them to improve their grades. because Charlie Harman pointed out at the meeting that their grades were not what they should be, or do we write such a letter to any one of the other assoc.iations we belong to? No we DON'T.

Do we go up ancl down the street and let the people know that the ,millwork business is doing more to build better homes and more of them than the big store on the corner, who sells your wife a pair of shoes, a dress, and a hat that she doesn't need, or the furniture store that puts a rug in your 'home that isn't necessary? No, we don't do that.

You may go to a friend's home for a party, and the friend, of course,takes yon to the kit,chen FIRST (because that's what we all do these days). There you see that the place has no back porch, or no glazed-in porch, no breakfast nook that could be fixed up. Do you suggest to your friend that he makes these improvements? No. of course you don't, and neither do I. Vou went there for a party, and not for business. You wouldn't dare even mention it to h'im the next day. That is what we consider ethics.

But we never think that in a thousand other ways we could tell this self-same friend these self-same thingi, SUggesting that he add a sleeping porch, a serving porch, a breakfast nook, or a family cupboard to make the old home more liveable. Or, better still, make him want a NEW HOME. Your tailor always talks new clothes-why should we shut up about something new? But you don't do these things. And why don't you do them ?

Each and every one of you fellows have made money IN SPITE OF YOURSELVES. The questionnaire sent out from the office of this Association revealed the fact that mightl' few of you were willing to sell your plants. Of course you don't want to sell them. You are making some 'money, and so am f.

Just look how much money you could make if you got out of the little hole-in-the-wall you call your office, if you threw a little more light and ventilation into that dump you call your plant. If we did the things as a whole that Charlie Harman wants us to do and preaches for us to do, all of our self-interest would be so thoroughly aroused that

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