Perhaps You Would Like to Know About the'\ry. H. Norris Lumber Company

By Jack Dionne

There are some kinds of advertising that money cannot buy.

This is one of the kinds.

The other day I was talking to George Jacob, Vice President and Manager of the Wholesale Department of The W. H. Norris Lumber Company, of Houston, Texas, an intimate friehd of mine of many years standing.

We were talking about the West Coast, its lumber products, their advent into the Southwest Territory, etc., and George remarked:

"We are doing so big a business in West Coast woods now, and undoubtedly will do so much larger a business, that I wish the trade on the Coast could know the W. H. Norris Lumber Company like they do in the Southwest; it would certainly facilitate our business dealings out there."

So the thought occurred to me to return a thousand favors of many years standing by telling the Western lumber folks a few things about the W. H. Norris Lumber Company. Such telling belongs not improperly in such an issue as The California Lumber Merchant annual, because this concefn and its personnel typify wonderfully many of the theories and examples of business character th.at we .continually preach in this journal,

W. H. Norris, an old and valued friend of mine, created the concern nearly a generation ago. And he built into the fiber of the concer'n his own splendid ideals of business, business obligations, business integrity, and business performances, that remain there unchanged to this day, and carried forward as firmly by the men to whom he entrusted them as he could have done himself.

Mr. Norris has been dead many years. His right hand man at the time of his death, and from the inception of the company was N. C. Hoyt. And when Mr. Norris died he entrusted in the youthful hands of this lieutenant of his, the job of carrfng through to greater success and volume, the business he had established, and which had come to be successful, financially and otherwise, during his lifetime.

He left George Jacob as Mr. Hoyt's lieutenant. Mr. Jacob is Vice President, while Mr. Hoyt is President. And the Secretaryship of the firm remained and remains in the hands of W. E. "Billy" Black, of Dallas, who covers North Texas for the concern, and has ever since anyone can remember.

So well has the business been conducted that todav it is an $800,000 corporation, all paid in, and one of the most useful, most dependable, and most respected wholesale lumber concerns in the world.

Besides their wholesale business they own a big string of retail lumber yards in Texas, about twenty-five in all, and this is a very prosperous department of their business.

For many years the concern sold Southern Pine and Southern Cypress in large quahtities. At one time they operated mills. They do so no longer. Their Cypress business has been exhausted for some time. Thev still do a large volume of Southern Pine lumber business, and now they are doing a huge volume of West Coast business.

They handle exclusively some of the largest and best Red Cedar Shingle accounts in the Northwist, and do a tremendous shingle business, shipping both rail and water.

They have a very active trade developed in Fir lumber and shingles, and this department is grorving fast.

Just a little over a year ago they began selling White and Sugar Pine, and today they sell more California Pine in Texas and Oklahoma than any other concern. ahd that business is developing very rapihly. They expect and hope to remain the premier shippers of California Pine into that territory, and to that end have been extending their search for dependable and quality supply.

They cover Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana with their fine sales organization, the highest type of salesmen calling on the trade. They carry and finance their own accounts, and do business on a caih basis.

So much for the physical department of the W. H. Norris Lumber Company.

But what I rvould like to impress upon my western friends with rbgard to this cohcern is its ftvenesi. its safeness, its splendid integrity, and its thorough dependability.

It is one of the most on-the-job and'punchful lumber organizations anywhere. It is out after business all the time.

But it is out only after the riguLt kind of business.

The word of this organization is as good as its bond.

Any:contract,they make, the}l will'fglfill. :

Any obligation they assume will be faithfully performed.

They do what they say, they represent only what they can perform, and they demand that those who do business with them follow the same principles.

Any square shooter will delight in. doing business with these men.

The other kind will only do business with them once.

For a selling department in the Southwest, they cannot be surpassed.

Mr. Hoyt, Mr: Jacob, and their gang, represent the best there is in the shape of lumber folks.

And that is saying a great deal.

If you lvant to sell in the Southwest Oklahoma-and Louis- iana through an old established, well financed, and thoroughly active wholesale lumber firm with an excellent sales organization, We Would Like to Serve You

W. H. NORRIS LUMBER CO.

HOUSTON, TEXAS