Lumber Woman Compares Lumt Industry to Republic of Chinu'"t (

Miss Alberta Ruth Brey, Manager of the Sales and Service end of the Brey-Wright Lumber Co., Porterville, Cal., has decided that in some respects the retail lumber business is as far behind the times as the Republic iof China. Read her very interesting letter on the subject: Dear Mr. Dionne:-

Have yoq ever happened to think how the overthrowing of the Chinese Monarchy and the establishing of the Chinese Republic is like the overthrowing ('here in U. S.) of the old fashioned Retail I-umber Yards and the establishing of the Modern Building Material Stores ?

It may seem a long stretch of the imagination to youand truthfully it never entered my head until last evening when listening to the eminent Dr. Ng Poon Chew lecture on "China and the Future Peace ,of the Pacific."

"China," said Dr. Chew, "is tied down, and has been tied down for centuries by its customs and its traditions. We have been a Republic for eleven years and you, rthe American people are disappointed in us, because we cannot seem to improve o'ur Republic to something greater than it is now, in that time.-It is because you do not understand us, because with your restlessness, your swiftness of thought and motion, you ambition, your energy, you are never satisfied unless you are doing something every

Trade

minute. While you work and earn and play and enjoy the luxuries of this life, we rust, rust, rust. We are trying to educate our young men so that they will educate the coming generations to the same thing. That is why we have three thousand of our students in the different countries of the wofld, studying so that they can go 'back to China to teach the younger generations and someday make a Republic of .China as great as your own. Of course we can do nothing, nor do we attempt to do anything with the Chinese of the old school ry'ho are still tied down by their beliefs and their ancestor w,orship. It is impossi6le to change them, and we cannot kill them off, for we have neither the time or the money for so great a funeral, we shall simply have to wait until they die ! die t die !"

Can you, Mr. Dionne, see the connection? We can't seem to change all the Retail Lumbermen in the United States in even eleven years or less, to Mod,ern Building Material Merchants. It is almost impossible to try. THEY are held down by their traditions and almost ancestor worship-you mi$irt call it-They do business the sarne way their predecessors did it, 'they are as bad or even worse than those Chinese in the far East, for the Chinese have no advantages of travel, of contact with the outside world, or

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