If You Should Die Tonight, What Would the Lumber Industry Say About You?

By lack, Dionne

Did you ever stop to ask yourself that question, Mr. Lumberman?

Did you ever sit down and try to itemize honestly and without bias the things YOU have done for the lumber industry, and look yourself squarely in the eye and tell yourself the truth about the matter?

Remember the story of Jones, who was showing his visitor Smith around town. They passed a portly gentleman who bowed condescendingly to Jones, yet whose condescension seemed to please our friend. When the big man passed from earshot, Jones remarked rather proudly to his guest:

"That was Jim Bond. He's worth FM MILLION DOLLARS."

And Smith, who had looked Bond over, and who was something of a human nature judge, asked, dryly:

"Who to? Himself, or the town?"

And the world, and the lumber industry, is well supplied with men whom their fellows frequently call "successful," of whom Smith's question might pertinently be asked; and there could be but srrs a1sq7s1-"HIMSEI.F."

Men of utter selfishness. Men whose only aim and only ambition is to get together as many dollars as possible, and to hang on 1e 1lgs1-"Until death do them part."

YOU know some of them. We all do.

Let's suppose that one of them had just died, and we are writing his obituary. NOT a regular obituary. An HONEST obituary; doing him no whit of injustice; merely telling the truth. It reads like this:

"Jim Bond, President of the Bond Lumber Company and associated interests, died last night. He had been in the lumber business thirty years, and left an estate of FIVE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. He took this huge sum OUT OF the lumber industry. He put back NOTHING. Not a thought; not a deed; not a constructive act; nothing whatever that served to make the industry better, or the world more fit to live in. He did NOT believe in cooperation. Those fundamentals of the industry without which there could have been NO INDUSTRY, he did NOT support. The foundations and the superstructure of the lurnber induptry-essential to the very EXISTENCE of the industry-knew neither his assistance nor his help. He boasted of the GRADE of his lumber, yet he never supported those institutions whose grading rules he used. When things arose that required the cooperation of the stalwarts of the industry, Jim Bond was missing. FIe was too cautious, too stingy, too narrov/, too short of vision, to appreciate the big things of LMNG. The idea that he had a PART TO PLAY in the industry; that he OWED A DUTY to the industry; found no place in his soul. If all men acted toward the world as Jim Bond did toward the industry, mankind would be savage, living in caves, clad in the skins of wild beasts, and knowing no God- Jim Bond is GONE; like a derelict sinking in the fathomless depths of the sea, leaving no trace behind to mark where once he was. And no man can look back over his life and say-'THIS is what he did for the lumber industry."'

Know any Jim Bonds, Mr. Lumberman?

Think that question over, once in a while, If you dropped said of you that you had left a constructive mark on the industry off tonight, could it be that has supported you? That it is better off because of YOU?

Work hard to keep from being a Jim Bond. went tonight:So live that the world could say if you

..IT'S A BETTER INDUSTRY AND A BETTER WORLD. BECAUSE OF HIM.''

Achieve THAT, and you are a SUCCESS, even though you may not have amassed even a tithe of the estate of Jim Bond.