Why Lumber Merchants Should Organize

Here are ten reasons why lumber merchants should organize: l. When we read a bankrupt's list of creditors and find more than one lumber merchant "stuck" bv the same contractor, the moral shrieks louder thin a calliope.

2. All of us know more than any of us; few of us realize how little most of us really know about the daily business of each of us until we begin to meet the rest of us and talk things over among the lot of us.

3. It's fear that is at the bottom of most of the lumbermen's troubles-fear of competitors, loss of business, of failure. Even timid animals are brave when they run in packs-and they rnake a larger "kill".

4. Lumber Merchants suffer more in mind and estate, from lies told them about one another by their customers than from any other sauss-and there is just one obviously sensible cure for that.

5. Wise old Ben Franklin said, "We must hang together or hang seperately." Haven't the lumbermen b.een hung seperately by their customers long enough ?

6. No, brother, your problems are not "peculiar", Your fellows have the same pexplexities, and why waste time and money blunderipg into a solution alone, when you can get help by being willing to give help.

7. Lumber Merchants are all in the sams feaf-ys1y few can advance much in profits and prosperity eicept as the trade as a rvhole advances. You'll get ahead much faster by joining your fellow lumbermen in a pull together for the good of all.

8. You think your competitor a scoundrel; he thinks you a crook. Both equally right, of course; but remember that it's lvhen thieves fall out that thev get into trouble.

9. Civilization itself is organization. What good reason can any lumber merchant give for remaining in his own little business cave, a prey to every b-ast of trade when he could find added safety and prosperit.v in association rvith his fellotvs ?

10. "I helped a blind man across the crowded streets, and lo ! I rvas safely across myself as well. His cane had found a mudhole that I did not see."

(From "The Imperial Builder," Imperial Valley)