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Show LUMBERMAN? The popular idea of this occupation occu-pation is far from the facts. It is a calling which Includes every form of Industry connected with lumber from the felling of the tree In the woods to the sale of the finished product In the yard. Whichever branch of It your boy may choose, there Is plenty of room at the top. By C. W. JENNINGS. 5Jji?!jg) HE word "lumberman," as It itlir 's use( nere does not apply u (iiHh exclusive'y to the rough and VoTV often disreputable logging e15aj crews of our great forests. That Is but one phase of a comprehensive and varied industry, and least attractive of all to one who Is ambitious to make for himself a satisfactory place among the successful success-ful breadwinners with whom he comes In contact. ' The lumbering business takes In everything from cutting down trees in the woods to selling the finished product prod-uct to the man who has a lumber yard In your home town, and there is such a great variety of occupations connected con-nected with It that your boy, having decided that he wants to be a lumberman, lumber-man, may select his own line of advancement. ad-vancement. It Is up to him In the be ginning to say whether he would prefer pre-fer to be an office clerk, or to handle j an ax In the woods, or to pile boards In a lumber yard; or to be an engineer or a machnist In a mill or a salesman or a buyer or a dealer In timber land. No matter which branch he may choose, there Is plenty of room at the top if he will only exercise a reasonable reason-able amount of Industry and stlck-to-lt-lveness. Strictly speaking, however, a lum-Derman lum-Derman is generally taken to be the man who owns a sawmill and disposes of his product in large markets. Therefore There-fore this is the department to which I shall devote myself In trying to show the steps that must be taken to reach a lofty place in the indnstrlal world. The biggest end of any business Is the marketing or selling of the product, prod-uct, for no producer can thrive unless he can dispose of his wares profitably. This makes lumbering a sort of paradox; para-dox; for the owners of the biggest sawmills, saw-mills, the most successful lumbermen, are not always the greatest experts In the mechanical phases of their mills, the ones who know most about lumber production technically; but may be the ones so clever and experienced that they can so handle their shipments as to sell at greater profit than their competitors. Let us say that your boy. not caring much for mechanics, has taken up this line. All that Is necessary for him to do is to get a job with the lumberman In the home town. If you live in a village, vil-lage, so much the better; for then his experience will be more varied. He will have to help unload and pile the lumber and shingles that come in to replenish the stock, check off, according accord-ing to board measurement, the Invoices, In-voices, help in keeping the books of accounts, assist in figuring up the price at which the lumber must be sold in order to realize an adequate profit, sell to local contractors and builders, etc. And for all this he will be paid what his employer thinks he earns, possibly $30 a month or so. If he should be employed in a city yard he would get from $40 to $60 after he had acquired some ability. It will require a year or so before your boy begins to realize some of the possibilities of his chosen Ufework. He has been learning all he can about lumbering, of course, and will be a diligent reader of the lumber trade papers pa-pers that come Into the office, which will Inform him of the proceedings of various manufacturing and selling associations as-sociations throughout the country and conditions all over the field. This study Is most important for thus he will be solving a serious problem prob-lem affecting his own firm. If he becomes be-comes a student of freight rates and manufacturing conditions, he will find plenty of opportunity to use his brains to the advantage of his employer. For Instance, he may discover that, through local conditions, the mill men in some parts of the country are overstocked over-stocked with lumber and are willing to accept offers below list price. He knows the freight rates from that mill to his own town. Thus a telegram ordering or-dering a carload of this or that may result in a saving of $20 to $50 or more, enough to change a close shave into really profitable business. By the time your boy has become acquainted with the various kinds of lumber sold in your town and learned the yard business sufficiently well to be able to handle all departments without any directions from anybody. unless he should prefer to stay until j he becomes a member of the firm which he probably would be in time he should go to some large railroad center In the east or middle west, where he will find wholesale lumbering lumber-ing an important business, and get a 1 Job. There should not be any special difficulty in doing this, for he will have met numerous lumber salesmen when he was in the home yard and will probably have secured their assistance in making the move. Here his work will be that of clerk, attending to the volume of orders and invoices and correspondence with mill men, railroads and retailers. If he is with a firm that has an extensive trade he will be doing business with all parts of the country, from buying carloads car-loads of lumber and shingles In the states of Washington and Texas and Michigan and Maine, to Belling it to the government for a drydock to be built on the Panama canal or to retailers re-tailers In all parts of the country. Continuing his previous habits of study, your boy will find here opportunity oppor-tunity to exercise all the brains he possesses. pos-sesses. He will not only be In competition compe-tition with the other offices In the city, but this competition will extend to the mills, as well as to the retailers; for It Is quite as Important to be able to buy cheaply as to sell for a high figure. fig-ure. Many mills follow the custom of loading cars with their product and shipping them to some transfer point on the speculation that there will be a demand somewhere nearby by the time the car reaches Its destination, wholesalers also do this, frequently having hundreds of cars in various parts of their selling district which may be diverted quickly to a yard or other buyer not far away, thus making ma-king a hit with the buyer on account of the quick delivery, and getting their money quickly. Wholesalers also maintain the closest possible relations with mills turning out the kind of product they handle; some of them, indeed, having actual definite relations with certain mills to handle all their product Thus, your boy, who Is now a matured man of 23 to 25, and Is drawing a salary sal-ary of perhaps $125 a month, will be chosen to make the annual or semiannual semi-annual visit the firm pays to the mills, spending several weeks looking into manufacturing conditions and signing sign-ing contracts. Thi3 gives him personal standing with the mill men and also a close knowledge of the general phases of manufacturing, cost, output, freight rates to various points, the probable production and Its influence on prices, etc. Also he has been visiting the retail re-tail dealers that handle this lumber and knows just as intimately all their requirements in the way of prices, quantity, etc. So he has become the keen, able connecting link between producer and consumer. Don't you see what a big future there is In store for him? Before long he will likely start In a firm of his own, with an associate or two, one of them devoting himself to the Belling and the other to the buying end. He will not require much money to do this, for he has established credit with the mill men, and can Bell to retailers before he has to pay the manufacturer. manufac-turer. From here on his line of work will be what he chooses to make it. As he has set out to be a real lumberman, with a mill of his own, he will look for opportunities to get into some manufacturing firm. This may come through an offer to be eastern selling representative of a large mill, placing all its product, and later on to go to that mill as resident manager of the sales department, the biggest end of the business, and, ultimately, by the time he is 35 or 40 he will have opportunity oppor-tunity to be taken In a.t a member of that or some other firm. Thus he becomes one of the Important Import-ant members of one of the largest departments de-partments of Industrial life in the world, with the high social and business busi-ness standing he deserves and abundant abun-dant financial reward. (Copyright, 1810. by the Associated Literary Lit-erary Press.) |