Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1921-12-02
THAT ZIMMERMAN STORY

Ladysmith, Wis, Nov. %, 1921.
Editor, Ladysmith News-Budget,
Ladysmith, Wis.
| Dear Sir: | read with some inter
est your article in this weeks issue OF
| the News1Budget about the eastern
Wisconsin lumberman who shortened
| his scale rule one inch, thereby cheat
| ing jobber of quite Il sum Of money.
Commenting upon this article, per-
NIT me TO submit the following: The
| lumberman, whoever he was. certain
| ly was a very liberal cuss TO have
scaled the jObbers logs with scale
rule that was shortened one inch, or
| two inches. or any number of inches,
and the jobber must have beeh an hon
est gentleman or he never would have
mentioned the matter. However, the
whole story brands itself as fake
cencocted by someone with a brain
storm who didn't know what they were
talking about.
If. as your article states, the jObber
logged for the lumberman for ten
- "
logged under favorable conditions, and
II the jobber put in any amount OF
logs, and ii all this time the lumber
man had scaled his logs with a rule
shortened one inch, and further, had
paid the jObber on the basis Of the
scale thus obtained, then at the end
of ten years, or even less, the jobber
should have been financially able TO
retire. and it should never have been
necessary for him to swamp out att
other log.
To illustrate-If you were selling
goods with yard stick, and such goods
were cut from larger piece, and you
had shortened your yard stick an inch
if you could get away with it you
would be cheating your customer an
inch on every yard sold. But. please
note that in scaling logs you are meas
uring something that has already been
cut, and if your scale rule had been
shortened an inch. it's plain that you
would only be cheating yourself and
that the other fellow would be getting
the benefit of an inch on every lOg
which amounts on the scale rule to from
ten to fifty feet on each log according TO
size. IN other words, if you were
scaling log ten inches in diameter
and your scale rule was shortened one
inch, isn't it evident that you would
be scaling the log as eleven inches?
On sixteen foot log this would amount
to ten feet.
Now, as long as we are at it, we NAV
as we'll pick the story to pieces little
further. Presenting the jobber put in
half million feet each year, which is
small amount for jobber to handle,
possibly he logged more but we will
use the half million feet as an illus
tration To make half million feet
as logs are cut these days would re-
quire approximately $500 logs. Pre-
Stunning that the jobber received the
| benefit of only ten feet on each log by
reason of the scale rule being short
ened one inch. in one seasons logging
this would amount to $4,000 feet, and
in ten years it would amount to &c.,
900 feet Say the jobber got $1,000 per
thousand feet which is an average
price for logging, and lower than it
has been for the past few years, in ten
years the jobber would have been paid
| $6,500.00 to which he was not entitled
in addition to what money he had hon
estly made. Some little present on tie
part Of the lunberman.
| From the foregoing you will see that
| the party who gave you the infOrma-
ton upon which your article was based
got somewhat tangled in his story,