Bismarck weekly tribune., 1886-04-09
A BIG LONDON STORE.
ONE OF THE HUGE ESTABLISHMENTS
THAT SWALLOW THE SHOPS.

.sf4. /, Il
Trade Is Daily Transaoted-Fear-
full Crowds Of Buyers-Great
~ Cutting of Prices.
The London shop-keepers are making the
most inviting statements representing the
cheapness Of the wares they offer, but as q
lady who addressed me this morning in that
plebeian conveyance, the omnibus, said:
''Look at the shops! They are empty. It is
only the stores, with their prices cut down
SO as to leave but a few farthings of profit
on each article, which do any business!'
These cooperative stores have revolution
lied the whole face of trade in England.
They have driven old respectable houses to
the wall; commercial enterprises which have
lasted for generations have been thrown into
bankruptcy by these colossal schemes of
turning the nimble sixpence The ststores''
have effected the same ruin as was caused in
Paris to "le petit commerce" by the opening
OF the Bon Marche and the Louvre, those
enormous establishments where purchaser
can buy almost everything under the sun at
rate which can only be renumerative
when tremendous volume of trade is daily
transacted. The small umbrella-maker
bootmaker, silk merchant, milliner and his
fellow in every department of labor which
aims at personal adornment-an have been
literally smashed to pieces by the trade IL
tans, who have drawn to themselves the bus
mess which formerly drifted into thousand
tiny channels. .@
THE UNIVERSAL PROvIDER'S'' STORE
In England the movement has been on
far more comprehensive scale than it has
even reached in France. The trader White
ley, who calls himself "the provider,' has
got an establishment in Bayswater, which 7
look upon as one of the wonders of the
world To try to give "a puff to such q
place would be rather laughable perform
ance, as the crowd trading there every day
is SO enormous that there seems to be con-
siderable effort made, on one pretext or an
other, to diminish the rush of patronage I
went there the other day, and on leaving
the underground railway found myself in
steam of people all pouring one way. I
asked cabman If anything unusual had
happened in the neighborhood, and he merely
answered that it was the same all day long
the people were going to Whiteley's
The buildings which this Napoleon of COM
merce occupies are nothing like SO imposing
as the great white stone palaces where the
Bon Marche and the Louvre carry on their
amazing traffic. But the order, neatness
and general system prevailing inside more
than make up for any exterior deficiency.
The trade branches are far more numerous
at Whiteley's than at the great Paris shops.
The latter do not deal in food, but every
thing, positively everything eatable, drink
able, wearable and usable generally, can
be had at Whiteley's You can buy any,
thing there, from a shooting estate or
town mansion down to Florida orange or
new laid egg. I verify believe the world
has never seen such a mart before our day
Prices are cut to the lowest possible figure.
fancy there must be but the most trifling
amount of profit on each article; it is the
enormous volume of trade which is inces-
sanity done that rolls up the figures on the
handsome side of the ledger. Everything
must be paid for on or before delivery,
consequently there can be no loss from bad
debts.
THE FEARFUL CROWDS OF BUYERS
There is one direction in which Whiteley
lags behind the great shops in enterprise
the London man does not give free lunch,
as the Louvre and Bon Marche have been
doing for some time. Neither is there any
pleasant drawing-room, where the public can
sit down quietly and read papers and write
letters at the expense of the firm, as in Paris
There are also no lifts, or elevators las they
are called in America, to the annoyance of
linguistic purists who say: "How can you
be elevated downs'D But the up-stair
rooms at Whiteley's are not particularly
fascinating; the bulk of the business is done
on the ground floor of his wide extending
double premises.
So far as I am personally concerned I
exceedingly dislike these fearful crowds of
buyers, all rushing about, banging each
others elbows, knocking counters with their
umbrellas to call the attention of half
maddened attendants. would rather pay
little more and do my shopping quietly
and in the full possession of my own senses,
with the salesman or woman presumably
in like enviable frame of mind. I be-
ieve this method, the old-fashioned one,
is quite as cheap in the long run also,
for the new system tends to make ali
women Mrs Toodleses, tempted by
cheap ticketed-up figures to buy things that
they cannot afford and could very well get
on without. I am told, too that since the
starting OF these enormous stores with their
piles of tempting articles lying loosely about,
like cream before the whiskers of a cat, the
crime of thieving has greatly increased
among the ranks Of people hitherto consid-
cred incapable of SO great sin Now and
then q culprit Of this sort, rightly or
wrongly, escapes punishment on the plea Of
kleptomania,. But why should kleptomani-
acs be allowed at large to injure the sane
community any more than any other kind
of maniacss
Whiteley's is only one of the numerous
'stores' which are to be found all over Lon.
don, their trade features just the same,
their advantages and disadvantages alike
strongly marked. Their aggregation Of
capital, with the power that enormous
money always confers, is the real secret of
the depression of trade in England, and for
my part trust the day is far distant in
the United States when the cut-throat sys-
tenn of ''cutting Of prices" will ever be car
ried on with the wholesale slaughter to tlit-
tie commerce., which has marked the in
auguration of the great "stores" of Paris
and London.-Olive Logan in Philadelphia
Timea