Virginia free press. (Charlestown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1832-1916, 1892-06-01
From the Rouss AUCTION Trade Journal

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wheel, but it is The mightier power of
Brains that makes it whirl.
The pages of commercial history are
crowded with melancholy illustrations OF
ability and integrity ground into powder
between the milestones of credit and part
nership, emerge from the ashes only to
flourish, fall and perish in the same iden-
ticle, inevitable financial whirlpool that
spares but six out of every hundred-One
Z of a thousand scarcely musters the cur
age and desperation and resolution to
face Implying fate with unflinching and
magnificent defiance, and the story of the
march of the author of Net Spot Cash
and his iron harted Lutenants from the
ashes of Church St. to the landmark OF
Broadway is an Grafton in iron, brick
and granite that aut to inspire evry er-
nest enthusiast to beat or rival the record,
and he can if he will.
In that "hole in the wall, as competi-
ton called it, there was no cash capital,
but millions piled up in pluk, experience
and judgment. OF course piety said it
was the Lord, envy cald it luck, but the
sucesful master-minds Of to-da kno that
it al la in the two mastodons of the Eng
lish language-Underby and Undersell
1t is no walk over ether, as competition
stretcht acros that hidden path, with bill
ions in rating, prestige and stok, with
one special price for cash byers, another
for the old regular who sold as he baut
ON eternal time-and another for the
traveller with his trunk, bats, comisions
and blu gras.
Yor chances and yer prestige depend
upon wher u buy, and yor popularity
upon how u sci. If U quote at market
price, peple vii buy wher tha are best
known, but when L undersell u touch
that sensitive nerve-the pocket book !;
the former forgets his fatherland, piety
its religion, the pa-da pirate his proclivi-
ties, and al join in the rush upon the %
per center who had the pluck, nerve and
hard hors sens to tickle and tackle that
tender cord Of human nature-the purse.
The nock-down arguments and the
sledgehamers that ar destined to make Z
a popular and progresiy merchant ar not
found in the beaten paths of the old reg
ular with his regular time, terms and fig
ures, but under the red flag cash before
delivery concerns, in the slawter pens Of
the sheriff and his marshals. or at thes
Headquarters, who's agents buy in evry
market of the world in big bulk for cash,
from Scotland to Japan, from Berlin TO
India, and we fasten the great importers
upon the wall as our special advertise
ments in our advocacy of rOk bottom.
Our mercantile Marathons, Marengos
and Manassas were not won from the CO.
losal concerns of the metropolis without
fierce and auful graple but we always
fired upon closer margin for the money
down than the giants on their customary
terms, and keen cash byers al over the
land ar always after this very leverage
of FIVE or ten or twenty per cent. that
enables them to play havoc with compe-
tition at home. 1t was this margin that
gave to our conspicuous and distinguish
representatives the enflading fire that
drove the old credit craft into oblivion.
The Leviathan, big and strong in una
vailable assets, struggling under tie
treacherous ledger, is simply small game
to the daredevil audacity of the Liliput
with his wheelbarro of hard-hitters.
Success depends not upon time, place
or circumstance, but upon the man and
the correct system. Big in pluk and
nerv, Stewart stuck close to the cash and
his start of one thousand in 1886 had
grown to forty millions in 1876. The
war doubled his wealth. ClaAin began
in grocery at Worcester, Mass, in a
very small wa, and in one year he sold
seventy-three millions A man of mar
velous mercantile curage. Jaffray began
at the foot of the ladder, and from the
ashes Of the great fire in 1885 he swept
up into the lofty attitudes. George Bliss
began with nothing Ridley, like this
ritter, began with thousands Of old diets
hanging over him, and with the author
of net spot cash, paid them all-one hun
dred cents on the dollar. The Arnolds
and Lord & Taylor, and Altman and
Sterns-in fact, every merchant that
can recall began erly and absolutely
without capital. Their starting point was
pluk and push, with the lever Undersell.
The vast majority Of New York's able
merchants went down in the ruins OF
credit.
Peake, Ludington, Bates, Halstead
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