The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-01-02
BRITISH SHoPKEEPERS
HOW THEY ARE AFFECTED BY MOD
ERN TRADE DEVELOPMENTS.
The Cooperative store and the More
Recent NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
Stores Not Yet known.
london Letter in New York Post.


United States, is practically nonexistent in
the large towns of England In the news
papers one looks in vain for the columns Of
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES announcements which are
so prominent in the advertisement pages of
American newspapers English advertisers
are going on in the same conservative way
as ever, and, with one or two exceptions, in
cities even as large as Manchester or Liver
pool, it would be difficult to find retail bust
ness houses which spend as much on news
paper advertising as they DO on rent.
The English tradesman has not yet come
to the conclusion that if it is worth while
for him to pay two or three hundred pounds
for the rent of his shop it is worth while
to spend a correspondingly large sum in tell
ing people where he is and the kind of bust
ness he is doing. The English tradesman,
whether in London or in the provincial
cities, secures as good stand as he can and
then relies on the displays in his shop win
dOws to attract trade. The English shop
keeper seeks to sell as trustworthy goods
as he thinks his trade demands. He gets
just as large profits as the trade he has
drawn to himself will stand, but makes none
of the systematic and continuous efforts for
larger trade, with smaller margins of profit,
which are so characteristic of newer retail
trade methods in the United States.
Since l wrote the letter from Manchester I
have Travelled further among the towns Of
Lancashire. l have been through the Mid
lands, and spent six weeks in London While
observations on these journeys go to confirm
what L wrote about the general absence Of
department stores, they have shown that tire
old one-line trader is being attacked in Eng
land, although not by the same methods as
in the United States.
Retail trade in the towns of the north of
England and of the Midlands has long dit-
fered in one essential particular from retail
trade in the United States, and this differ
ence has brought about conditions which do
not leave quite as free a field for department
store enterprise as exists in American cities.
The English retail trader in all the large
industrial towns has to compete with the
cooperative stores. Nearly all these organ
iZatiOns do their purchasing through the
Cooperative Wholesale Society of Manches-
ter, mammoth concern owning steamships
and many factories, which a month ago
reached the total of twelve million sterling
in it's annual turnover All this trade is on
a cash basis. The Wholesale Society, which
came into existence in 1854, to act as the
purchasing agent and warehousing firm for
the local cooperative societies, whose be-
ginnings date from 1885, demands prompt
cash from all it's constituent members The
local societies in their turn demand ready
money for every article which passes across
their counters.
COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES.
All these local cooperative societies are
supported by the better-clasS artisans and
the lower middle classes. These people are
permanent members Of the cooperative soci-
cites, and at the initial stage of their men,
bership invest a few pounds in the capital
stock. When buying goods they pay at the
same rates as nonmembers, much the same
rates as are charged by ordinary traders.
AT the end of each three months trading,
however, they are paid dividends based on
the amount of their purchases from the So
ciety.
The fact that these cooperative societies
draw so much of the ready-money trade of
the large towns accounts in some degree for
the conservatism of the one-line trader and
would to some extent retard department.
store methods and enterprise if they were
tried In English towns. The one-line trader
draws his support from customers either too
improVdent or ShiftleSS to meet the ready
cash requirements of the cooperative store,
or from families whose manner OF life does
not fall in with the co-OperatiVe-Store organ
iZatiOn. None of these stores sends around
for orders and few Of them deliver goods.
to do a large credit business and to carry
the losses which a credit trade involves And,
moreover while the trade of no single shop
keeper is large, 1t is of character which
is hard to move. If department stores were
established the management would have to
convince the cO-OperatiVe-Store members that
at the department store goods could be
bought cheaper than at the cooperative
stores even when the quarterly dividends on
purchases We're taken into account.
This is what is now being attempted in
the new departures in one-iine trade. 1t is
most largely and generally done in the
grocery trade. specially in lines of bacon
and cheese. Concerns with enormous capt.
tai are opening branches in all the large
towns. They buy for prompt cash, and
then sell for a profit little larger than the
discount which ready money commands in
the markets which they buy. An immense
Germs pay, and the effort to secure trade
in such a volume Is made by placing a
branch of the business in every town where
there IS the least opening 1t was in this
line Of trade, carried on in this way that
one of the most talked of knights created
ranks of English millionaires.
THE TOBACCO TRADE
Next after the trader in provisions the
one-line traders now most assailed by large
capitalists, with extended ramifcations and
newer retail methods, are tobacconists and
chemists. The attack on the old style of
retail tobacconists is most vigorous in Lon
don. 1t was embarked on about seven
years ago by a Jewish fra. They began
in a comparatively small way, and at first
established their shops in the near
err suburbs. Then they moved on
to the city and central London.
and to-day in some of the main thorough
fares their shops are as near together as
those of the Weil-known company which
pioneered the revolution in the refreshment
business, and IS now making dividends of
seventeen or eighteen per cent from takings
at its hundreds of tea-rooms. In one wav
the tobacco concern which is doing for the
oid-style London tobacconist what the de-
partment store has done for so many one
line traders in American cities began like
the tea-houSe concern. In the early DAYS of
it's enterprise the tea company took the
smallest stores available, but took as many
of these as it's capital would permit of its
renting and stating with assistants. AS
soon, however, as the tea habit got possess
sion of Londoners and the concern began
to make money the small places were aban-
doned and no site anywhere in the CITY and
central London was too good Or too expen-
sive to be occupied with tea shop.
The tobacco concern is now a limited lila
bility concern, paying 8 per cent divi-
dends but instead of taking possession of
larger shops, 1t is constantly adding to the
number of its stands, and making il i'm
possible TO pass TO a railway station or
reach a stopping place for street cars and
'busses without being confronted with
shop window closely packed with tobaccos
of standard brands, all sold at cut rates One
set Of figures viii serve to show the havoc
these cut prices are making in the re-
tail tobacco trade. While cycling throrob
England 1 paid two shillings for a packet
of tobacco Of a standard English brand II
was the regular price in that town yVher
[ reached Manchester / renewed nv supniv
at the rate Of one shilling and sixpeuce he
packet. In London l found that the Ont
rate price for the same brand was one shil
ling and a halfpenny, and on maline IN
told that the profit of the cut-rate concaTn
was represented by little more than the
odd halfpenny.
The attack on the old-fashioned cberoist &