The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1900-09-28

would cause drummers to lose theil
places.
Then consider that millions and mill
ions of dollars are spent in this country
for advertising purposes, not merely in
the newspapers and the magazines, but
on the fences and the bill boards, in
signs, in distributions of printed mat
ter. and what not.
What is all this money spent for?
To sell goods.
And the study of hundreds of the
brightest men in the country is devoted
to making advertising more and more
effective, so that a given expenditure will
result in greater and greater sales at a
lower and lower expense. Why do the
advertisers want to sell more and more
cheapiy? So that they can beat their
competitors-by giving the consumer bet
ter things for the same money, or just
as good things for less money. All this
effort to sell things cheaper means that
drummers are going to be laid off if they
by their methods have been selling things
more extensively.
There is another thing that we owe it
to ourselves to look fairly in the face.
Many drummers in the past have consid-
cred that the business that they helped
their houses to do belonged to them and
not to the houses. Others, surely all the
houses, used to take a contrary view;
and of late years they have resorted to
the various more or less direct methods
of selling in order to get their business
back into their own hands. No doubt
about it! No doubt about it,
One of the things which a trust aims
to do is to reduce its selling expense. If
four manufacturers making the same ar
ticle are drumming Indiana, and their
four able and persuasive representatives
light into Indianapolis some day, they
all go around among the trade doing lit
tie except neutralize one another. About
four times the talk, nerve force and
money are spent to sell only as many
goods as Indianapolis wants that day,
as needs be spent This is one of the
many things that the trusts have found
out-that they knew before they started
in.
Now, it is inevitable in the very econ
omics, in the very natural law of the
situation, that some of those drummers
must go some time; they may be sent
into new territory, they may be recalled
to work in the Office at home, or they
may be dismissed entirely Just so much
of their work as has been unnecessary
will surely be dispensed with in time.
Competition does that, and we couldn't
have any better illustration of the fact
that competition is always active. Here
it is potent, actually. In the case of the
glucose trust that was afraid to encour-
age too. much competition fof other capt.
tai and brains) by making more than sew
en- per cent, it was active potentially.
1t is preposterous to say that fifty
thousand commercial travellers, or thirty
FIVE thousand, have been thrown out OF
work by the trusts. There are probably
not sixty thousand of them in the whole
country. Besides, If ten per cent of
them have been thrown out of work by
the various changes in producing and dis
tributing that have come about in the last
few years. other causes have probably
contributed equally with the combination
Even so, and putting the
case at its very worst, the general i'm
provement in business. the wide expan-
sion of trade at home and abroad, which
all of our producers, manufacturers and
traders have helped to bring about, and
by which they have all inevitably profit
ed-this has put all of those commercial
travellers back into places just as good,
or better. or will do so. 1t Is inevitable.
More people were employed after ma
chinery was introduced-simply because
the wants of the human race became
greater and wider every year, and these
wants had to be supplied, and could be,
because things were so much cheaper.
We have taken over Porto Rice, Ha-