The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-09-20
in A MAIL.ORDER STORE
SYSTEM BY WHICH THEIR VAST COR
REsPONDENCE Is HANDLED.
Immense Establishment with EN-.
ployes Enough to Make a New
England Village.
New York Evening Post.

New York Evening Post.
You can't buy anything here said the
man who stopped me at the big front door;
land you can't order anything if you come
from this city"
Il don't want to buy anything" said l,
land l come from a city-far away. I've
come to see how you 90 IT."
We stood in the corridor OF a great build
inging with twenty-five acres of -four room
and two millions of dollars in stock. rang
ing from harvesting machines to old fash
Toned melodeons and cans of condensed
milk. On one side was a spacious office,
iron grated like a bank; on the other a
checkroom and a telephone exchange as
Dig as a central station. 1t was the ground
floor of a mail-order store.
A store like this seems TO the innocent
Fastener a curiosity, a problem, a commu-
nifty.
The company sends out a catalogue; it is
fat with commodities numbered and priced
and pictured. You would be taking a risk
to bet that you could think of something
that was not i'm il. Persons who look over
this catalogue and see something they want
are advised to write, inclose the money and
satisfy their desire.
The letter reaches the mail-order store
among the other twenty or thirty thousand
that come every day, and from the base
ment II speeds upward on an endless con-
veyor TO the correspondence department,
which covers a space as large as a base
ball field There a girl-perhapS a pretty
girl with sleeves rolled UP and with a dis
tinct look of business-clips off the edge of
your letter, takes out your money or ex-
press order, writes what you want on an
order entry. and hands IL TO a grinning
boy who is chewing gum but is quick on his
feet. Back 1t goes TO another conveyor
with labeled pigeon holes, shoots upward
and is snatched out when il reaches the
right floor: your can of beans. your safety
razor, or your roll of carpet is quickly Sc
lected, put on the rack of an endless freight
conveyor moving towards the basement.
is packed. addressed, put on an electric
van with twelve tons of other goods and is
off TO the freight terminal. Perhaps 1t did
not take twenty minutes.
HOW EXCHANGES ARE MANAGED.
But let us suppose you do not like your
harmonica when it comes and the calico'has
a red instead of a green pattern. Scissors
to grind, Don't hesitate a minute. Send
them back at the company's expense; they
will not even be curious. They promptly
return your money and send you an adver-
Using flyer telling you why you should own
a porcelain bathtub. That is the way the
mail-order store does business. 1t takes a
great number of hands and brains to con-
duct it.
The employees are often numerous enough
to make a New England village, and are of
all kinds, from the spry and coy telephone
girl to the expert buyer, who travels first
class around the world, picking out China
silks or Brazilian coffee. In one of these
stores is a mailing expert who knows every
postoffice in the United States and can tell
you its State. county and location in an
instant. A whole corps of workers is en-
ployed exclusively on the publication of the
five-pound catalogue. When the customer
raoafx-nc thtc tayon III rallaH my in N owl
indrical mailing box, and holds II open upon
his willing knee he realizes nothing of the
problems it involves; he does not know that
if the paper was imperceptibly thicker 1t
would cost the company $4,000 a year in ex-
ira mailing charges, nor that four presses
are crashing at their printing task almost
every hour in the year. He does not know
that when he writes for articles his letter
goes unsorted from the mail to the store,
and does not realize that ii will be accom-
panied by letters from Java and Peru, in
strange tongues that keep a staff of inter-
prefers busy. Many of the letters are from
simple country folk; often they are. ridicu-
lOus or pathetic.
Deer Sirs,' wrote one man who had re-
ceived an advertisement with a halftone
picture of the members of the firm; 81 am
glad you. thout TO send me your photograf.
L enclothes a picture of me witch L had
taken at Patter's Junction and hope our
friendchip will continou." And said an
other in a labored scrawl: 81 send u my
watch. my watch. Have you got my watch?
My watch, it will cost two much to be re-
pared. Do u want to buy my watch and
did u get it.. My watch 1 am ready TO sell
it. Or do U want two trade watches with
my watch. Do L want to trade watches or
not send it back unless it is my watch send
it back. For my sake, quick. 1 want to
know something quick
AT Christmas time the mail bears COM
petent testimony that the legends of old
Noel are not dead; numerous letters come
in addressed to Santa Claus in care OF the
company. Most of them are pathetically
childIike and sincere, and SO are some of
the letters that come from the simple
minded women Of the rural districts, ask
ing for all sorts of household advice from
the making of jam TO the care of children,
and pouring out. at times, their own little
privacy of trouble.
ANSWERS TO INQUIRIES.
The answers to inquiries and assurances
to impatient customers that the goods are
on the way forms a large part Of the
stores correspondence. In fact, the out
going mail has become so large that the
stamps are bought already cancelled, the
sorting is all done in the b~uilding-in short,
the store runs it own postofice.
Most of the orders are from rural dis
tricts. What do people buy most?" /
| asked. What do people think most?' said
the superintendent, answering my question
with another. Yet there are certain ten
denotes in buying which are interesting. For
instance, the farmer. the sailor, or the me-
chanic, whether he be from Portland, Ore,
| or Portland, Me-, will always purchase one
kind of decorative china-the kind that is
gay with gilt tracing and brilliant with
red-petaled daisies. and there is one pre-
dominant pattern of rose-igured carpet that
is now adjoining front rooms" from Mich
igan to Mexico.
Still another universal is for
"tailor-made' clothes. 1t took the mail
order stores several years to discover this,
but they will tell you to-day that. whether
il is from vanity or prejudice, the men of
this country will pay half as much again
for clothes made especial" A thriving
department is also to be seen where they
sell and repair violinS. They are mostly
of a cheaper glade. who buys Them"
said I-'musicians?" The expert looked at
me with a profound disgust for the I'M
tutored East. "Musicians-nothingi" he ex-
claimed. Just plain fiddlers." 1t was rather
lumberman in his camp, the Georgia crack
ON the docks and the Massachusetts black
smith at his fireside We're still fiddling. Per-
haps the mail-order store is helping TO keep
alive the old tunes.
Sometimes orders are sent in for COM
modities that are hard to supply. A woman
wrote from New jersey for a pair of
gloves to be used in killing mosquitoes" a
veterinary surgeon from Indiana wanted a
1atiron for his aged mother which was
made of aluminium or some other light
MATERIAL a good soul wrote from Quebec
as follows: My wife says there is a kind
of medicine which will cure a person of
talking too much, and she says you keep
it. Money is i~nclosed, and want four
bottles Any one seeing these epistles
could not doubt their sincerity or fail TO
wonder how q store can deal with these