Custer County Republican. (Broken Bow, Neb.) 1882-1921, 1906-03-15
Catalogue Houses Prevent Development
And Tend to Capitalization of Trade the Large Cities
to the Detriment of Towns and Country Alike.
How it Can be Prevented and the Merchants, Citizens
and Farmers Greatly Benefited Thereby.


of which might aptly be: Head
win; tails you lose," and tn,
process of operation a sort of ca
in the bag trade, or "swap un
seem" so far as the consumer i
concerned.
The catalogue house occupie!
citadel of security from which
radiates a system of tenticle'
reaching into the heart of every
community, and counter system
of well CREASED skids along which
glides to their Golfers the wealth
of the land. There is a deft in
genuity in the system which re
tains every advantage for the
house and gives nothing in re
turn until the last penny of the
purchase price is yielded up by the
farmer. The accumulation Of
prepayment, thus artfully exact
ed, looks like the inception of an
other Tontine insurance scheme,
which, if developed unchecked,
may some day invite another up.
rising of the people and at least
furnish fame for a Moses, a
Roosevelt or a Lawson.
The theory of the cataloguer's
system, if carried to it's logical
conclusion, means stop to com.
munal developments, centrali-
cation and monopoly, compared
with which the beef trust is a
roadside lemonade stand. 1t
means the extinction of country
merchants and the obliteration
of inland distributing centers.
With the country merchant and
kindred industries the villages
and towns dwindle and disappear
and the country at large finally
resolves itself into system of
one great center of supply on the
one hand and an unbroken ex-
panse of agriculture on the other.
With the inuumerable small
commercial centers must also go
the ready facilities that make
suburban life endura ble-the doc
tor, the lawyer and all of the
professions that cater to the con-
venience and happiness of the
communicable drawn to the
one congested vortex of strenu-
Gus life and leaving the balance
of the country to the lonliness of
toll to enrich the one great octu-
pus of city life. This condition
attained and monopoly is ripe for
its final stroke that makes all
commerce the servitor of the
trust for which peoples and gov
ernments must exist only as
feeders. Thus in theory the
catalogue house commences a
long stride toward universal
justification, a condition which
some political economists say is
ideal, but against which all in
telligent humanity struggles
aghast, knowing that the price
is the extinction of the last atom
of individuality, reducing all
men to a single unit as cohesie
and indistinguishable as a mass
of dough. This view, even if
drawn with broad strokes, is yet
the tinallty of the catalogue
house.
There is no class who rebel
against monopoly, centralized
power and justification more
than the farmer, and yet their re-
Spouse to the sap-sucking tenth
c!es of the catalogue houses do
much to transfer the wealth of
the country to the great centers.
They are sapping the life of
home commerce, which is the
basis of social and industrial de-
velopment; the first of which
makes life worth living and the
second provides the abundant
means of it. They are destroy
ing that touch-stone of progress
-credit-w without which the
great west wonld be yet wilder
ness.
Under the cataloguers' regime
it would require ten times the
money now in use to carry on the
exchanges of commerce and by
the difficulty of its procurement,
to that extent retard the devel-
opment of the country.
The country merchant and all
he stands for represents a theory
directly opposite to that of the
catalogue house. He represents
the greatest axioms of political
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