Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-03-19
George Thayer Thinks There
Are Others Who Buy of
Catalog Houses
CAST OUT THE BEAM, ETC
As He Travels Over tho Country, He
Wonders Why the Merchant Glass
Buy Out of Town, Yet Curse the
Farmer for Doing the Same Thing
Dakota Has the Same Troubles.

travel among the farmers the year
around and l get the farmers end of
the catalog house argument every day
of my travels. Then when get home
for Saturday evening, and Sunday my
associates are many of them retail
merchants and often meet these mer-
chants in other towns. What has SEEM
ed to me SO strange in the discussion
of catalog buying is that the average
merchant wakes eloquent in his expo
sition of the fallacies of the mail order
buying, then turns right around and
buys from catalog the goods HE needs
outside his own line A grocery friend
of mine was opposed to creamery en-
terprise in Marshalltown because the
farmers, if they had a cash market for
their cream, might send their money
to mail order house and yet that
same merchant bought $50 or $40
worth of jewelry by catalog not sixty
days before. A druggist in my ac-
quaintance keeps a jewelers. catalog in
his store and any of his intimate
friends can buy jewelry thru him at
wholesale prices. Leading dry goods
men and hardware merchants send to
a California fruit house every year for
their canned fruits. merchants in every
line allow their wives to send to mail
order houses for dry goods, yet in all
the talk l ever heard from merchant
about mail order buying the complaint
is always made about the farmer. The
farmer seems to be the only class
abused for his patronage of catalo g
houses.
This condition is not peculiar to
Iowa either. Up in South Dakota the
Farm Journal says:
Looking into the matter somewhat
carefully, we find 1t is the practice Of
the hardware men to send away for his
groceries and dry goods; the grocery
man to order his hardware, and the
dry goods man to do the same, even to
the extent of buying his buggies, har-
ness, ETC., direct To be sure many
and particularly since this war began
abstain from these dia-
bolical acts, but the vast majority do
not. According to the Parker Leader,
a merchant of that town was overhaul
ing soulless farmer for having sent
off, for something that he in that way
got much cheaper, or more to his ik-
ing, when it was noticed that all the
printed material bore far
away imprint. The farmer asked the
frothing merchant why he did this with
two good job printing establishments in
town. why" was the reply, II make
quite little saving in this way
South Dakota, too, offers it's own
remedy as is explained in the GMilbank
Review, which says:
Evidently there is rustling lot Of
over in our neighboring
town of Watertown. They are flooding
the mail in this county with printed
circulars and sheets quoting prices on
furniture, dry goods, clothing, jewelry,
ETC., and sixteen to one they will draw
a lot of trade from Grant county mer-
chants which will be lost to them sim
ply because they are endeavoring to re-
duce expenses by withdrawing their
Advertising this season of the year"
Merchants must admit we are up
against condition never known be-
fore, and good or bad they will have to
meet it. 1t will do no good to single
put the farming class or any other
class, and say they are running the
owns and merchants. The telephone
s here and at the farmers door; the
'ural delivery is here and at his door.
and there to stay, and all kinds of fast
freight and cheap freight is here. The
producer and consumer have every IA
,ility for dealing direct with each 9TH
sr, and all the combinations of earth
compel them-right or wrong
% support great and costly middle
class unless the invincible argument
If the right goods at the right price
s forever presented in the right man
Ter.
In Marshalltown there are between
twenty-five and thirty grocery stores.
Only one in five do any advertising.
How is the farmer to know what they
nave or what it is worth? Why do
,atalog houses keep out of the large
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