The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1906-07-05
WHERE THE FARM.
ERS' MONEY GOES

Sears, Roebuck & Co., the great Chit
cago catalog house, which heretofore
has been capitalized at five millions,
has suddenly blown out into great
corporation with capital of forty
million dollars.
This evidence means that 1t has
been turned over to great Wall street
syndicate, and that the concerns
which the farmers of the country have
been 80 persistently and determinedly
contributing their money to, under
the mistaken impression that they
were serving their own interests, has
sold them out TO the very class OF men
whom they most hate.
It is claimed, though we are free TO
admit we do not know upon what au-
thority, that Mr.. Sears who, as the
journal has previously stated, started
out only fifteen years ago with no cap
ital, retires from this new deal with
cash bonus Of ten million dollars and
very considerable block of stock In
the new syndicate. All this, OF
course. representa- the money the hon
est granger has been pouring into his
Golfers under the delusion that he was
getting his goods 80 much cheaper
than he could possibly have bought
them at home of the greedy and avar-
icious home dealer But, II he will
stop to figure it out, he will find that
II would represent the combined
profits of vast army of retail dealers
throughout the West, prosperous as n
good many of them may be, to equal
the enormous swag with which Mr..
Sears, who has engineered this gigan
tic scheme during the past fifteen
years, has been enabled to retire.
There is altogether mistaken no
tion on the part OF the farmer regard
ing the profits made by the dealer.
If he gets an inkling of the wholesale
price of plow or drill or a harvester
and compares 1t with the price he
pays for 1t, he concludes Immediately
that the dealer must be getting rich
as Croesus, and that he, the farmer, is
simply digging up his hard earned
money and throwing IL into the pass
ing hat of mendicant. He does not
take 1t into consideration the num-
erous other facts In the case--the
freight, insurance, interest on the in
vestment, liability OF loss from dis
honest customers, rent, clerk hire,
taxes, and the dozen other items that
the dealer knows about to his sorrow.
Neither does he take into coDsidera-
tion, when he buys Of the oataloge
house, that he does not have chance
to see the article before he buys It;
that he has no way, In most cases, of
finding out whether 1t is really as rep
resented until he bas used 1t for a.
while and finds 1t break down or go to
pieces on his hands, with no opportu-
nifty for redress, for his money Ia al
ready gone, and gone 80 far as to be
entirely out of reach. He does not
take into consideration, either, al
though 1t has been referred to in many
local papers and In practically all the
trade papers, that the catalog house
does nothing whatever for his town In
the way of taxes or improvements or
donations in time Of trouble or stress
that, In other words, 1t Is "all going
out and nothing coming In" and he
does not stop to think that there is a
day of reckoning coming and what
will he do when the rent comes
roundY"
Reciprocity Is principle of eco.
nomics. A. condition in which every
thing goes out and nothing comes IN
cannot last long; and that Is in prac-
tical effect what the mail order busi-
ness Is. 1t drains community of
its commercial life blood aud, II per-
sisted in, the thriving country vii
lagos will eventually become ruined
and deserted, and with them will
surely 20 the prosperity and value of
the farms; for the markets will be de.
stroyed, and without them, both the
social life and the financial profit Of
the farm will disappear, and in time
the country revert to a wilderness.
OF course, this picture ia rather lur-
idly drawn, but II lie the logical out
come of such course If carried to
the limit.
The journal does not believe that
things will ever come to such pass,
even in spite Of the enormous catalog
house trust just organized, and which |
is so strlkingly cartooned by the gen
eral Merchants Review because 1t |
has too much faith in the business
acumen and spirit and enterprise of
the merchants Of the country. =. They |
will have to fight, and fight hard; but |
they will yet win. But it will have to
be by conoei ted, intelligent effort. 1t
is high time for every dealer, in what
ever line, to throw aside his preju.
dices, overcome his distrust of his
competitor-who. in ninety nine cases
out of 100, at low estimate, is more
honorablethan the catalog house-and
join hands with his association, aud
association with association, to meet
this, the greatest evil OF the trade to-
day. 1t must include, also, whatever
else may be done, a campaign of edu-
cation among the farmers, to show up