Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1907-07-05
Shopping by Mail.

houses and other big establishments
which advertise to do mail-order bust
ness. The theory upon which they pro-
coed is to pick out few articles of COM
mon consumption and sell them at
wholesale prices perhaps, on even less.
If popular copyrighted hook is pub
lished they will buy them in large guam
titles and put them on the market at
their cost price, and this serves two
purposes; it aids them in killing off the
local dealers by showing a great con-
trast between the mail-order house and
the local dealer. 1t also operates as an
excellent advertising scheme. Seeing
these low prices upon articles which the
people know about, they readily con-
clude that the company advertising these
things so wonderfully low are selling
everything on CORRESPONDENCE low bas-
is. The next deceit is in the quality of
the goods. They advertise apparently
the same article that your retailer does,
at lower price and soon they make the
non-expert believe that. he better buy
all his goods of them. He proceeds to
do so and actually pay more in the
end than he would pay his local dealer at
regular prices.
the goods which you do not understand
than they lose on the goods that you
do understand, and by this process of
hood winking, retain your trade, tear
down the local dealer in the small towns,
decrease the value of town and adjacent
country property and you are doing it
yourself. You are saving few cents
on barrel of salt and reducing the price
of YOUR farm bv the act.
Suppose you would buy only the bar
gains-just the goods that you under
stand and know to be bargains. How
long do you suppose the mail-order
house would do business? Not very long.
They rely upon the bait which they set
and it works in large lumber of cases
to perfection. Barnum said that the
American people delighted in being hum
bugged, that his show was the greatest
humbug on earth and that was the rea-
son he got such large crowds. We are
always looking for bargains and that is
all right. But because someone adver-
tises one article at less than you know
it is worth, that is no inference that he
sells other articles for less than they
are worth. In fact the opposite inference
is true, namely, if he sells one thing for
less than it is worth, he must sell the
next for that much more than it is
worth to make up the loss on the first
article, otherwise he would soon &c
bankrupt and out of business. When
we deal with these great commercial
centers, we are centraliZing trade at the
expense of other cities and towns
throughout this beautiful country OF
ours. How would we like it if there
were no towns except the ones where
| l. dor 10 hn III
would it affect the value of our prop
erty? All of us like to live near thriv'
ing towns and yet in many cases the
people adjoining the towns whose finan
cial standing depends upon the exist
ence of the town, and whose land values
are nearly twice as great because of it,
nearness to town are sending to Chicago
for goods that are kept right here, and
what is worse, thev are getting heater
on every article bought, let alone the
damage done to the local dealer who il
usually one of the principal factors il
keeping up the town.
There is no logic in the situation
Your local dealers can furnish you you
articles for one year as cheap or cheap
er than you can get them in Chicago
besides If you happen to get something
you can't use, you can easily adjust j
with your local dealer. We insist tina
the quality of the goods bought at hom,
is invariably better than those bought il
Chicago. You are all opposed to trusts
why help in building them up? Tha
is just what you are doing by sending
to Chicago for your goods. As long a
we give the trusts our financial or mora
support, we are creating masters TO
ourselves. Are we SO mercenary, tina
for the purpose of saving a few cents
we are willing to hazard the future o
our children.
Let's have the patriotism and the sta
nina to say that the interest of our HON
town shall first be protected, and whel
we have done our whole duty by on
local interests we will find that we ar
worth more in dollars and cents than WI
, are sending to Chicago for our supplies
and we will have retarded the progress
of the trusts just that much.