The Sauk Centre herald., 1907-12-05
HURTS BUSINESS
J. J. Ryan Gives His Opinion Of
Of the Effect Of the Supply
on the Small Town

]. ]. Ryan, secretary of the Retail
Grocers' Association, hands Tie
Herald the folio wing Tor publication:
Among the scholars who attend
ed the academy at Elizabethtown, N
Y, with me twenty-five years ago
were about hundred sons of farm
ers, such as l was. About twenty-five
of them have since gone into the
mercantile business in nearby coun-
try towns, and without exception they
have failed in business. The Chicago
catalogue houses accomplished their
ruin.
Not only have the merchants been
driven out of these towns, but to-day
in some of them you cannot buy or
get repairs for such articles as q
wagon, harness, stove, shoe, furniture,
etc. for love or money Twenty-Five
years ago, when l lived there, you
could buy and get repaired anything
needed on farm in these villages.
These men have been driven out of
business through no fault of their
own, but because an Assyrian peddler
in Chicago, some fifteen years ago,
laid down his pack and invested his
surplus, some $4,000, in catalogues
about the size of family Bible, and,
sad to say, they have driven the Bible
out of many a home. These cata-
logues are illustrated with pictures and
ingenious descriptions of every art
icle known, whether useful or useless,
and curiously has created almost as
large a demand for the latter as for
the former. Every year millions of
these catalogues are sent out from
Chicago at an average delivered cost
Of 81 each.
You infer from reading their cata-
logue that hey have no expenses. and
are doing business for the producer
and consumer without profit, until
one of them makes a sworn statement
that his net, profits in the past ten
years were S40,0OO,OOO which sheds
light ON the cause of the failure os
the farmers SONS as merchants---and
in New York state 80 per cent of the
are the sons of the farm
ers. Some Of the smaller towns have
their charters because the
who formerly paid the ex-
ira taxes necessary to maintain a
village government are no longer
there. At on open meeting of To-
cal grange the question of buying
in Chicago was freely discussed by
the farmers. Most of them admitted
they could do better by buying at
home, and in the minds of all VINO ex-
Il ~
as to the advisability of sending their
money away from home, and ali were
opposed to building up a great mono
poly in Chicago that would forever
close the door of opportunity against
Lbe farmers sons in the mercantile
line.
Minnesota is beginning to feel
he competition of the foreign mail
)rder concerns acutely. l know a
farmer in Sibley county who gave
lis son $4,000 to start a general store
md the boy only lasted two years
It happened this same farmer had
himself been buying from the cata-
ogue houses for ten years past, pass
ng up his own town, and the town |
passed his son up.
The last census showed a decrease |
II many of the towns in Southern
AS an example, take the
,nce flourishing town of Ottawa, on
he Northwestern railroad, which the
merchants had to abandon because the
people in that locality sent their mon
y to the Chicago catalogue houses.
There are at least twenty vacant
buildings in the town that are going
> decay. and the village charter was
surrendered.
''The value of every farm in Min
lesoa is determined largely by it's
distance from a market An acre
lear the Twin Cities is worth hum
red acres away off in the country,
nd farm close to a village is worth
wo farms ten miles out, while in