The Newark journal. (Newark, Ark.) 1901-1959, 1907-06-07

over again by actual and minute COM
parsons of goods, as to their quality
and prices. TIE refute it finally and
indisputably by simpler and more
direct method it is necessary only to
ask the reliable business men of any
of the smaller communities to show
the evidence from their books and ac-
counts OF the harm the mail order
habit is doing their communities.
1t is truth as old as the hills and
as certain as the rising and setting of
the sun that no country or section of
country can prosper Unless the peo-
pie as a whole shall be prosperous.
Such general prosperity as may exist
cannot be retained if the institutions
of the already larger and Weather
built up by contributions that should
be spent at home from the thousands
Of smaller communities.
The need of the country, a desper-
ate need upon which the welfare of
the individual depends, is Tor the
upbuilding and continued progress of
the smaller communities, so that the
wealth of the country may be distrib-
uted over the entire country, and not
congested and controlled in large
amounts in a comparative few centers
of population.
Therefore, the man who sends away
from his own community money which
he might have spent at home and per-
mitted fair profit to the home mer-
chant to be retained there for the
ienefit of the community, is injuring
his community, and thereby the pros
poets for his own future prosperity.
In large number of instances he is
doing more than this. Unwittingly, or
unthinkingly, perhaps, he is violating
his own principles of right and justice.
for at the expense of his own COM
munity, he is needlessly contributing
profits to the capitalistic combinations
menacing the country.
The mail order giants direct their
energies particularly toward the peo-
pie of the smaller towns and the agri-
cultural districts. In hundreds Of
thousands of the homes of these the
catalogue of the mail order house is as
regularly received as the home paper.
The man on the farm last year sent a
very large portion of eighty millions
of dollars to two of these institutions,
in one community, alone.
In all sincerity we ask: Admitting,
purely for the sake of the argument,
that the farmer or the resident of the
small community can save a few dol
lars on some of his purchases, or even
that he could do so on all of them, can
he afford to continue to impoverish
his own community, upon which his
own prosperity, the very value Of his
LAND depends?
If he will ask himself this question
and consider it soberly and fairly in
all of it's phases, including the many
! which cannot be touched upon within
the limits of single article, we think
his answer must be that he cannot.
The wonderful productivity of this
country has been sufficient to over
come the various adverse economic in
fiuences which have existed during the
period of years in which the mail or
der business has accomplished its
greatest growth. Everyone has been
getting along pretty WELL While the
increasing flow of golden millions from
their source in the land of the coun-
try to the already great centers of
money and population has held back
the growth of the smaller commune
ties, it has not yet occasioned a great
disaster. The test will come with the
first pinch of hard times" a condi-
ton which no country ever has been
able to escape at recurring intervals.
When this time arrives those COM
munities will best stand the test which
have best conserved and husbanded
their resources.
JOHN S. POTTS.