Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1908-01-18
Merchandising


towns of considerable size in the middle
west is now small business. Where
stocks of goods used to be large and of
great variety now you find shelf-worn
and few low grade articles. The
travelling salesman is not so much in
evidence; hotels and livery stables are
not doing the business they used to do,
and the high school boys are missing
the early business training boys used to
get, and are taking to the cities to join
the now over-crowded professions.
Barnum said the American people
like to be humbugged. Just now there
his great ado about trusts, and yet we
have few, if any, trusts that have not
destroyed their competitors through the
gullibility of the people. Senator Jeff.
Davis of Arkansas in his>maiden speech
in the senate few days ago cited an
instance of Standard Oil methods. An
independent company was selling oil
on legitimate basis in Little Rock, and
was doing a good business. The big
organization of power and greed de-
creed that the little competitor should
go to the wall, and Rockefeller and his
outfit soon found enough penny wise
and pound foolish" people to carry out
the decree. Oil was sold at ruinous
prices by the big concern, the small
company was put out of business, and
the people of Little Rock are paying
for oil now more than they ever paid
before. If any patron of a catalogue
house thinks for one moment that he is
not helping to build up strong institu-
ton that will some day control the trade
in it's line and set arbitrary prices on its
wares he is as badly mistaken as it is
possible for one to be. Things are rap
idly drifting that way. The small
wholesale houses are affected. They
are doing business with the retailer on
short-time credit, and the retailer must
in turn have frequent settlement with
his customers. The little wholesalers
are having hard fight with the
wealthy concerns that are arrayed
against them. The big concerns, by
means of the capital they command, are
going into the foreign fields and either
buying in large quantities of output and
production or securing complete control
of the source of the article. One large
Chicago concern recently established
a branch house in Kansas City, and an
other concern is now building in Mime
apolis, the removal in both instances
being done to allow them the advantage
of river terminal freight rates. Rookie
Teller and that outfit followed the same
methods.
Catalogue house patrons are helping
to build trust, which, if it continues
to grow, will in a few years more tower
head and shoulders above any industrial
organization we have today. 1t will be
more arbitrary, too, on account of the
necessaries and things essential to life
it will control, and its exterminating
touch will be on every line of trade. and
business where men work for their
daily bread. When is the public tc
learn that the character of government
is the result of conduct of the smallest
units the people-who make up the
government. When the catalogue con-
Germs begin to bride congress, legisla.
lures and courts. and hold up the rail
roads to do their pleasure, the public
will spend it's money in a new reform
movement, and the penny wise and
pound foolish fellow, the fellow who
fed the octopus in its younger days, viii
sit on a box and white land curse the
government that permits such things tc
exist.