The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1911-07-27
THE MAIL ORDER BUSINESS.
The System that Makes it Prosper is the
System it Will Take to Kill 1t.

System 1t VIII lake to Kill 1t.
There have been many foolish conten-
tons and many absurd arguments made,
pro and con, on the mail order question.
A great deal of abuse has been printed
of the mail order concerns by local pa
pers and most of it, in our judgment. is
little short of good advertising, and in
effective argument against the mail Or
der concern. The reason that country
people buy goods of mail order houses,
or of dealers of some larger nearby town,
is because they are influenced or made
to believe that there exists some advan-
with the home dealer. And this, per-
strong. There are those, doubtless,
great deal on the purchase of their goods
elsewhere than of the home dealer.
One very marked oversight on the part
of local business men, and of the general
public as well, is the insignificance or un-
Importance of things that often produce
a lasting and almost ineffaceable i'm
preston. Little things very often cause
us to reach decisive conclusions that may
VI,
yet remain forever a settled conclusion
unless emphatically disproved. A 10
cent cast monkey wrench may have the
same finish and appearance as genuine
orged steel wrench, worth three or four
times as much. A ten cent cast claw
hammer, polished and plated may have
an equal appearance with a rs cent
forged steel hammer.
A ShraW6 calocmap alwavc cookc to
impress his prospective patrons with the
advantages to be enjoyed by trading
with him, and the mail order man NAV
very properly be classed as a shrewd
salesman. He has no objection to the
general public getting under wrong i'm
preston, provided the error is in his
favor. But what does the local mer-
chant do to disprove the error? Nothing,
absolutely nothing as rule. He Just
sulks! That's ALL
The catalogue man tells the consumer
over and over from start to finish of his
big book that he can and does buy and
sell cheaper than any other dealer. He
prints plausible arguments why it is So
his big purchases, his ownership of fac
tories and his millions of dollars of sales
annually, etc., ETC., are all cited. But
did you ever know of one of them to tell
how much the rents, taxes and insurance
cost on the big city block? How much
the salaries of the thousands of en-
ployees amounted to annually? How
much the million or so of big catalogues
they put out every year come to? How
much the hundreds of men at the heads
of departments which they employ at
500 to $500 per month salary come to?
How much the army of truck wagons
they employ to cart the goods from cars
to warehouses and warehouses to cars
come to? No, they do not boast of any
of these things, but we know that all
these things in big city cost great sums
enough to make the goods thus handled
and sold in retail way, shipping direct
to consumer, cost fully as much or more
than goods of similar quality do, when
sold from the retailers stock, direct to
the consumer, without any packing, bill
ing, booking and shipping expense like
the mail order house has to stand.
But the mail order man spends great
sums annually advertising and educating
the public to believe in him. The country
retailer in the small town holds his ad-
vertising expenditures down to dollar
or two week, and most of them not
even that much; and many of them
nothing. The result is the mail order
man sweeps the country over with his
deceptive arguments and gathers in> the
trade
A skilled writer can produce sound
logical arguments and proof that knocks
the whey out of every claim the mail
order man makes in behalf of his system
of doing business as against the system
of the country retail merchant. But the
retailer will not stand for the service
and the mail order man finds him easy
prey, and all but wipes him off the face
of the earth.