Norwich bulletin., 1914-07-18

(written specnally for The Bulletin9
 There's a very wide difference be- tween making shoes and selling snoes. 1t requires entirely different traits Tn a man to get the best prices for the most pairs of shoes. from those Wnicn are required to make the shrewaes, ses SC, lection of leather and cut and fasnion it into footwear. The latter calls Tor knowledge,-knowled Of tanning mysteries. knowledge of human ana tony, knowledge of how weather ana other things affect leather, knowledge of what kinds of nails and what kinas of thread and what kinds or eyelets and what kinds of laces are best 70 use: e:--it also calls for prophetic insagnt into what styles and shapes shnuns whims of fashion are going 10 olctate. The traits demanded in good sales adaptability. plausibility, tact ana certain talent towards making the .-orse appear the better reason.
 The nnansqer of a big shoe raanufac~ tory nlay Known all there IS 10 pc known asbeut leather; all there IS lo be known about tanning processes; all thAre is to be known about the worth and usefulness of the various acces- sories: all there is to be known apoul how to make good shoes. All or tnis won't help to sell shoes. In ract, IL IS about the rarest thing in the Worlo to find such a man in the saiesroom. He's kept where he belongs and nts, in the making rooms.
 It's so in almost every branch or manufacturing and productive indus try,-except farming.
 When you come to the farm. you inn mediately run upon man who IS re- quired by his vocation to produce things one day and sell them the next. He must know seeds and soils and sea- sons and the thousand and one details of crop defenses: he must foresee what the public is going to want months pc fore the public opens mouth to call for it: he must produce the right goods or the light quality at the right moment: and then he must flop instantly from one hard role to another, and become at the firt of a bats wing as good a salesman as he had hitherto been pro- ducer.
 There are mighty few in any other form of business who can do this mir acle of transformation: there are mighty few farmers who can. don wonder that so few make money. l sometimes wonder how any Of us get enough to live on. For, by the sar- donic irony which rules in so-callsd "business'' it is the ability to sell any old thing at a good price which pays big money rather than the ability to make or produce a good thing. And, while there are many farmers who can raise pretty good crops and some far- rners who can sell pretty poor crops at big prices, that man is a veritable freak and phenomenon of a farmer who can do both,-raise banner crops and then ret banner prices for them out of a bearish market.
 kst@ nri ad the limitations of human capacity. Its leaders saw that no one man was like ly to be a topnothcher in every capaci- ty. Therefore big business picks and places It's men where they are best fitted to go. It puts one genius into the designing room, and another, who couldn't design @ hen -coop into the stock room because he knows raw ma terials, and another who is wizard with machinery it puts in charge of its engines, and another who has knack for handling men it makes foreman of its big shops, and another who could delude the Father of Lies himself into believing that a papier-mache shoe was made of Cordovan leather 1t puts in charge of it's sales department. Therefore Big Business gets you, going or coming, because it has a specialist on guard at every door whose duty and delight it is to know more about what's behind that door than anybody else.
 But MT. Farmer lives and works all alone on his farm, and has got to take his raw materials where he can and superintend the process of production as best he may and personally pack his goods as well as he knows how and then sell them for what he can get. He must do all these various and di- verse things himself, meeting in every one of them some expert who excels him in knowledge and aptitude be- cause said expert doesn't pretend to do but one thing and therefore does that one thing exceptionally well.
 Probably when the millennium gets within about six inches of Connecticut, enough farmers will see the advantages of cooperation to bunch their differ ing abilities and take charge of things, as is perfectly possible whenever they get ready. When that time comes those whose abilities tend that way will spend their summer conjuring crops out of soil, while others will make a speciality of packing them so that the market will squeai with joy when it sees, them, and still others will sell them at worth while prices.
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