The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1915-11-12
VITALITY OF NATION LIES
IN Community WELFARE
LOYALTY TO HOME INSTITUTIONS RESULTS MANY
INDIRECT BENEFITS
Commercial Prosperity Shared By All

GRITTY SHARED by All
only farm values, but the price OF
farm products as we'll, depend largely
upon the proximity of a good live
town.
If the residents of the country tri-
butary to small cities insist on buying
their supplies from out-of-town
houses and travelling agents, the CON-
munity is deprived of business that
legitimately belongs to it. The gross
profit on such business is lost to the
community and with the increase of
the practice and resultant decline of
business begins the inevitable decline
of community welfare and commune
ty values.
When your personal habits and
tcustoms tend to decrease the COM
mercial prosperity of your home
town and surrounding country, your
own home in turn will be bound to
suffer depreciation. Any policy which
has tendency to injure your neigh
Dor will in time react, and you will
have to bear your share of the dam
age.
If Everybody Sent Away
What would be the result If every
body in your town and community
we're to send away from home and
purchase all their supplies? You
know it's poor rule that wont prove
and if it is a good thing for one to
do, it must certainly be equally prfit-
able for all. Suppose you all did,
what would follow? All the fine
large stores in your town would close
and you would witness daily de-
crease in population and an enormous
shrinkage in real estate values. And
then you'd have a few nice little
problems to solve.
Where would you get another job?
Whose teeth would you fill? Whose
child would you teach? Whose fam
lily would you doctor?
ANp-who would give you credit
when crops were poor and money
tight? You answer. can't.
Keep the good stores in your town
h,,ex MoHn than haitian NV hnOcfinO
for them and pushing for home trade
all you can, and be proud of your
town instead of ashamed of 1t. Any
thing you can possibly do to increase
the volume of business done in your
community is bound to react to your
own individual benefit, because in
creased business volume means in
creased property values (which in
turn means larger tax returns, and
the consequent benefits which follow
In every progressive community.
Peculiar Prejudice
Some people are of the prejudiced
opinion that If they spend their
money at home it simply goes to
make one of the local merchants a
little richer, anG would have obso-
lutely no other results. They think
that all movements to encourage a
spirit of loyalty to home institutions
are based on the purely selfish in
terests of the merchants promoting
the campaign, who want to gather all
the money in sight for their own
individual benefit.
They are unable to see that better
business conditions in their town
would in reality work just the other
way. Once the word went abroad
that theirs was a live home trade |
town, progressive and up-to-date
merchants from all over the country |
would soon seek locations there to
share in the prosperity created by a
loyal devotion to the spirit of home
patronage; thus creating new COM !
petition which could only tend to
lower rather than increase the profits
of the merchants who started the ball |
rolling.
A Square Deal
Notwithstanding insinuations to
the contrary from certain quarters,
the merchants OF the small towns and
cities throughout the country are not
robbers. They are just plain, every
day American citizens, who, like the
rest Of ne, want to make an honest
competency and give and take
square deal from everybody.
During the course of my work IN
preparing this series of articles-of
which this is the last have inter-
viewed upward of thousand mer-
chants on the question of mail order
competition. ] confined my inquiries
to men who were merchants in every
sense of the word. Men whose bust
ness methods are based on efficiency