The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1915-09-03
BY David Powell

of the country in which the exclusive
mail-order houses of the eastern cite.
have enjoyed greater patronage thar
in the four or five states Immediately
tributary to the city of Chicago. Ii
fact for many years the habit of mail
order buying was so firmly establish.
ed throughout that. region that the
trade of hundreds of dealers in the
smaller cities dwindled to practically
nothing and scores of once prosperous
towns became wrapped in a death-like
stupor of commercial coma.
With that knowledge in mind il
seems almost like an act of retribu-
tive justice that in the same district
should also occur the first decisive
defeat of such concerns in the keen
struggle for commercial supremacy
that has been SO marked during the
past decade. Yet that such is the
case is proven by the many successful
Buy-atHome campaigns that have
been conducted there during the past
few years.
Birth of the Mall Order House
Reports of such successes having
reached me from many sources, and
believing the subject to be one of gen
eral interest to the consuming public,
| resolved on a trip through the af-
fected country to learn as to actual
conditions, both past and present, and
to find out by first hand evidence
what particular kind of medicine and
what sized doses had been used in
effecting cure" After getting on
the ground and sizing up the job I
had undertaken it became clearly evil
dent that the first thing most essen
tial for me to determine was the pri-
mary cause leading up to the rapid
development of the business and to
find out why the practice of mail-or-
der buying should have been so uni
versally adopted by the people in such
short time. / reasoned there must
have been some vital factor account
able for it. And there was. 1t was
not due, as many suppose and the
mail-order houses would have us be-
lieve, to the fact that they can buy
and sell cheaper than other mer-
chants, but to certain conditions that
existed in the retail trade at the time
of which / write which were the d.
rect result of the slip-shod and easy
going methods in vogue prior to the
commercial revolution that followed
the introduction of cheaper and
quicker methods of communication
and transportation some twenty or
twenty-five years ago.
-.-..... "Storekeeper" Responsible ........
Those methods had been peculiarly
favorable to the growth of a large
class of merchants-more fittingly
described as "storekeepers" -who
were not business men in any sense
of the word and who followed along
in the same old rut year in and year
out, religiously adhering to the good
old system of taking all the traffic
will bear" AS the new order was
ushered in and the people became
more and more awakened as to what
they were entitled to in the way of
quality and service, they still refused
to admit there was any cause or rea-
son why they should abandon the me-
thods they and their commercial an
cestors had followed SO long, and
persisted in their accustomed habits
of pernicious merchandising. That
kind of treatment at the hands of
"storekeepers" quite naturally devel-
Oped spirit of bitter resentment in
the minds of the people and created
the condition of which / spoke as ex-
listing when the mail-order houses in
troduced their novel and fascinating
system of buying by catalogue.
Mail-Order Buying Becomes Fad
Conditions were ripe for the inno-
walton and the people flocked by the
thousands to the banner Of this new
defender of their purse strings whose
every promise glittered with the lure
Of golden relief. Mail-order buying
became the fad" of the day followed
by rich and poor alike with never a
thought of the desolate trail of COM
munity disaster 1t was destined to
leave in its wake. 1t spread like a |
like plague. As staring |
skulls and bleaching bones mark the
course of the dreaded plague no do