The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1917-06-28
GTgF17N1lHE MOST influential pub

II
HSNkgN financial and banking in
t&-NB terests of New England
is the Boston News. In a recent
editorial entitled Cash" this con-
servative journal puts in some
mighty good licks for premiums as
a form of profit-snaring and cash
discount. 1t clearly refutes the
fallacious argument that premium
giving lures to over-buying and
shows how it operates to Offset the
charge account and the installment
purchase, the two things which
really do tempt to over-buying.
How premiums also promote the
habit of paying cash is also force
fully brought out. The argument
is so sound and the points made
are so we'll taken that to give them
prominence the salient paragraphs
of the editorial are quoted here
with:
''The cash discount is the logical
method of combating producer
of overhead, a consumer of profits,
devourer of incomes and a temp
tation to the weak-the charge ac-
count and it's twin, the installment
purchase. The trading stamp, the
credit coupon, the gift slip, are the
poor mans 8 cash discount. Custom
has habituated him to their re-
ceipt and caution has prompted
him TO seek them, that he may not
be led into the mOrass of INSTALL
ment credit buying. 1t is safe to
say he does not want them abol-
ished.
''The main theoretical objection
to the coupon device is that it may
tempt to over buying in some par
ticular direction-which really
means ill-distributed buying. This
propensity, however. cannot be
classed as common; and, further,
it is pretty closely hedged by the
nature of consuming needs or de-
sires and by the contents of the
purse. What really happens in
the vast majority of cases is di-
version of purchasing inclination
from credit to strictly cash chan.
nels. And 80 far as the habit of
spot-cash payment is inculcated
and guarded, genuine service and
protection may be afforded the av-
erage family budget.
As an opponent of extrava-
eance, an enemy of over-extended
credit and a legitimate discount for
cash, the coupon rebate plausibly
pleads that it has far too much in
herent usefulness to render wise
its abolition by state enactments-
to which supreme court rulings
have made it wholly subject. Regu-
lation may be needed, in practice:
destruction, however, especially if
it be simply the child of trade
jealousy and prejudice, is decidedly
questionable in principle.
The friends of premium adver-
tising advocate its proper regula-
tion; it's enemies advocate it's de-
truction. So the matter stands to-
day. The opposition rests on lack
of information, or misinformation,
in so far as it does not rest on
trade jealousy and prejudice.
Students of economic science
have long sought an agency which
will operate to smooth out our
prosperity curve. In the past
American business has been some
+. what hectic; in the prosperity
curve, sharp peaks have been fol-
lowed by squally sharp depressions
Hills and valleys have followed
each other in comparatively quick
succession. Of late much thought
has been given to foreign trade as
a means of offsetting periods of in.
dustrial depression; foreign trade
has been hailed as the great indus.
trial stabilizer. That there il
much truth in this cannot be