The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-07-22
VISITING BUYER
 HAS NO INTEREST
 IN DRY NEW YORK
Happy Days Country Folk Once Had There Appear
 Things of Past.

Prohibition in New York either closing or desolating the places where the lights used to shine the brightest threatens to change the whole system of New York's great marekt.
 The visiting buyer threatens no longer to come here, but to demand that the New York salesman come to him.
 The dreary dullness of the cabarets and big restaurants during the last week is regarded as proof positive that the eXpedient of their proprie- tors in raising the price of everything else to make up for the DO per cent. cut in profits charged to the demise of liquor will not work with the pub lie. The emptiness of the many tables is not due to any midsummer dull ness. New York at the moment is entertaining pretending to en- tertain-a daily average of at least a hundred thousand visiting buyers. These persons, men and women, for merly used the occasion of their an nual or semi-annual trip to New York as their one opportunity for a fling. Free from the restrictions of sewing circle gossip in the dry home town, they dressed in their best and did a splurge here, frequently as the guests of the big wholesalers from whom they buy.
 This season these wholesalers have by no means diminished their ap- propriations for entertainment. But as one man who sells hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of winter goods during this summer buying season said yesterday:
 "An old friend of mine from Springfield, H., told me last night that she could have a better time at a cider party back home than at the cabaret l took her to. And my check for the evening was more than the fifty dollars I spent in taking her to dinner the year before. I guess I agree about the cider party too. You can't shake the shimmy on tea-and somehow or other it doesn't seem half so funny to watch 1t with noth- ing but French pastry to attune the nerves on. As for jazz music-weu. you've got to put something between the ears sturdier than a couple of Eustachian cubes to get any pleasure out of that"
 The visiting buyers are still to be observed in diminishing numbers at the gay places, but they are not even dressing up for the party the way they used to and one look at them shows that they are having no such delirious time as prompts them to forget to ask for discounts The sellers were perfectly willing to take chance and spend their money to see whether napkins and food and soft drinks and jazz and atmosphere would have the desired effect Most of them confess themselves beaten after a couple of trials.
 So the wise ones are already con templating taking their whole lines on tour. New York, they say, will still remain the centre for the crea- ton and exchange of ideas and for manufacture of certain lines But they predict that selling will have to be intensively carried to the prov inces. Some of the bigger buyers, of course, will come here strictly on the business of getting a birdseye view of the market. The others, who are wont to combine the birdseye with Q rose tint and a bleary eye, will prob ably stay some.
 The same conditions are reported from a half dozen other great market centre cities of the East in despatches received yesterday. Both there and tn New York the places which ca tered to entertainment as well as to eating are rapidly closing down.