The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1922-03-10
PAy-uP WEEK.

/ beginning Tie AS
sociate Retail Credit Men of Birming
| ham, launched movement to popu
! larize promptness in the payment OF
debts. In advance of the campaign, a
circular was sent through the mails,
the foreword OF which indicated the
fundamental reasons for the CAM
paign:
IF all the money due the merchants
of Birmingham was paid this week
business would be increased to such
an extent that hundreds of men would
be put to work at once. Those men
would have needs to supply which
would give still more men employment,
the benefit accruing to our district
would be incalcuable. Pay Up Week
begins Monday, the 9Th. 1t is nation
wide movement, designed TO quicken
prosperity and to restore business nor
malcy."
In commenting on the campaign, the
Birmingham News said:
1.-THE campaign will have no militant
features. No drastic methods of debt
collections are planned. 1t is purely
and simply a part of the educational
program announced by the national or
ganization of credit men.
"All that is asked by the credit men
of their clients is a measurable degree
OF cooperation. That. the News takes
it, will be the keynote of the cam
palgn; to popularize the working idea
of cooperative partnership-because
from cooperative partnership and CO.
hesive team work between the man
who sells his goods on faith and the
buyer who obligates TO pay on or be-
fore certain date, springs the very
answer to the question, What consti-
tutes prosperity"
Merchants who sell goods either to
those who have no cash to pay at the
time OF purchase or others who pre-
fer to pay by the month must have
their definite income regularly to meet
expenses. Rents, clerk hire, insurance
on stocks; these items cannot wait
Regularly as the month, or the week,
rolls around. these must be this un-
ceasing outgo.
Glance over your bankruptcy lists.
Most of them are merchants-lner-
chants whose kindness Of heart led
them into placing too much faith in
the honesty of their clients. And not
SO much the dishonesty of poor eli
ents. but rather the long delay in
payment by clients who might have
paid--cllents whose cooperation reg
ularly might have saved them from
financial disaster.
Every once in while you hear
tales of merchants turning over to
sbyster lawyers the accounts of poor
70
tfves stripping the homes of poor folks
of purchases for which they failed to
pay.
There are more great-hearted mer-
chants In the credit business than
there are of the grasping, undesirable
sort. There are precious few mer-
chants in Birmingham that refuse to
lend ear to the tales of distress when
told by those honest patrons who find
themselves in hard lines. Merchants
can plumb the depths of clients minds.
They know the true from the false.
They have been educated IN the school
of Human Nature. When they discover
the will to pay, even amongst the low
Hest and the humblest OF their risks,
they make extensions.
Actually, 1t is not these to whom
the campaign Of education Is directed.
1t is to those careless patrons who,
living in affluence, let the months pass
without meeting their obligations II Isl
to the men and women who think of
their creditors and their real servants
last they would bring this new word
about cooperation.
ut is word by which the whole
fabric of human society may prosper.
To live and let live. To pay to the man
who has advanced you. To practice
absolute reciprocity whenever it is hui
manly possible to do So"