The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1933-09-14

the fellow who brags about his
tough beard.
We are so accustomed to articles
in stores priced at SO cents, $1.49 and
other odd-penny amounts that few
persons give any thought to what
once was considered freakish idea
of price-making.
But G.. H. Cilley, well-known
store advertising manager, tells in a
recent article that the custom arose
from the solution of very practical
problem by shrewd merchant.
When Captain Roland H. Macy got
tired of sailing the briny deep as a
sea captain and started store in
New York, there were no cash re-
gisters or other means for checking
up his clerks. Money received for
purchases was put in an old-fashion-
ed cash drawer which made no rec
ords, and the practice of knocking
down." a euphemism for plain steal
ing by clerks, was quite prevalent.
Macy changed all prices to odd
cent amounts, established cashiers to
make the required change, and kept
a close watch on the cashiers. His
advertisements of these odd prices
seemed to strike the public eye fav-
orably, and he got great response.
What was at first only an expedient
to keep from being robbed developed
into potent psychological appeal to
his customers.
Thus the odd-price has survived
many years after the original reason
for it's adoption ceased to exist.
80
Some figures that may assist Min
nesota farmers in deciding whether
or not to sell their pigs under the
governments emergency premium
buying plan, have been offered by DR..
A. G. Black, corn-hog production
chief of the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration, Washington. DR..
Black was formerly an economist on
the staff at University Farm, St.
Paul.
DR.. Black says pigs that average
between &c and 70 pounds would
qualify for a price of seven and
half cents a pound, delivered to the
slaughter house (Chicago). This
means $5.25 pig. He says that if
the pigs were fed until they averaged
225 pounds, and if they were sold for
6 cents pound, the fattened pigs
would return gross Of $3.50.
Fourteen bushels of corn would be
needed to- put the extra 1856 pounds
on each 7O-pound pig. Figuring corn
at so cents a bushel, the feed would
cost 81. This would leave $3.50, or
only $1.25 more than would have
been received for the 7O-pound pig.
But out of the dollar and a quarter
has to be subtracted additional labor
costs and the extra disease and mark
ct risks. If hogs should not sell for
Sc next winter, or if corn should go
higher than SO cents a bushel, the
farmer might lose even this slight
advantage of the finished hog over
the pig.
The quality and character of COM
munities varies with the type of cit
ize nry who make them up. Some
towns are without much semblance of
ordinary decency, the buildings and
homes within them for the most part
being shoddy and rundown, while the
men and women who are seen sitting
or walking about, (mostly just sit
ting), are about as agile and speedy
in their perambulations as a glacier
moving over mountain.
There are many such towns in the
all of them with rapid
ly decreasing populations. They have
"gone to seed," and decades will pass
before many of them reap a better
crop.
Then there are other communities
who reveal to the world varying de-
grees of progress and Improvement,
whose populaces are correspondingly
more animated, whose buildings and
homes tell the cock-eyed world that:
"Here, folks, is a place where life
may be lived to its fullest. Come
and live with US, enjoy yourselves,
rear your families, and otherwise be
of good cheer and enduring peace"
After all, it is the SPIRIT and the
COOPERATION Of group of human
beings who constitute what we call
that determines the
quality and the character of them.
What people THINK, what they
x1DAnNy II