Evening star., 1939-05-23


ttondl Forum at the MayfolUer
Hotel last night tollo,0s.
Mr.. Chairman, Fellow Retailers:
I am happy to speak at this
first Forum of the American
Retail Federation. l feel a kim
ship between your business anu
mine. The backbone of the GUS
toners we are both trying t.
satisfy is the Same-in your case
the many small customers whose
steady demand for the neceSsi-
ties and a few luXurieS of life
make up your volume and in my
case millions of average Ameri-
can families whose standard of
living is the practical measure of
the success of our democracy.
You have one advantage over
me, however. Unlike Louis Ker-
stein chairman of the Board of
Trustees of the American Retail
Federation. vice president of Will
liam Filene Sons Co. depart
ment store, Boston, who pre-
sided, I have no bargain base
ment.
1 hope you are all cash Gus
toners. After searching the room
I find with one exception you are
all retailers, except Henry Nor
genthau (Secretary of the Treas
ury) and he's a wholesaler.
For you who are in the hon.
orable business of storekeeping,
the flow of consumer purchasing
power determines the difference
between red and black on your
account books, and for the Ma
ton the difference between un-
employment and prosperity.
That is why I want to devote
this opportunity to a discussion
of Government fiscal policy in
relation to consumer purchasing
power.
Some highbrow columnists and
some high-geared economists
say that you and I think too
much about consumers purchas-
ing power and look at our eco
nomic problems from the wrong
end. They say that we should
glue all of our attention on the
heavy industries, and should do
everything and anything just to
get these industries to work and
to get private investors to pur
up the money to build new build
tngs and new machines without
regard to the average consumers
need or his ability to use these
buildings or machines.
Experts of 1929 Called
Unrealistic and Theoretical.
BY and large, you will find that
these experts are the same as
those who in 1929 told us that
conditions were sound and that
we had found the way to end
poverty when we were building
luxurious Office buildings, hotels
and apartment houses and four
tracking the railroads, and doing
all this work for consumers who
did not need it and had not the
purchasing power to pay for.
Today in 1899 they tell you that
conditions are not sound because
we are trying to build the sort of
houses and structures and other
things which our people really
need. and because we are trying
to make sure that our people
have the purchasing power to pay
for these things when they're
built.
They were unrealiStic and the
oretical. They were that when
they were prophesying their new
era in 1929-they are just as un-
realistic and theoretical and
wrong-when they are prophesy-
ing national bankruptcy in 1899.
To translate this into terms of
the retail trade, the shelves of
heavy industries and shelves Of
consumers stores in 1929 were
seriously overstacked. You know
what happens to storekeepers If
they buy twice as much as the
public can buy from them.
In the last analysis, therefore.
consumer buying power is the
milk in the coconut of all busi-
ness. big and little.
Whether you are big de-
partment store or do business in
a small way on the main street
of a small town, your sales are
dependent on how much money
the average family in your COM
munity earns. That is homely
way of putting it, but it Is an
eternal truth.
More Customers
With More Money.
That is one reason, my friends,
why I have talked so much about
the one-third of our population
that is ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-fed.
That third-4O,O 100000 Americans
can buy very little at the stores.
Therefore, I don't have to tell
you that their local stores can
order very little at the factories.
Some of my friends laugh at me
when I stress this, laugh at ef-
forts to establish minimum
wages and get more purchasing
power to the lowest groups. But
the little and the big storekeeper
understand and know they will
sell more goods if their GUS
toners have more money.
want, and I think I have your
help, to build up the purchasing
power of the average of your
customers and mine.
How shall we produce more
customers with more money?
One school of thought is what
/ call the school of the gamblers.
You find some of them in every
communicates we'll as in Wall
Street-and some of them, the
political variety, even In the halls
of the Conrgess itself.
That school is eager to gamble
the safety of the Nation and of
our system of private enterprise
on nothing more than their per-
sonal hunch that if Government
will just keep its hands off the
economic system customers will
inst hannen uSe the word