The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1946-03-01
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w GEORGE S. BENSON
ii ~ PresideAf--Hardine college
Ssarry. Arkansas
King Customer

Catering to the customer has been
Americas most profitable and high
ly diversified craft for several gen
erations, and it must never stop if
this country is to stay great and free.
Catering to the customer is an hon
orable and interesting activity, and
there is nothing to stop it but man.
made laws. May they neOer be
enacted! Certainly 1916 is no time
to experiment with silly ideas.
Take the automotive industry for
an example. 1t is probably the best
example. Automobile men have
gone to great lengths to please the
American buyer. His wish for
speed has been served, seasoned
with safety. His need as to seating
capacity, his taste in design, his
whim in color, and (most importantly
his buying power, have been taken
into account. Result: A car for a
king.
Primitive Notions
Perhaps the first time car manu-
facturer decided suddenly to rip the
insides out of his plant and put
in new machinery to give King
Cur+omer a better dollars worth,
the stockholders WINGED. Maybe, in
| that long-gone day, stockholders con-
sidered such expenses wasteful, but
they learned better. Catering to the
customer is exactly what makes
dividends grow bigger each year.
We may imagine also that, back
in the early days of the horseless
carriage, some factory workers wor-
ried about their jobs for while aft
err lower prices were announced.
Probably some good workmen
asked, "How long can the big boss
keep paying us after he starts CIV
ing his profits to the consumer"
j These doubters are wiser now too,
same as the old-style stockholders.
Initiating Nobody
Yearly better machines, more
ha- deome and less costly, have built
big industries and created thousands
of good jobs. Wage earners and
stockholders prospered together
while shrewd management studied
King Customers needs and met
them. When the Japs struck at
Pearl ,Harbor the United States had
one automobile for every four people
one for each 1879 people in the rest
of the world.
American manufacturers know
the route that leads to national pros
perity. Just the same, they are be-
ing urged to turn aside and try a
course completely strange to west
ern industry. It's an old jungle road
that has lost many great races in
poverty. It means business servile
to power. It means opening private
records to be thumbed at will by
partisan fact-fnding committees.
Looking for What?
Such a committee will be con-
cerned with wages only with
wages. It will have small interest
in prices of cars to the user; less in
returns to investors. It's job will be
to say what wages an employer is
able to pay. Rightly, wages are de-
termined by a workman's ability to
produce. The new concept seems to
be that an employers savings have
a bearing on wage levels.
Such a scheme would ear-mark
for wages all but paltry share of
a firms earnings and investors
would turn away. Down would come
cash reserves, plant equipment and
outrut. Quality would suffer, prices
would advance and sales drop off.
Paying men, not by what they pro-
duce but according to the employ
er's ability to pay, is the surest (if
not the fastest) way to hopeiessly
low wages and dogs life for us all.