AIL order business, in its final analysis, is not greatly different from that conducted in any other manner. The chief difference consists in the enterprise and energy, the intelligence and persistency which are put into the one as compared with the other. All methods of conducting business have one common factor, and that is inducement to buy. The time is past when the simple statement that one has a full assortment of staple goods will attract any but those bound by mortgage or ties of blood. So also the mail-order advertiser must offer some inducement for people to patronize him beside the fact that his goods are equal to some others and no higher in price.

As the American people constitute the great army of mail-order buyers, and as our god is the almighty dollar, the question naturally confronts us as to what extent price forms an inducement, and how far it is a controlling element. In fact, we may ask the direct question, is price the controlling or only inducement, as is claimed by the trade journals and expounded by more or less learned speakers at the trade ventions?

con

When the spirit of active competition first gave rise to the necessity for advertising among local dealers, there was lacking the modern energy of genius in publicity, and a bright idea was at once appropriated by all and used without thanks or credit.

We find early in the game some enterprising dealer had the rocks and fences for several miles

around his town emblazoned with the legend, "Smith sells cheapest." I well remember my early effort in advertising was to pick out some prominent point in the landscape, not already appropriated, where I could paint a sign or nail a board containing just that legend. It was always left to the reader to ascertain whether the sign meant that Blank's goods were of inferior quality or his prices lower than those of his competitors. Not infrequently it happened that both ends met on the same proposition. Either one naturally means the other, or did in those days. This claim, by universal adoption and constant use, came to have no meaning nor force, for a tenmile drive would disclose the sign of nearly every merchant in town and the same statement that he sold "cheapest."

But it is well to speak no ill of the dead and we will give those forbears of modern publicity credit for an honest effort to convince the public that they could sell good wares lower than could their competitors, thus offering an inducement to purchase of them. When the mail-order business began to assume a dignity compatible with legitimate merchandising, its promoters naturally sought to approximate those conditions under which the dealer handled his customers. Thus we find that many of the early mail-order advertisers placed great stress upon the fact that they sold goods cheaper than the local merchant. Some have never relinquished this claim and still appeal directly to the pocket book. But I venture the assertion