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SA reader of this article, begin with the presumption that you are the manufacturer of a most desirable and valuable spraying material used as an insecticide. You have the proprietary rights and secrets, making the spray your own. One demonstration of this spray in midsummer is sufficient to demonstrate that certain specializing farmers cannot afford to be without it. You are spending good and big money to advertise the stuff in the agricultural papers. As a most important conclusion to the premise, this spraying material is highly volatile and would waste enormously in anything but an air-tight container.

Now! Under these conditions would you purposely design a container for this fluid which from the first opening of the can for the first pouring of the liquid into the sprayer, spills an impossible percentage of the chemicals upon the ground?

The fact that the price of this composition is printed plainly upon the package is proof that the manufacturer has insured his own and the retailer's sufficiency of profit. One whiff of the predominating odor of the insecticide, too, will indicate to the intelligent farmer that the first cost of the preparation is comparatively cheap. HE has paid a big price for it, however, only to discover that in making a first use of the stuff he not only must stand startling waste of it, but he must get away from his house to out-of-doors in order that this wasted substance may not be intolerable to him.

Again, would you call these impositions upon the purchaser "Good business methods?"

The fact is that they are about the worst business methods possible! Every thinking farmer who fills his sprayer from this wasteful container damns the manufacturer of the stuff! Can this mean good business by any

interpretation? Were the Standard Oil Company-damned by so many millions of people that it doesn't seem to care a copper-the manufacturer of this insecticide, it is a certainty that its container would be fashioned to give to the purchaser the last drop of the liquid he had paid for. Which-if you will-may be used as demonstrating in manner of detail a something prompting that familiar utterance of "Good and bad trusts."

True, one may say that the manufacturer of this proprietary fluid DOESN'T KNOW of the wastefulness of these containers. But if the manufacturer doesn't know, the bad business of it merely is emphasized for still harsher criticism.

Why doesn't he know and save himself the execrations of his consumers, making each of them a friendly first aid to his campaign of advertising? As it is, if I were called upon to suggest his stuff to a good friend needing it and ignorant of it, I'd probably say to this friend:

"Get a can of Razzle Dazzle's spray at once. Blank the blankety old rascal's memory, though; I'd rather bust his business wide open than help to build it up!"

No one needs to be reminded that we are in an era of Package Goods. There are lines of manufacture in which a customer willingly may stand for a light weight or an inferior quality of content if only the package retainer be artistically attractive.

The average farmer, considering the purchases made for farm purposes, however, probably is appealed to less than any other class by the container for his purchase.

Wherefore the farmer, of all men, IS expecting to find the contents of his package purchases all there and ready for immediate use.

But he doesn't find it so-not by gosh, Jupiter, by a million miles. No, he isn't finding

things that way and the sooner the manufacturer discovers this important shortcoming in his business methods, the sooner his advertising in the agricultural press will show signs of picking up briskly.

For years the American manufacturer seeking foreign trade has been lambasted by his government's consular service in all parts of the world.

"Why don't you pack goods to suit the foreign peoples?" has been the insistent question of the American consul. "Other nations are doing it; wake up!"

But when the American manufacturer isn't packing to suit his trade within his own continental limits, what does the earnest foreign consul expect save the figurative snore in answer?

Before we leave the subject of the common sprays, necessary to almost every farmer in the United States, something more may be said pointedly about containers.

Great industries have developed in late years confined wholly to the manufacture of spraying materials. It seems that more and more as the years go on these insecticides and fungicides become the more indispensable. Some of these materials are in powder form, some of them of the consistency of putty, more of them in mixed solutions and yet not a few of them of pasty consistency settling to the bottom of their cans.

At least one of the big concerns manufacturing these spray materials has adopted a style of five-gallon can well designed to suit the farmer as far as liquid emulsions are concerned. The can itself is bound with a protecting belt of thin, tough wood while the conical top with its metal screw cap preserves any volatile matter within. In this shape the emulsions may be poured without any necessity for waste.

But there is the universal Bordeaux mixture. Bordeaux mixture settles to a paste at the bottom of the can and is impossible of pouring. Yet these manufacturers are using the same can for Bordeaux as for the common kerosene emulsion!

And the situation presented the farmer? He takes off the screw cap of inch diameter and must devise something of less diameter with which to probe this five-gallon can to the bottom in search of this pasty blue substance. And he may be in a hurry to get it, too, yet lucky if he can dig up an average tablespoonful at a time!

Would you call that good business on the part of the manufacturer? Arsenate of lead for solution as a spray is only a little thicker than is the bottom of the Bordeaux paste, yet this firm packs its arsenate of lead in a wooden kit after the manner of commercial white lead.

As to packing for the farmer in general, perhaps no one manufacturer confesses to such imperfect packing as does the manufacturer of edged tools. His confession is unmistakable, too, for the reason that before almost any edged tool can be used at all, the farmer-buyer must hike with it to the grindstone. He must complete the work of the manufacturer for the reason that the manufacturer says, in the language of his packingcase, "I can't finish it and get it to you sharp, for service."

What would have been the history of the safety-razor, for example, if the manufacturer of that safety-blade had announced in his advertising: "Have this blade carefully ground and honed before using." How long would manufacturer and publisher alike have profited from the vast business if this before-using prelude had appeared in copy?

Only that it is so universal in practice, however, the farmer in buying the edged tools for the farm would not stand for them in their wholly unfinished state. Naturally the manufacturer reasons that a thickened "edge" that is highly burnished for pleasing effect upon the eye, safeguards his product from nicks and bluntings that may come from handling the imperfectly packed blade; that the farmer willingly does the rest.

But he is mistaken. As a class the farmer is likely to buy just when he needs his purchase most. To discover that an ax, hatchet, pruning-knife, sickle or scythe-blade is almost worthless until he has held it to the tedious grindstone from fifteen minutes to an hour, becomes an imposition which the manufacturer probably doesn't understand. That these typical blades so often have been mistaken as having a finished edge and because of the consequent belief that they are hopelessly no good, also may have cost the manufacturer far more dearly than he has dreamed.

Does the manufacturer of the old-fashioned scythe-blade understand that because of his protecting rounded edge, this first grinding of the blade may be the hardest? In good working shape, the real edge of a scythe should take the hollow-ground effect of the grindstone.

in comparison, would be two or three slight nicks in a real edge, plus two or three inches of slight bluntness-even supposing that these could not be prevented by proper packing at the factory?

As to edged tools in general, however, others than the farmer have appreciated the manufacturer's shortcomings in packing for his market. If you are a married man, whose friends threw rice down your back at the railroad station and whanged you over the head with old shoes in the get-away, long ago, can't you recall your first at-home dinner to a bunch of these when, shakily, you sat down and picked up for the first time the handsome stag-horn carver present?

Your thought never for a moment was that the knife wouldn't cut! Your nervousness first was over the fact that you didn't know any more about carving in detail than you knew of sculpture. But when in the tenderest, juciest of rib roasts you found that this handsome carving-knife of scimiter shape and of Damascus steel, would rather push an eightpound roast off the fork and into the middle of the beautifully hand-embroidered centerpiece-present also from one of the waiting guests say, didn't you want to cut the manufacturer's throat instead?

If you remember, as I do, that is just what happened and just how murderously you felt! At the present time there is a greater business than ever before in the "From manufacturer to consumer" idea. It is a fact that of all the potential customers of such houses, THE FARMER is the man most important to reach successfully. He is further away from the great retail markets of the great cities. Thus he is not reached through the great plate glass windows of the shop-front. He must be reached through advertising in the agricultural papers. You as an advertiser-do you know whether you are reaching him satisfactorily or not?

Have you considered what true satisfaction may mean to this distant customer? Are you depending upon a second or fifteenth order from him as the sole evidence of this degree of satisfaction? If you are, you may be grossly

deceived both in yourself and in your methods. It is insufficient that you "guarantee satisfaction or money refunded." That your average customer and his household doesn't often visit the great, showy retail centers of the country where visual comparisons may be made, isn't a safeguard for you. They DO GO, and they SEE MORE in going than ever the jaded manufacturer is likely to see in a year. They KNOW a lot of things!

But as your mail-order customer, back home, and receiving your shipment of "Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded" goods, there are a number of conditions which may modify the quality of this "satisfaction" without ever your receiving the call for "money refunded."

Your goods are a little better and a little cheaper than can be bought at the slow-going country store. They are delivered at the door perhaps by the convenient parcel post. Examination may prove that, especially through improper packing, the stuff so easily and simply could have been so much better! Annoyance at least attends any such discovery, but if even anger is excited for the moment, the conditions of returning the purchase and getting back the purchase money most often cools the temper.

To begin with, the stuff must be re-packed. The firm must be notified by mail. Carriage charges must be advanced, temporarily, at least. After which comes the fact that it may be five or ten miles to the point of return shipment-it may be the busy season-it may be hot, cold, wet or other deterring features and facts obtain.

But above all this, often, there is pressing necessity for the purchase and that farmer-buyer already has waited days or weeks for the shipment to arrive!

HE NEVER HAS WANTED HIS "MONEY BACK," IF HE COULD HELP IT! HE HAS WANTED THE GOODS!

Do you realize it? And realizing it, are you willing to depend upon the inspections of your shipments by your own inspectors in your own shipping-room, thereafter defining a "satisfied customer" as one who never has sent an order back for return of his cash?

If you wanted to know just what-and allthat a "satisfied customer" really means, wouldn't you rather have your inspector sometimes at the other end of the deal and have him help the real customer unpack the goods?