manufacture, and he was in a position to take up with a clear understanding those details, which would have appeared as so much Greek to him at the start.

It is easy to note the facility with which the salesman carries the mind of the customer from the state of attention through the states of interest and desire, and up to the point of resolve, and then grasping a realization of the

T

HIS is the tale of a store that kept its promise. It was told by the man to whom the promise was made.

This gentleman happened to be in Los Angeles, when he discovered that somewhere and somehow he had lost the pair of pajamas with which he associated. He thereupon dropped in a men's furnishing store in the city and endeavored to find another pair to suit him. What he wanted were pajamas of a certain color-but they didn't have them.

"However," said the manager, "we will find a pair for you somewhere in town and will deliver them at your hotel by seven o'clock this evening."

The traveler returned to his hotel at six. had supper, and went to his room to get ready for departure. No pajamas had arrived-and he took it for granted tnat they wouldn't show up at all.

But just before seven o'clock there was a rap at the door, and there stood the manager of that store himself, and under his arm was a package that contained a pair of pajamas of the exact hue wanted.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long," apologized the manager, "but it took us all the afternoon to pick up a suit such as you wanted. This one didn't come in till six, and as there was nobody about to make the delivery, I brought it down myself."

It sounds like rather an ordinary story, doesn't it? But it was extraordinary enough to make a big impression on the mind of the man to whom the promise was made-so that he repeated it to me as a particular example of how a store's promises should be kept.

Ask yourselves, you who buy goods "to be sent up," how many proprietors of the stores you trade with would have themselves delivered that one pair of pajamas to you, so as

to keep the store's promise? How many of them rather would have left it till morning, because there was "nobody to deliver it"?

Store service is more than the making of the sale, the waiting on a customer, the showing of goods. It is also the delivery of those goods by the time when they are promised. It would do the management of some stores a world of good could they but listen to the remarks made by good customers when the day has come to a close, and the article expected and promised has not arrived. It may be only a fifty-cent tie to go with that dresssuit, but how many future dollars' worth of business its absence may destroy, as your cus tomer goes about trying to beg, borrow or steal a tie that he can wear to that particular function? It may be only a dozen carnations-but what distress the housewife goes through because she could not have them in the center of the table, set for a party of six. Is her next order, amounting to many dollars, just as sure to go to the one who disappointed her?

I know of stores where the clerks will glibly promise any delivery you ask for, but the promise is never kept. They seem to feel that failure to promise anything, no matter how unreasonable, might hurt a sale-but they are quite oblivious to the fact that the promise unkept may lose a dozen sales, where the plain truth, that delivery cannot be made before such or such a time, won't hurt one sale in fifty.

The buying public are not acquainted with delivery systems. When I ask for delivery of a pair of shoes today, I do not necessarily know that delivery is only made every other day out where I live. I might be willing to have the shoes delivered the next day, or if I wanted them for use that same evening, I would probably be willing to take them along with me. But if the clerk says, "Yes, sir, we

will deliver them today," and they aren't delivered, who's to blame me for being put out about it?

The store that refuses to make promises that can't be kept, but keeps every promise made, seems somehow to get the confidence of folks, most of whom, after all, aren't inclined to be unreasonable in all matters.

I was talking to the salesman for a certain manufacturing concern the other day and he lamented thus: "If only my house would let me offer quicker deliveries to customers. I'd add 25 per cent to my business."

"How long do they allow?" I asked. "Thirty days."

"Well," I said, "I should imagine that was just about time for them to do the job well without too much hurry. Do they always get the stuff out on time?"

"O, yes," he answered, "they do. But lots of people want a promise of quicker delivery."

"If your house is getting out all orders on time," I suggested, "Don't worry about the earlier shipments they refuse. They're turning a lot more future business your way than any present business you're losing."

And he pondered over the idea and remarked that that was another way of looking at it. It is and it's one way of looking at promises that altogether too many merchants, manufacturers and plain mortals overlook, to the future detriment of their business and their pocketbook. From the Business Builder.

Announcement is made of the retirement of N. C. Wright and H. S. Thalheimer from the management of the Cleveland Leader and News. They will devote their time to their Toledo Blade and other interests. With their retirement, D. R. Hanna, owner of the Leader and News, will assume personal direction of these newspapers, William P. Leach of New York being general manager. The Leader and News are represented by Paul Block, Inc., Chicago offices Steger Building.

C. J. McCarthy is Eastern advertising manager of Boyce's Weeklies of Chicago, and is located in their newly established office in the Metropolitan Building, New York.

The Chicago Daily Live Stock World has the

tion list of any daily farm paper. Readers be

lieve in it. "World" Bldg., Chicago. (Adv.)

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