The Penny that Broke Brown. Here is a plain statement by J. R. Worden, of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, of the way a whole lot of men make failures in business. It is worth while for retail druggists to note the point made: Brown's case is particularly interesting, because he had unusual ability as a storekeeper. He kept the store full all the time-great hand for special sales-had a fine looking store-wrote snappy advertisements. He was doing the business of the town in his line, and had to live pretty well, of course, to keep up with his reputation. Then he failed. The receiver found it was just a matter of bookkeeping. Brown never had been much of a hand at figures; he said "the money was made in the front of the store, not in the office." He had always sold goods for what he thought they would bring, without much relation to the cost, because he didn't really know his cost. The receiver explained it to Brown this way: "Here's a cake that you sell for 25 cents. It cost you, to make it, 22 cents. The cost of selling it, including overhead expense, depreciation, your salary, interest on investment, insurance, etc., is 4 cents. Therefore you lose 1 cent on each cake you sell. That's the penny that broke you. Before the receiver turned the business back to Brown, all clear, he had installed a bookkeeping system that showed Brown where were his true costs-a bookkeeping system that gave him every morning absolute facts about his business. Now Brown knows today how much profit he made yesterday. He knows what goods are selling at a profit-what ones at a loss. He knows just how much he owes and how much is owing him. And he is finding that the cost of getting the extra facts required, is made up for many times in money saved. Ninety-five per cent of all retailers are doing business the way Brown had done. That is why 95 per cent of all retailers fail sometime. ✰✰✰ Theory and Practice. How To Be a Live Wire.* BY FRANK FARRINGTON. At equal distances, in opposite directions from a good-sized city on the Central Railroad, there are two towns which ten years ago were each of about 3,000 population. These two towns were doing business under practically identical conditions. Neither had much in the way of local manufacturing enterprises. Both depended largely on the farming trade of the same class of prosperous farmers. The stores in Ayville resembled the stores in Beeville as the peas in a pod resemble one another. The merchants in one town were the twins of the merchants in the other. The intervening city gave them both the same competition. If you had been offered your choice of the two towns as a gift you would not have turned over your hand in favor of either and you would have declined them both. If you were a traveling man you would have dubbed them both dead ones. A Washington Irving picture of the typical sleepy town would have fitted either community like the peel on an apple. There was a very good volume of business transacted in each town, but the people who transacted it did it in their sleep. But that was ten years ago. And now look at these two towns! The tenyear-old description still fits Ayville perfectly. The grass still grows between the flag-stones in the sidewalk and the State road passes by six miles away. The hotel flag-pole has rotted off at the base, and there are five more broken panes in the store fronts along Main Street, otherwise Ayville needs no change of identification tag. But Beeville: well, what has happened there anyway? I ran out there from the near-by city the other day, and when I got off in front of the new brick station and climbed into the waiting motor bus that serves as a transfer to each of the hotels my first impulse was to go back *Copyright 1. and look at the name on the depot and see if I had made a mistake. As we rolled up Main Street over a good macadam road I asked the traveling man next to me what had started the Beeville bee buzzing. "I don't know where they got the bug," he answered, "but this is sure some live little burg. I've only been coming here a few months, but it's got any town of its size backed right off the map. Why, their hotel here is a better place to spend Sunday than down in the city." The whole thing looked like one of life's little mysteries and I determined to investigate. I dropped into the nearest drug store after dinner and bought a cigar out of a patent humidor case and lighted it with a neat little electric lighter, and received along with my change a cash register check, on which I read, "Beeville, a good town to live in." On the other side of the check I read, "Beeville, a good place to do business. I suspected the truth of both statements by this time. "I know that, and that's why I am so astonished now. You have as modern a drug store as I've seen in the State." "They do tell me this is a pretty good looking little joint," he acknowledged modestly. "Well, you'll find all the stores in town are right up to the minute. Why, there's Johnny Corcoran's grocery right next door. He's got seven computing scales, patent bins for all his stock, floor show-cases, Kawneer store front, multiple draw cash register, cheese cutter; I don't know what all he has got, and he hasn't got much on the rest of us at that. Go down and see the Burns Dry Goods Store if you want to see something that's just a little bit of all right. It isn't as big as the city stores, but it's got it all over most of them for convenience. You couldn't get a farmer around here to go down to the city to trade if you offered him fare both ways and dinner besides." The druggist was called away then and I did not get the secret of the ginger hypodermic injection from him, so I went out and paused in front of Johnny Corcoran's all glass front. Well, I might Well, I might have thought I was looking at the window of the best fancy grocery in New York or Chicago as far as cleanliness and class of window display went. It was a sanitary grocery all right and no mistake. I went in. "Is Mr. Corcoran busy?" I inquired of a clerk whose apron was as spotless as the linen in the dining room back at the hotel. I supposed he would take me for a traveling man and put me off, but whatever he thought me he did not put me me off, and neither did Mr. Corcoran. But Johnny Corcoran was the busiest man I have seen in a long while, and the best I could do was to slip in a word edgewise now and then, and I didn't even get a chance to ask him who put the Bee in Beeville. But when I get curious about a thing I can't stop until my curiosity is satisfied. I meandered along looking into the candy store, which looked lighter and brighter inside than it was out on the street in the sunshine (almost); past a shoe store that had two window displays that looked as if they had climbed right out of the pages of a trade journal; past a lunch room that made me hungry, though it was just after dinner. Everywhere I saw all the conveniences and fixtures, the advertisements of which in the trade journals were every day diet with me. The town was certainly up to the minute in methods and equipment. It was up to the minute in stock, too. I saw in a hardware window display goods with the manufacturer's cutouts and show cards just as I had seen them first announced in a trade paper two weeks before. I went in and asked the man how he came to know about the display and the goods so soon. Sure enough, he had seen the same advertisement I saw and had wired (mind you, wired!) for it at once. "Why," said he, "you've got to use the quickest method if you get anything in this town ahead of your competitors. Every man Jack is Johnny-on-the-spot." "Beeville didn't use to be like this," I said. "What happened?" "Bit by the Ginger-Bug," said he, as a farmer drove up in front and beckoned him to come out. Ginger hypodermics! Ginger-bug! I couldn't wait for the hardware man to roll out the barbed wire the farmer wanted. I must hurry to some other store and find out about this ginger thing. Right next door was Burn's Dry Goods Store. Four beautiful windows in front, with two entrances. A special sale of rugs from samples was going on inside, and the rest of the store was busy, too. I wanted to see what Mr. Burns would say about ginger, but there seemed little likelihood of my getting to him. Across the street was the only place I could see that did not appear to be busy. It was a little one-story building with an office in it, a "Real Estate" sign in the window. A man sat in the doorway quietly smoking. Perhaps he could tell me who had made the Beevillains into live wires. "How's business?" I asked him. "Bullish," said he, "but I can't get anything to sell. "Everybody holding on to property for a rise?" "No; everybody holding on to it because they need it in their business. The town isn't growing so much, but everybody is making money. It used to be that every one wanted to sell and no one wanted to buy. Now, every few days somebody comes along and wants. to buy or rent to get into business here, but there's nothing to be had but vacant lots out of the business section." "Well," said I, "I've got you here where you can't get away. Now I want to know what has hit this town. It used to be as dead as a motor with the 'gas' all gone." "Do you see that sign down the street, 'Excelsior Press'?'' "Yes." paper it publishes. Everybody thought he must be crazy to pay real money for that business in such a dead town. I'm not yet sure he wasn't and isn't a monomaniac. He began to call on the merchants and ask them what was the matter with them. Finally he told them so often there was something the matter they began to believe it. He preached at them in his paper and wherever he saw them, and finally he got them all together, every mother's son of them, and I'll be darned if he isn't the king of spellbinders! He told them they were a hundred years behind the times and they believed it. He told them their stores were filled with junk and they had to admit it. He told them their methods were those of their grandfathers, and they knew he told them the truth. He swore they would all turn into mummies if they didn't get rid of the hook-worm and the sleeping sickness and a few other triffling complaints, and they began to get pale around the gills. Then, when he had them eating out of his hand, he told them only one thing would save them. Every man in that room, he said, must sign a Live Wire Pledge before he would be allowed to go home. Then he unrolled a sheet of paper as big as a barn door and - hung it on the wall, and it read: 'I hereby agree to spend ten dollars within the next six months for trade journals about my business. Failing to do this, I acknowledge that I am dead to the world and might as well quit.' Did they sign it? Not a man in the room flinched! And that's all." "Do you mean to say," I asked, "that the signing of that pledge by the local business men has made Beeville what it now is?" "Perhaps not signing the pledge, but living up to it. At least there we were, a community where you couldn't see the people for the cobwebs, and now, here we are so full of life a third-rail would melt if it touched us." "That must have been quite a while ago. Do these business men keep on buying business literature?" "They formed an organization and incorporated it, and the first rule in the book of the by-laws is that every member has to spend ten dollars a year for trade papers. And they do it, too, and by George, you don't have to walk down the treet but once to see the results in every usiness, from blacksmith to banker." Some Light on Goods Returned for Credit. To illustrate how the wholesale druggist may sustain a considerable loss with an individual customer and quite a large loss in the aggregate of all customers in a year's business, Secretary Toms of the National Wholesale Druggists Association, in his weekly letter to the members, quotes a letter from Smith, Kline & French to a customer explaining their request for date of purchase on goods returned for credit. We are not familiar with the business methods between wholesale druggists and their customers, but we can easily see that if all questions of disagreement between buyer and seller were as explicitly set forth as in the letter here quoted there would be small room for misunderstanding and hard feeling. DEAR SIR: We find that our request for the dates of purchase on goods returned is a source of constant irritation to Our customers. For this reason we have decided to write you personally, explaining why it is necessary for us to know the dates of purchase of articles returned to us. In order to illustrate our point we mention a list of goods returned to us by a retailer who confines the bulk of his jobbing purchases to us. This retailer is one of the most honorable men in the drug trade, and on no consideration can we possibly conceive of any attempt on his part to take advantage of us. The list of goods was as follows: 14 doz. Lacto Bacilline Tablets. When we wrote this man for the date of purchase, he wrote back, saying that most of these articles had been sent him through our mistakes; that he confined his jobbing purchases to us, and that he had no intention of going over his bills to find out when these goods were purchased of us. We then issued orders that the goods be priced at the regular prices and credit sent him; and the credit was priced as follows: 14 doz. Lacto Bacilline Tablets, $8.00 doz. $2.00 15.00 1 oz. Oil of Rose, $15.00 oz.. .34 1-6 doz.J.& J. Shaving Cream, $2.00 doz.. 14 doz. Hand's Teething Lotion, $2.00 doz .50 2 doz. Glycothymoline, $9.00 doz...... 4.50 $22.34 We then analyzed this credit simply as a sample and we found out the following facts: That the customer ordered of us Lactic Bacillary, F. B. & F., and had been billed with these goods, but had been sent Lacto Bacilline Tablets by mistake. He reordered the Lactic Bacillary, F. B. & F., and put the Lacto Bacilline Tablets aside to be returned. This article should have therefore been credited at $6.00 doz., or $1.50 for the lot. Oil of Rose was bought from us eight months before and had been billed to him at $11.00 per oz. before the advance. This should therefore have been credited to him at $11.00. The J. & J. Shaving Cream he bought direct from J. & J., paying $2.00 doz. less 20% discount. The article was in poor condition and we returned it to J. & J. for credit, and they credited it to us at $2.00 doz. less 20%. In other words, we lost 7 cents on this article and it should have been credited to the customer at 27 cents. On the Hand's Teething Lotion, he had bought this eight months before as part of a 6-dozen lot. In other words, with the bonus he had gotten 61⁄2 doz. at $12.00, less 5%, or 62 doz. for $11.40, or $1.75 per doz. He should therefore have been credited with 44 cents instead of 50 cents. On the half dozen Glycothymoline, $1.00, he had ordered of us the 25c. size and we billed him with the 25c. size, but sent him the $1.00 size through mistake. This he put aside to return to us and re-ordered the small size. The consequence was that he should have received a credit of $2.25 doz., or $1.13 for the lot, instead of $4.50. His total credit should therefore have amounted to $14.34 instead of $22.34. In other words, by not having the dates of purchase we lost $8.00. This, of course, is an unusual case, but there are many cases more or less similar to it, and we think that every retailer on reading this over will realize that no item is unusual, with the possible exception of Oil of Rose. Even leaving out the Oil of Rose, our loss was $4.00 through a lack of the dates of purchase. We trust that you will be kind enough and just enough to realize the necessity of our knowing the dates of purchase on articles returned to us, even if in some cases they may have been sent you through errors on our part. Yours truly, SMITH, KLINE & FRENCH CO. Heredity. "Father," said the little boy, "had Solomon seven hundred wives?" "I believe so, my son," said the father. "Well, father, was he the man who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death?'" -Square Deal. |