Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1890 — Dry Go ds Salaries. [ARTICLE]

Dry Go ds Salaries.

“It is not generally known.” said Mr. C. B. Worth, of H. B. Claflin & Co., a few days ago, “that some of the highest salaries are paid in our business. We are often accused of paying starvation wages to our clerks by people who never look at the expenses entailed in running an establishment. Take the buyers, for instance. There are firms in this city who pay men from SIO,OOO to $30,000 a year for simply being able to tell three-quarters of a year in advance what the fashion is going to be. One gentleman, who buys for a wholesale house on Broadway, is said to earn $50,000 a year. “Dry goods houses are noted for paying low wages to their clerks, because the supply of clerks is so abundant. In some of the smaller stores the pay runs as low as $3 a week. But the buyer on whose judgment the sale of next year’s fabrics depends gets half as much as the President of the United States. 'lhe smallest, and some of the largest, salaries are paid in the dry goods business.” “How does the buyer for the house distinguish in advance what the fashion for next year is to be?” “Ah, that is where it requires a wide awake man. He must watch the growing tendencies among the firm’s richest and most fashionable customers at home and abroad. Whatever has become popular among them will make its way among the masses, and this tide the house must catch and swim along with it. “In Europe textile manufacturers make few goods except on orders. The buyer for a firm must decide what his house can sell next season, and order his supplies of cloth made in advance. A serious mistake might be sufficient to bankrupt the firm, by leaving them with a stock on hand of unsalable goods, the patterns not being to the liking of the firm’s customers. So you can easily see why a skillful buyer can command his own price.” “How do you select a man for such » position ?” “Nothing less than a kind of intuition is demanded for such a place. In addition, the buyer must estimate what amount his employer can sell of a given style of goods. If he overstocks the firm, then they are left with oldfashioned articles on hand which they must resort to the ‘bargain-counter’ devices to get rid of at a severe loss. ” —New York Star.

Astonishing success has attended the effort of Dr. Lannelongue, an eminent specialist of Paris, to give intelligence to a little idiot girl. Though four years old, the child could neithei walk nor stand, and never smiled nor took notice of anything. The Doctor concluded that the abnormal narrow-' ness of the head obstructed the growth of the brain, and in May last he mads au incision iu the center of the skull and cut a piece of bone from the left side of it. The result was marvelous. Within less than a month the child could walk, and she is now quite bright —playing, smiling, and taking notice of everything around her. The length of the telpherage line between Bueno Ayres and Montevideo is 186 miles, and it is designed to carry electrically driven letter boxes, which may be dispatched every two hours. The two wires cross the La Plata estuary at a point where it i-. nineteen miles wide.