Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1910 — DISHONESTY OF SHOPPERS. [ARTICLE]

DISHONESTY OF SHOPPERS.

Little Tricks Sometimes Played on the Helpless Merchant. Just before the curtain rose in one of the New York theaters the other night a keen-faced man strolled in and took an orchestra chair near a box >ceupied by a certain fashionable woman and her party, the Tribune of tuat city says. If any individual had taken pains to follow the keen-faced man’s movements during the preceding hour that individual might have perceived him trailing the fashionable woman from her home. From his place in the theater he seemed much interested in her gown, which was a beautiful one, with Paris written all over it. Quite unobtrusively he took several good looks at it through his opera glasses. Presently he strolled up to the box. The woman in the Paris gown was going to be haughty at this uninvited appearance of a man she didn’t know, but he gave her no chance.

“Madam,” he said, “the firm of H is delighted that you are so well pleased with the gown sent you on approval that you have decided to keep it.” Now, as a matter of fact, he knew, and she knew that he knew, that she had had no intention of keeping that gown. She was one of those customers, a class more numerous than people not in business imagine, who are constantly ordering things from the shops on “approval” and returning them in a day or two with the freshness gone; no definite tears or rips, but an indefinable something showing to tne axpert that that article has been worn. It was a critical situation for the fashionable woman, especially as her companions in the box might be moved to turd around and lend an ear to the conversation. But she never turned a hair. “It is quite satisfactory—which many of the gowns H— has sent me were not,” she said, serenely, and the next day the firm received her check. Not many firms, perhaps, would do what this firm did, and it took the step only after long provocation. The good wff? of wealthy cuetaszers, area &a tricky ones, is important. But there Is not a house of any size dealing with woman's raiment that doesn’t writhe under the depredations of the women who must have new gowns every time they go out, and aren't able or aren’t willing to pay for the privilege. "One of the puzzling things about a

puzzling sex,” said a merchant, recently, "is that while women in business—cashiers, buyers for merchants, etc.— are almost Invariably honest, women out of business are liable to have yawning gulfs where the sense of honesty resides. They wouldn’t steal- j -oh, no! But the innumerable ways in which they evade the simple law of straightforwardness would make an oriental feel like a tyro. Not all resort to the crude method of wearing gowns sent home an approval. The subtler ones have them copied. The dressmaker will be in the house, and the minute the gown arrives she falls upon it, tries it on her patron, studies it, measures the lines, and in a few hours, wiui the help, perhaps, of a seamstress or two, is well on the way of turning out an exact copy of the Paris gown. This has even been done with the messenger waiting in the house, in cases where he refused to leave the package. Then the gown is returned —unharmed, it is true, but the firm 'is robbed all the same; for that gown was probably of exclusive design, and the woman who buys It won’t be exactly pleased if she chances to encounter one just like it the first time she wears IL “This sort of thing is done a good deal abroad, and by women of greater wealth and standing that those who descend to it in America. Only in one respect can the Parisian dressmaker protect herself against these female pirates. He can adorn the splendid garments he sends out with original trimmings which can’t be duplicated. Otherwise die is helpless against the woman with the sliding sense of honesty.”