Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1901 — A BIG DRY GOODS TRUST. [ARTICLE]

A BIG DRY GOODS TRUST.

It May Drive the Little Fellows Out of Business. The latest mammoth trust to be exploited is that of dry goods. J. Pierpont Morgan, who fused the steel kings in a mass, and John Claflin, head of the well-known New York wholesale dry goods house, are the promoters of the unification. They propose to combine all the important dry goods stores, wholesale and retail, throughout the country, and this is intended to drive out of business the lesser merchants aud the commission firms, as the trust will deal directly with the manufacturers, thus ending the middlemen. It may also ruin the importer, for this colossus will take the product of European factories without the aid of the importer. It is thought something like 100,000 men will lose employment by this new plan. Traveling men will be displaced, as letters and telegrams will do the work fwrmcriy executed by the commercial traveler. Speaking of the proposition A. D. Juliiard, a prominent banker of New York, who is taking a leading part in it, said: “The man who has an enormous Broadway rental to pay for a 6tore carrying a special line of retnil stock cannot long compete with the department store proprietor, who can carry the same kind of a stock and put it away in the basement of his big building. Just as tbte department stores to-day can undersell the small retailer, so a combination of department stores can sell at cheaper rates than prevail now in the individual ones.’’ *