Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1917 — WHO’S TO BLAME? [ARTICLE]

WHO’S TO BLAME?

Tire following editorial taken from the Crown Point Register pretty. accurately describes the situation in the average country town today. It is a well-known fact that in every community there is a great deal of trading done away from home, and in this respect the merchants themselves are no less sinners than the rest of the people. All are going to buy where they can buy the cheapest. It takes just so much gross profit to conduct any retail business, and if a retail store i$ losing some of the trade it. should have, the profit on the merchandise it does sell must necessarily be increased to provide the revenue lost by trade going away from home. No retail merchant is treating his customers right unless he reaches out after more business to thus enable him to handle his goods on a smaller margin of profit. The article from the Crown Point Register reads as follows: If the Crown Point merchants could only realize the. loss they are sustaining every year by their failure to do adequate advertising to offset outside competition there would be greater haste to inaugurate a well-planned advertising campaign than there is to call out the fire department when a blaze starts. Take our grocery stores for instance, there is hardly one in the entire bunch that does enough advertising to recognize their name if they saw it in print, and as for writing an effective advertisement of their business, they never show that they are afile to do it, and they might not even recognize one if they saw it written. As a result they are continually complaining about poor business and figuring out some way to raise prices high enough to make both ends meet. This results in the prices of foodstuffs in Crown Point being the highest of any place in the country. Living expenses here are at least one-fourth higher than in the city. Much of the trade to which the home dealer is rightfully entitled and which would give him the profit he should have is going out of town, when rightfully placed advertising would help keep it at home. It is about time somebody woke up, when outside come, in and spend more to get the trade than the home dealers do to keep it.