People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1895 — DEPARTMENT STORES. [ARTICLE]

DEPARTMENT STORES.

A GREAT EVIL OF MODERN BUSINESS—AN OCTOPUS OF CREED. Shauld Be Condemned by All Right Thinking People Throughout the Whole Country —It la an Institution of Foreign Origin and a Monopoly. A city 1b something more than merely a large collection of houses. A city should be a scene of busy, bustling activity, where are erected many homes, where are employed many laboring people in factories, stores, workshops and mills. It is apparent that the farmer whose land lies nearest a prosperous city is in better shape than his fellow-farmer whose possessions are not so favorably situated. In order to succeed a city must have stores of every kind, afld many of them for the sake of competition if nothing else. The more stores in a city the more families to be maintained and the more, labor connected therewith, hence the greater demand for farmers’ produce of every kind. This being the case, imagine a city in which the mercantile business of a city is all conducted under one roof! The result would be that a hydra-headed monopoly of the worst form would be in control, and in course of time every interest of the city would pass under its direction. There would be no such a thing as competition. That city would be ruined. Ichabod would be written all over its every industry, and it would eventually become a monument to man’s avaricious greed as represented by that modern devil fish of business life, known as the department store. The practices of the modern department store are those that we might call “cut-throat games.” Its competition is illegitimate, such that no business man of principle can endorse. For instance, “bait” is thrown out to laggard buyers. Twenty-six pounds of granulated sugar is offered for a dollar. Any man acquainted with the price of this commodity knows that no department store can secure sugar any cheaper than the legitimate dealers, however large the quantity they purchase may be. Then who meets this loss —more than 25 cents on every dollar’s sold? This “bait” is thus thrown out that the public may enter and the loss on sugar will be made up on other articles the public may be induced to buy, the price of which they are not so familiar with as they are with the price of sugar. If this be not the proper solution of this problem then what is? Surely the managers are not so magnanimous as to absolutely give away money! Humanity is not built that way. As we have said before, the average department store should be opposed by eVery right-thinking person. Because it is a monopoly. Because it enoourages cheap labor. Because it encourages the manufacture of shoddy goods. Because it is illegitimate competition. Because it is an institution of foreign origin that ought not to be countenanced on American soil. These are some of our reasons for opposing the department store. The department store the world over is a monopoly, or seeks to become such, hence they advertise to “retail everything.” It is just as censurable for a few men to control the retail business of a city as it is for Jim Hill to control the two great northern railways across this continent, which attempt has caused such a stir in the judicial and business circles of this state, and the condemnation of everybody except the Inonopolists.

It is a fact susceptible of the clearest demonstration that coming to this country from Egypt, and from the various cities of continental Europe, every week, are ship-loads after shiploads of rags, the cast-off clothing of the poor of those countries, whose wearers, in many cases, died of small-pox and other contagious and loathsome diseases. These rags furnish, in a great measure, the raw material that keeps the shoddy mills at work preparing the cloth for the manufacture of garments to be sold “cheap,” thus coming in competition with wool growers of the north, and the cotton growers of the south, and whose principal customers are the sweat-shops of the great cities, and factories whose output is sold to managers of department stores. We have it upon the authority of expert microscopists that even after this shoddy material is soaked in hot water and subjected to other treatment it receives before being “made up,” that the cuticle of the skin of the original wearers is still retained in the fibre of the cloth, and that the disease germs still lurk therein! Is it not unreasonable to ask dealers in legitimate goods to compete with dealers in these disease-lurking articles? What has been said of this shoddy cloth may with equal force be said of nearly all the wares for sale by department stores. Products of sweat shops, of penitentiaries. It is strange that public sentiment does not speedily mass itself against an institution so fraught with danger and disaster as that disorgan'zer of business principles, known as the department store, but which should more properly and correctly speaking, be called the big racket store. Wherever aggressive capital may hope to be amply rewarded department stores are being established. Admitting that they are a success, then what of the future? Under our present system a young man may enter a store as a chore boy, then, as his abilities are recognized, become a clerk. As he saves his money and improves his time there is a possibility of engaging in business on his own account. It may be a small business at first, but gradually developes it until he is a fullfledged merchant. This is the possibility before a young man to-day, in

(act, it is the history of many a merihant’s experience, hence the incentive to excellency on the part of young men as they first enter the employ of the merchant under existing conditions. How is it in the department store? Over the front door the young man entering, and ambitious to establish a business for hmiself may see, if he scans closely, these fateful words: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Department stores with all their glare, tinsel and elaborateness, require a great deal of capital such as no business man can accumulate in a life time. Generally speaking, these stores are established on the money of eastern capitalists. For instance, Armour, who has accumulated his millions by questionable methods, such as, in the wheat and beef combine, is now investing his millions in department stores. It is impossible for a young man just beginning life as a clerk ever to become the owner of a department store. In the event of the success of the department stores, what must become of the thousands of small merchants and the large army of clerks? There is but one opening for them to enter the channel of productive industry, and that avenue, with the flood gates of immigration wide open, is already filled with more men now than can be profitaby employed. This question of the department store is an important one, and it behooves every person interested in the success of city, state and nation to carefully consider, and promptly discourage. Shut it off before it becomes a power in the land. Let every one realize at once the great danger of this insidious enemy to business and industrial life. — Mankato (Minn.) Journal.