Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1885 — How Women Buy. [ARTICLE]

How Women Buy.

“Women reason very strangely,” said a North Side grocer. “You see them on State street, eager and wild-eyed, spending thousands of dollars on dress. When they come to buy the staples of life they are entirely changed. They never haggle over the price of dress goods, but they grumble over the price of codfish, and will argue for an hour over a cent in a bargain. They try to make up in that way the money squandered on dress. You’d be astonished if I told you how poorly the families of some of our best dressed ladies live. Every one seems to think that it is their bounden duty to beat the grocer down. They also think that they should be able to buy retail groceries at wholesale prices. The lady who presides over one family on the North Side, a family Vorth millions of dollars, and which has given away half a million to religious institutions, is a specimen of the class. Our bills are the last she thinks of paying, and then she kicks at everything. Why, what do you think she did? She obtained in some manner the case price of all canned goods. She imagined she had been cheated by us, and sent her pass-book with the case price opposite each purchase of canned goods she had made in the last six months and a lengthy mathematical problem showing the difference she supposed in her favor. She asked that we rebate it (the sum, I think, was about two dollars.) She wanted case price on goods bought two or three cans at a time." '—Chicago News.