Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1908 — The Mailorder House. [ARTICLE]

The Mailorder House.

The Republican has al ways depre cated patronizing mail order houses. It has opposed the custom print-i----pally for two reasons: - It takes money out of the community and piles it up in the cities when it should remain at home to circula e among our own people. Patrons of mail order houses seldom get articles as they were expecting, or as good as they ought to get for the prices paid. Io other words the mail order houses ‘‘soak” their patrons unmercifully in many instancas, and a long distance kick seldom does any good. Tuere are several reasons for this patr mage of mail order houses. One is, of course, that the customer is led to believe that he is buying his supplies cheaper than he can purchase them at home. Another reason is that many country people believe that their home merchants

will cheat them—tho in this connection it is hard to understand what gives them.-such unbounded faith in the city merchants; Another reason is that{the mail order houses present their wares in an alluring manner, setting out items an 1 quoting prices. This last phase of the matter is plainly presented by a farmer reader of the Alexan dria Citizen, Alexandria, Minn. He says: “If the mail order houses get fl,ooo out of this county each mouth that belongs to the home merchants, as you say it does, the fault is with rhe merchants them-

selves. The mail order house ad vertises, and gives ns prices on everything they offer for sale. Tu.\v sell us what they have and what they want for it. Of court e we get soaked once in a while, ai d if we do we can try some other house. Most of the home merchants wh6 advertise at all don’t quote prices. They neglect to t-11 us what we want to know, the prices, and the goods they have. Of course we can go to the store and ask the price of this article and that, hut you know how it is, one doesn’t’know so well exactly what he wants to buy when he gets in a si-ore. here is where the mail order houses make the hit. They send their advertising matter into our homes, and we read it when we haven’t any thing else to do, the family who'reads usally finds something that he or some other member of the family wants, and many orders are made up and sent out adjust such times. ‘ Right here is whom the horns merchant falls down. L’h« talked up his business to us in our.homes, the same as the mail order houses do, the people would be in to see him the next time they came to town, and in many cases extra trips would lie made to get the things at once that we didn’t know we want od. until they brought them to our

alb-id;.ai. £ ... “The home merchant can save the expense of getting out a catalogue. We people read the home papers more carefully then we do the catalogue, and read them every week, and if the merchant wants to talk in the papers he must put his ad. in, so we know what he means. The home merchant likely, nine time out of ten, sellsiiis goods as cheap as the mail order house, and I ladieve on many thing they are much cheaper, but how are we to know it, if he doesn’t tell us about it A merchant must not think th d even his best customers know his goods so well that they can tell Vhat he has without being told.