Brains and Buying

THERE is a law to prohibit dishonest advertising, and a new committee has been formed to enforce this law. But legislative enactments mean nothing, public opinion passing freely from man to man means everything. If we are stupid enough to flock where poorly made things are offered cheaply, and to buy that which we neither need nor desire, we deserve to be made the sport of the advertisers.

The test of economic efficiency in the standard of living ‘is not a question of choosing the good instead of the bad, but of choosing the best instead of the good,’ and it is a far cry from our daily morning’s mail, in which we receive dozens of carefully worded notices, printed at huge expense, which we have to open, and destroy. Think of the relief it would be to our postman to have this idiotic use of the United States mails stopped. It would be impossible to read all this printed matter daily. If one did, and acted upon its suggestions, physical collapse would follow bankruptcy.

This huge and expensive mail delivery pertains to all manner of subjects. Let me give a list of the documents received in one day by a small family who live in a modest suburban house.

Notice of a new hotel to be opened in Chicago.

Four sealed invitations in double cream laid envelopes, engraved, and with an etched landscape at the top, inviting each member of the family, by name, to the opening of a toy shop.

Appeal to subscribe to a colossal new dictionary, enclosing twelve sample pages. Seven circulars about new publications; three subscription blanks and a stamped envelope.

Sample of laundry wax — with circular.

Large embossed envelope, containing a folder, tied with ribbon, enclosing three colored plates of ‘Clothing of Refinement’ for men.

Four-page circular, heavy Irish linen, with information about ‘One gray charmeuse gown, fur-trimmed, with beaded passementeries, Paquin Model. Value $185.00; sale price $78.00’; and ninety-six other equally alluring descriptions.

‘Biblical study picture course’ described for children in a six-page booklet.

Large notice of society vaudeville in black and yellow sealed envelope.

Six tickets to be sold for a fair, held in aid of an institution of which we had never heard!

And to-day was only an average day — and elections are over.

As Sidney Smith said, ‘What do I want of this piece of pasteboard? It costs you two pence and does me no good.’

One wonders if this daily deluge of printers’ ink is a useful method of distributing stray facts to the community; for Edward Devine, in his charming little book on ‘Economics,’ states that ‘A decrease in the cost of commodities, a discovery of some new mechanical process, a change in the habits of consumers, make possible a higher level of living for all who have an assured income of stipulated amount,’ and that‘the advantage will be retained, if the standard of living is modified.’

As individuals we may not be able to decrease the cost of commodities or to discover new mechanical inventions, but we can change our habits, if we will. We can teach children to choose the best instead of the useless, the lasting instead of the cheap, the beautiful instead of the ugly, — and we could, by common consent, and the force of honestly expressed opinion, relieve the advertisers from the strain under which they are now laboring, and ourselves from the burden of their industry.

It is no easy task to choose ‘the best instead of the good.’ This the working people, the professional people, the conscientious parents, all know, and to them idling in the shops brings no lasting satisfaction, no real interest. They do not often enjoy wandering from shop to shop, pricing, discussing, handling articles offered for sale. Shopping as an all-day business is impossible to them. They have no desire to sit in the waiting room of a department store, to listen to assorted music, to watch the wandering crowd, to examine, without mind to purchase, clothing suitable for a court function. They have no willingness to spend what they do not have, to receive what they do not pay for, or to get what they do not want, and yet they are often lost in the jungle of things manufactured, and feebly snatch what they can in the struggle to get out.

Sometimes one does not purchase according to one’s original intention. There was a ‘ rummage sale ’ not long ago, in aid of a local charity. A Society Bud, in charge of one of the tables, was earnest in her effort to find the real market value of her goods by the ‘test of final utility and supply.’

An old woman came to purchase, and spying a full-sized pair of La Crosse racquets, asked, ‘How much are those?’

‘Fifteen cents,’ was the prompt answer.

‘Will you take ten?’ asked the old woman.

‘No,’ said the Bud, ‘that is too great a sacrifice.’

‘Then give me that cabbage, and here is your dime.’

Saleswoman and purchaser both smiled contentedly, feeling that a good deed had been well done.

To buy wisely has its true satisfaction, but just ‘buying’ seems to have irresistible attraction for the human mind. We were spending a golden hour at the top of a great headland; far below, the sea showed opal color and violet light. The clay of the cliff ranged in tone from black, through red, blue, and yellow, to a creamy white; patches of sweet fern and delicate grasses grew in the crannies, glowing green, giving accent and harmony to the whole. Far below, the line of the golden beach, the white curl of the surf, were like poetry and music; and yet, among the people who journeyed that day to enjoy a fair place, only a few had time to go out on the cliffs and revel in color and beauty, because, at a neat little stall, there was a collection of perishable souvenirs for sale, and so great was the demand for them that the buyers had no time to feast their eyes elsewhere. A proof that purchasing is more interesting to the majority than observing.

Of this fact advertisers and merchants are well aware and yet they invite us to look also. ‘No trouble to show goods,’ is a slogan freely used, and the shop-windows are lessons in the art of display. This is the shopkeeper’s business, thought out, and shown to the passer-by. Is our spending thought out also? Do we really know our business, too, when we come to make our selections, or are we like the executive young woman who was riding in from Cambridge? Opposite her, in the car, was the embodiment of the respectable lower-middle-class British matron, with a child of ten. The day was cold and raw for November. The child wore a dress with low neck and short sleeves. The executive woman was troubled, and remarked on the fact to her neighbors. ‘She ought to be ashamed of herself to dress that poor little thing so foolishly; I really should like to take that child away from her; it is scandalous.’ The mother sat opposite, patient, but at last she remarked very clearly, ‘I’ve ’ad twelve. How many ’ave you ’ad ? ’

We constantly receive catalogues of ‘Reduction Sales,’ tremendous in bulk, and explicit in detail, offering great opportunities to buy goods that are unseasonable, or of a pronounced and passing fashion. The philosophy of such a ‘mark-down ’ policy was interestingly illustrated on Cape Ann, where two amateur artists, with paint-boxes and white umbrellas, were searching for an abiding place.

‘What is the price of board and room at your cottage?’

‘My prices are a dollar a day, or eight dollars a week,’ replied the business-like New England spinster.

Thinkers claim that a purchaser with high ideals and intelligence, whose demands call for a wide range of resource, will win a commanding place in the ‘Unconscious Economic Struggle’ that constantly goes on. Witness the assistance offered such a purchaser in a recent newspaper advertisement, which says:—

‘We have won distinction merely by doing well what all should be ashamed to do in a wrong way,’ and ‘firmly refusing to let fussy and affected discords of refined austerity take the place of the rhythmic and the graceful.’

You know about the woman who was pronounced by her friends ‘very sacrificing — but she did not sacrifice judicious’; this is what is happening to our advertisers: they no longer ‘advertise judicious,’ and if they keep on at the rate at which they are now going, arithmetical progression will prove that there will soon be room for naught else but their works on the civilized globe.

Would it not be interesting to have economic relations taught in our schools, just put into the simplest possible language; teaching that good not cheap is the standard, and that the best is our object in human acquirement? What a helpful body of young men and women they would graduate. What a bond there would be between them, what a force they would be in the nation; so that not only would ‘ Political Economy ’ be a serious study for the learned, but its simple and underlying truths would become woven into the daily thinking and accomplishment of our boys and girls, and its results would show in their relations to living and to trade.