Black. Don't you see that, if one hardware man, and one druggist, and one dry goods store, and so on, had our stamps, _all_ those merchants would be in a cla.s.s by themselves? It would make them the _leading_ merchants in the town, for people would trade with them so that they could collect the Garter stamps."

"I see," returned Fellows quietly. "And the man who gets stamps here from Mr. Black would be able to buy, let us say, a hat or some china ornaments through you people, which would, incidentally, deprive the local men's furnishing store or china store of the sale of those articles. And, of course, that same man might get trading stamps from other stores, and with those stamps he could buy a pocketknife through you people, and thus take the sale of that pocketknife away from Mr.

Black."

Bulder waved the question aside as though not worth bothering with. "My dear man," he a.s.serted, "the people who get things for those trading stamps get things they would not buy otherwise. That is surely a _very_ trivial contention."

Fellows looked at me and said:

"Black, I have no reason to take any more of yours or Mr. Bulder's valuable time, as I see nothing else to say except that I strongly advise against the adoption of this or any other trading stamp or profit-sharing scheme which you do not control yourself. Of course, a few merchants in a town can get together and run this trading stamp system, whereby your stamps are accepted for cash in other stores and other stores' stamps are accepted for cash in your own, and by that system there might possibly be some benefit in the trading stamps. But I believe that any merchant who uses trading stamps--and I do not refer to your excellent company, Mr. Bulder--is merely building up business for some outside organization. He is merely diverting some of his own profits into the pockets of the trading stamp concerns, which do not really build up any business at all; because, if the stamps prove successful for one merchant, it will not be long before other merchants take them up and then every one is giving profits to the trading stamp concerns without any of them getting any real benefit from it. I believe the use of trading stamps is more or less an admission of inability to think up plans of getting business for oneself."

Bulder smiled. He was once again the acme of courtesy.

"That argument of yours _sounds_ excellent, Mr. Fellows," he said suavely. "Excellent! But why not apply it to _your_ business? Why not say that if one merchant advertises, _all_ merchants will advertise and thus the benefits of advertising are nullified?"

Fellows was once again beaten down, I thought. He was plainly stumped for a few seconds. Then he replied:

"There is something in what you say, Mr. Bulder. But with trading stamp compet.i.tion every one is offering merely trading stamps. There is no particular difference between them, and one offers no material advantage over another. But advertising is different. You yourself admit that, and appreciate the benefits of advertising, for in your own printed matter"--and here he held some of it up--"you advise the merchant to advertise the trading stamp proposition, 'thus'"--he quoted from a folder--"'tying up the prestige of the Garter trading stamps with the local merchant's own store.'

"Now, while in trading stamps there is no apparent difference, with advertising one can express one's personality and character, which trading stamps never do. There are so many ways in which one may advertise: newspapers, billboards, booklets, form letters, street car signs; and you can make your advertising such that it will be better than your compet.i.tors'. But trading stamps are trading stamps and nothing more. The story of advertising is as varied as language itself.

With advertising you can vary the appeal so that it always has a freshness which trading stamps must soon lose."

Bulder was plainly perturbed.

"I claim," he said heavily, "just the _same_ distinction, that _same_ personality--why, the very _dress_ of our trading stamps is an advertis.e.m.e.nt, just as is the design on those Kleen-Kut tools I see displayed there. They are well-known, they are recognized by the trademark, and that is their individuality. Our trading stamp has the _same_ individuality--it has our peculiar design and trademark."

"I am unconvinced," said Fellows, shaking his head with finality. "Your arguments sound excellent, but the fact remains that once a dealer takes on trading stamps it is difficult for him to get rid of them. People come in and ask for the stamps--"

"Good night!" I thought. Bulder was quick to respond.

"Of _course_ they come and ask for the stamps. And if we offer these stamps to other dealers, and then people come to Mr. Black and _ask_ him for them, and find he doesn't have them, won't that _hurt_ Mr.

Black? Won't they say that Mr. Black isn't as _progressive_ as other people? If the people _demand_ trading stamps, it is up to Mr. Black to give them, for, if he is not progressive enough to do so, he will _drive_ them to some other store."

"I take strong exception to your words," said Fellows evenly. "I don't appreciate your slur on the 'progressiveness' of my--of Mr. Black."

"I _beg_ Mr. Black's pardon. I spoke hastily. But you must admit, Mr.

Black, that the unreasonableness of your friend _is_ exasperating."

Fellows ignored the last remark. Apparently to no one, he mused:

"I remember in the little town of Wakeford some of the merchants there got this trading stamp 'bug.' First one got it, then another, and then they were all giving trading stamps--that is, all those who did any real business. And then one of them thought he would steal a march on the others, and began giving double trading stamps on Sat.u.r.day. In two weeks they were all giving double trading stamps on Sat.u.r.day. It has got so now that they are giving double stamps every Friday and triple stamps on Sat.u.r.day! I suppose before long they'll be all giving double stamps every day of the week. Pretty tough on those merchants, isn't it?"

Bulder looked at Fellows with some amazement in his face, for Fellows'

remarks were not apparently addressed to either of us; he was gazing through the window of the door leading into the store.

"Pretty tough on those merchants," Fellows continued, "because, when they give double trading stamps, they increase their percentage of cost on their capital from 15 to 30 per cent. a.s.suming they have a 5 times turnover. Of course it's all right for the trading stamp concerns, because the more stamps that are sold, the more profit they make.

"By the way, Mr. Bulder, do you sell stamps in Wakeford?"

"Why, yes, we do sell some," was the reluctant response.

I saw the point at once, and instantly I made up my mind that I would not take the chance of being drawn into a war of giving trading stamps away in compet.i.tion with other stores, and I quietly told Bulder that we were merely wasting time now, that I had definitely decided not to touch the proposition at all.

Bulder shrugged his shoulders. "I am _sorry_ that you let this opportunity go by. But _please_ don't come to us in a few months' time and ask to do business with us, for we shall _unquestionably_ close with some other hardware store before I leave town to-day."

He was once more the suave and polished man of the world. He shook hands pleasantly with us, cracked a joke or two, and left the store, apparently in the best of humor.

Hardly had he gone out when Fellows went to the telephone and called up Mr. Barlow. I don't know what Barlow said, but I heard Fellows say:

"This is Fellows of the Flaxon Advertising Agency. I am at Dawson Black's. We have just had the Garter Trading Stamp man here. You knew that Black was thinking of taking up the trading stamp proposition.

Well, he has turned it down cold. I thought you might like to know, in case they came to you with a different story."

There was a meeting of the Merchants' a.s.sociation that evening--I didn't tell you that I had joined sometime before. As I entered the meeting room, Barlow came to me and told me that Bulder had been to see him, and had told him that I was interested in his proposition but he felt that Barlow would be the better man for them to work with.

Barlow brought the matter of trading stamps up for discussion at the meeting, and it was decided that no member of the a.s.sociation should handle them.

"What would we do if some merchants in the town, who are not members of the a.s.sociation, should take them on?" I asked.

I saw a twinkle in Barlow's eye, for he knew I was thinking of Stigler, who was not a member of the organization.

"I should think," said Wimple, who was the president, "that we had better not try to cross that bridge until we come to it. The leading merchants belong to the a.s.sociation, and I question very much whether the fact that some small store might handle the stamps would have any effect upon us, one way or the other."

I hoped and believed that we had killed trading stamps so far as our town was concerned, but I determined that, if ever the question was to come up again, through some of the others taking up stamps, I would suggest that idea of Fellows', that we form a trading stamp organization of our own, which the a.s.sociation could run. In other words, the Merchants' a.s.sociation would be the trading stamp concern, and so we would have any benefits coming from it ourselves.

CHAPTER XXIV

PREPARING FOR THE BATTLE

As soon as possible, I visited the landlords of all the empty stores in town, and contracted to rent the windows in seven of them for two weeks beginning the first of October.

Two of the stores I couldn't get because they had been rented for the first of October; one I didn't go to at all because I remembered, fortunately, in time, that the landlord was a friend of Stigler's. If I had told him what I wanted, the probabilities were that Stigler would have got wind of it and he would somehow have got ahead of me.

The total expense was less than twenty dollars. Two stores I got for nothing, and I found out that Barlow owned them. The old brick had told his agent to let me have them for two weeks without any cost. Traglio, the druggist, let me have the vacant store next door to him, which he owned, for $2.00 a week, on the understanding that I would not display any toilet articles, and that I would put a card in the window, at my own expense, reading: "For toilet articles of all kinds go to Traglio's." I didn't think that would hurt me any, so I promised to do it. It cost me $12.00 for the old Bon Marche store, but that was right opposite the post office, and I thought it well worth the money, because everybody in town would see the displays there. Besides, they were big windows. It had been a prosperous store, but Waldron, who ran it, had lost his money in a big Providence bank failure.

When I had got it all done the question came to me, What am I going to do for stock? It would be difficult to put a lot of stock in those windows to make a real display and still have left in the store any of the lines to sell. I worried over this for some time, and then I wrote to Hersom, the salesman for Bates & Hotchkin of Boston, the jobbers from whom I bought the bulk of my general supplies, and told him about my plan, and asked him if he could help me out. They were pretty decent people, and while I had to pay a fraction more for the majority of the goods than if I had bought from the manufacturer it was well worth it to me, for they looked after me well. As Hersom had told me, the last time he had called, "We certainly will do all we can for you, because you give us the bulk of your business." . . .

Coincidences do happen even in a little town. The electric light company had been making a big campaign in the town, advocating the use of electricity for lighting, cooking, ironing, etc. The advertising certainly had made the gas company sit up and take notice, for they had offered to wire houses for a ridiculously small amount, with easy terms of payment, and in a large percentage of the houses they had begun to use electricity instead of gas. For some time I had been thinking of taking advantage of this fact, and putting in a stock of electric toasters and grills, perhaps an electric fan or so, and a few electrical devices like that.

Well, I happened to meet Mrs. Twombley in the street. Mrs. Twombley was a close friend of the Mater's. She was a widow, like Mater, and they had been schoolgirls together, and Mrs. Twombley had been one of the episodes of my father's period of calf love. Mrs. Twombley was a big, plump, jolly-looking woman, well to do, and she was quite fond of me.

The last time she had been at the house she had said to the Mater, as she rumpled my hair--she did that every time she came because she knew I didn't like it--"It was just nip and tuck as to whether I would have been Dawson's mother, wasn't it?"

She was pa.s.sing on the other side of the street, and, seeing me, she frantically waved her umbrella at me--she always carried an umbrella, whatever the weather might be. I went across to her, and she told me she wanted a dozen kitchen knives.

"I don't know what Lucy does with them," she said. "I think she must be engaged to a sword swallower and he is practicing with my knives."

Then she added: "By the way, Dawson, I have never asked you to do anything for me, have I?"