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THE: IVIUSIO TRADE:
prepaid, any imperfection or defect in the material or manufacture
of said machine not caused by misuse or neglect, provided that the
factory serial number shall be on said typewriter at the time the
claim is made and that all imperfect or defective parts shall be
referred to us before any claim for repairs or replacement shall be
allowed. This guarantee continues for one year from date of sale
by us.' The italics are ours.
"You can imagine our disappointment at the form of this
guarantee, which we with all of our business experience had not
thought to call for beforehand. The idea of having to pack and
express to a distant factory a heavy typewriter to have a type bar
put in or a key top or letters replaced, or the tension or screws
adjusted, is the height of absurdity, and practically vitiates the
guarantee. Having had this experience we think it only fair to the
trade to call attention to what a guarantee may mean, and to recom-
mend to our brethren in business who are buying typewriters, comp-
tometers, adding machines or anything else which is liable to get
out of order that they see the exact form of guarantee, hold it :;.
their hands and read it through a magnifying glass before they
commit themselves to the deal. 7 '
As a matter of fact when we analyze the various guarantees
it will be discovered that the maker has any number of escapes from
responsibility if he so elects. But he has no escape from annoyance
and abuse as long as the present form of guarantee is in force.
HE small dealer of to-day is in direct competition with the
large city stores who reach their customers daily through the
large city papers, and one of them recently said to The Review
that the city merchant was growing in a perfectly legitimate way
in his business with his flaming page advertisements well displayed
and written, and he said that he was using this very kind of liberal
advertising as an impelling force to his business. He did not
hesitate to speak in terms of admiration of the large piano merchant
who could go in in such a big way. because it needed the stimulus
in these days of progress and strenuous times of restlessness and
innovations in the business world.
T
HIS particular man takes an optimistic view of the situation,
claiming that the expenses of the catalogue houses and the
big advertisers which run into many millions is a point in his
favor, because he compares the low rate of expense and advertising
which he has to pay, places him in a superior position to do as well
by his customers on the same quality of instrument.
A man may fool himself perhaps by believing such a policy for
it is noticed that the men who spend the money for advertising are
the men who do the business whether wholesale or retail.
Take the concerns that are liberal magazine advertisers. They
may lose here and there, but their business grows, a tribute to
progressive modern ideas, and the little fellow who is afraid to
spend money, either in magazine or trade paper advertising, is con-
stantly drying up. He is wondering how he loses his business, and
he says the other fellow isn't giving a square deal, and that he can't
last long.
That is the view the small men usually take of the larger and
more successful enterprises who are steadily grinding out the
non-progressive element. Yes, it costs money to advertise in daily
papers, magazines and in trade papers, but it pays. And the in-
stitution to-day that has not considered well conducted, well re-
gulated trade papers in his advertising appropriation, is acting
against its own interests.
T
UT advertising alone will not bring the desired results. The
pianos must be what they are represented, both to the dealer
and the home purchaser. Advertising helps but it cannot do it all.
The prices must be right. There must be for the retailer a well-
selected stock, and to sell the instruments right, they must
have been bought right. They must be well displayed in a clean,
bright and attractive store, where customers find prompt and cour-
teous treatment, where customers will not be deceived as to values
offered.
That is progressiveness; it will pay the dealer to use his local
papers, because even in the smallest hamlet the home papers are
read. They arc good mediums and should be used freely and
constantly.
A man cannot get the best results when he is out of the papers
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REVIEW
three or four months at a time. He should use space frequently
and change his advertisements so that they are at all times attractive.
Use the show windows and use them right. They will sell a good
many pianos if they are properly looked after. The windows are
a good exhibition point, and the demonstration or exhibit idea is
a good one. This is an advertising age, and no business man can
afford not to advertise.
T
HERE is to-day an imperative demand that the business of this
country be run on cleaner lines than ever before. This demand
comes from the people, and it affects everything from the vast
political machinery which runs the national government straight
on through, affecting the management of the great commercial
concerns, insurance companies, down to the more modest business
enterprises controlled by individuals.
Viewing the country as a whole it must be apparent to all that
there is an unmistakable trend towards higher and better things in
the conduct of all our national, State and personal affairs.
A good many people who were prominent in political and
business life are now members of the down-and-out club, and they
will be joined by many more, for the society is one that is thriving
rapidly these days. People are beginning to realize that honesty
is the best policy, not wholly because it pays best in immediate
dollars, but because it is character building, and many, after all, are
learning that character is the greatest asset which a man in any
walk of life can control. It is not always valued as highly as it
should be until it is irretrievably lost, and a man without character
is indeed badly off.
T
AKE the case of the three men controlling the great insurance
companies of New York. A year ago these men were vigor-
ous in mind and body, and seemed certain to enjoy old ages of
serenity and happiness, but to-day one is dead, one is an exile, and
the other is in a sanitarium. If one of them only had been afflicted
it might be said that it was merely the manifestation of disease
that would have shown itself in any event. But with two shattered,
and one dead, the law of chances forbids us to deny the fact of
the troubled mind on the body. It shows that men may die from
the loss of reputation, and be shattered in health from a broken
heart. The common element in the thr.ee tragedies is that these
men, doing wrong, failing to measure up to the responsibilities of
the great trusts, and perverted by the foul financial atmosphere
surrounding them, did not know that they were being untrue.
B
Y slow processes, to the growth of which the public con-
tributed, they were educated into the belief that the assets
of the great companies of which they were the heads, were their
own private property. They asked themselves, undoubtedly, can-
not a man do what he likes with his own ?
Colonel Conway said twenty years ago that no man can be
honest in handling impersonal funds, and it would seem as if he
were pretty nearly correct in his statement. But these men, if they
were real hard-hearted, or worse men, they would not have suffered
so; if more wicked, they would have been more calloused, and would
have viewed with singular indifference the investigation and its
results. So, paradoxical though it may seem, the net results of the
ill doing of these men is to throw into high relief the f".ct that men
of high finance are not always the sordid, feelingless, pachydermics,
so often described and caricatured in the public prints. On the
contrary they are extremely sensitive. We find a fact, not without
ethical significance, that the very cupbearers to Mammon are the
victims of their environments and are not deliberate, designing vil-
lains. We can thus perceive a basis on which to rear a new and
purer business temple.
S long as the names of these insurance leaders are remembered
—and they will be remembered long—they will point the
old, old moral, prone to be forgot, that the corollary of power is
increased moral responsibility—that the leader must not only be as
good but better than his fellowmcn. Still the mills must grind for
the time has gone by when a man can ride, rough shod, over his
fellowmen, abuse and villify them without paying the penalty. In
some cases the penalty is hard and severe, but in this old world of
ours, wrong cannot sit always on the throne, for close within the
shadow stands the Unseen Power, ever watchful of His own.
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