VOL. XV.

IRVING P. Fox,

FRANK FARRINGTON, L. W. MARSHALL, CHARLES A. MILLER,.

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No. 5

THEY say that we are

on the eve of a period of great prosperity. Probably it is true, but don't let that disturb your plans for going after business harder than ever this year. Too much prosperity talk has

a tendency to induce some of the fainter hearted to sit down and wait for that prosperity. In the first place prosperity never comes to everyone. There are always some exceptions. In the second place it never comes to anyone without some substantial effort on the person's part. And in the third place, it may not come at all in the first place, so everybody dig in! Waiting for prosperity won't bring Working for it will. Special Days.

it.

It's a wise druggist who makes the most of every special day in the year, from the greatest of all, Christmas, down to whatever may be the least of all. Just

now, for instance, everyone ought to be getting ready for the Easter business. The shopping of the few days before Easter has become second in importance only to Christmas. There is a big sale of goods for presents and that enables the drug store to sell perfumes and other kindred goods. No one who does not. make a display of the goods and advertise them will meet with much demand along that line. The Easter trade can still be stimulated a good deal and the day has not reached the importance that ensures its taking care of itself. Begin early on special days and tell the public that they mean a chance to give presents, then tell them what you have in the way of suitable goods.

Exclusive Lines.

Such lines are particularly valuable in the smaller towns where every store is within shopping distance of every inhabitant. In such places one may easily popularize a brand of goods and create a demand which will bring to the store, people who are the regular customers of a competitor. This is particularly true when the brand of goods is one of general repute and universally advertised. The exclusive line in the small town gives the dealer handling it an added advantage in his effort to beat out the other fellow. In the large town or city the exclusive line has no disadvantage but there is not the chance to make it so much of a success because of the inability to reach so large a list of possible customers. People who Would go across the street to get just the Coure wanted would hesitate to go the Uther end of the city. If you are

in a small place, by all means get all the good agencies you can without tying up too much capital and sell the exclusive goods whenever you can. That is what will bring back the customers who are tempted to try elsewhere. A first class rule for the druggist in almost any town or city is never to give up a window to a patent medicine or proprietary that can be bought ANYWHERE. Let the window be used for goods that are exclusive to the store, or for goods that are general in character, not for proprietary specialties that are profitable only to the manufacturers.

Do You Know It All?

With all due respect, there are a great many druggists who do think that they know all there is about the drug business. This same thing is true of other lines of business. These men attend strictly to business. They keep their stores looking clean and they have a good line of the goods that people ask for. They make a little money every year (if they do) and they are more or less satisfied. These men need to be stirred up. They need to be made to realize that there are plenty of ideas about business getting and store handling that will never originate in their brains. No matter how much you may know about your business, there is prob ably not a man in it but has a few good ideas that you would never think of. If you meet other druggists, talk things over with them. Don't think that anyone is too poorly equipped to give you some ideas. Better than waiting for a chance to get ideas in person, buy all the good literature you can find about your

business. Subscribe to good trade and advertising journals and read them, advertisements and all. Buy all the good books that you can find on store management, advertising and window decoration. Any journal or any book that supplies you with one good working idea that will bring customers into your store, is worth ten times what it would cost you and it might make the difference between success and failure. No matter how much you know, you don't and can't possibly know it all.

Getting The Farmer's Money.

The complaints about the mail order houses getting the business of the farmers come largely from the smaller towns of course. In the smaller towns the druggist has the chance to get into pretty close personal touch with the farmers. The mistake that many druggist and other merchants make in this connection is that they are interested in getting the farmer's money and there the interest ends. It seems to us that it would be better for the dealers to try to get in touch with the farmer upon a basis of mutual interest rather than with the single idea of selling him goods. The farmer is independent. He can spend his money where he chooses and if he sees fit to take the chances of buying goods "unsight and unseen" no one can deny him that privilege. As a rule the farmer is reasonable and no one responds to advertising better than he. More than this, he is a man who likes to patronize dealers with whom he has a personal acquaintance and the local merchant has a chance to make him not only a friend of the store but a promoter of its business as well, for no one will go farther

to say a good word for a store than the farmer who has been treated well there. Study the mail order catalogs a little yourself and when you find that one of them offers witch hazel in 12 or 14-ounce bottles for 30c, take pains to tell the farmer that you sell the same goods only better grade for 25c per full pint. If there is anyone who is a typical Missourian it is this same farmer. He wants to be shown and he is waiting to be shown and it is easy to show him. If you don't interest him in your store and in yourself and get him into the

habit of coming there, it is because you do not try. He is willing to meet you more than half way.

Merchants' Associations.

The old idea of every man for himself in the business of the village has been exploded. It is too much like robbing Peter to pay Paul. By ignoring the common. weal and plugging away for all he is worth, the single dealer in the town may get more business and of course he gets it from his competitors, adding nothing to the general welfare of the community. It has dawned upon the merchants of the day, however, that there is more to be made by maintaining a friendly attitude toward one another and uniting in an effort to get the business away from the merchants in the surrounding villages. Sometimes the druggist is the leader in these progressive movements-and sometimes he is the man who hangs out and can't see the use of it although he does not hesitate to reap all the advantage he can from the general gain in trade. It is undoubtedly true though that less druggists will try to sneak in under the tent without

paying, than men of almost any other line. If there has been no general movement in your town to improve local business conditions and get things coming your way, what is to prevent you from being the man to inaugurate it? A local Prosperity League is capable of accomplishing much good, not only in getting more business but in bettering local conditions of many sorts. It is sort of a modern improvement upon the rather staid and conservative Merchants' Protective Association which usually dies without getting through its second summer. Such an organization is one of the best known. weapons for fighting the mail order house. And, be it known, the mail order houses know very well what towns are alive and looking to keeping the trade at home and like any other good business concern, they are going to expend their advertising money in the places which offer the least resistance. Wake up your community and you will hold trade at home and discourage outsiders from coming after it. They will prefer some less enterprising town as a field of operations.

Not A Joke.

There is a magazine in Chicago named "Eternal Progress." It is devoted to "new thought," "metaphysical therapeutics," and lots of other things of that kind with meaningless names. It does It does not seem possible that anyone outside of an insane asylum could read it seriously. Nevertheless those whom it would like to have as advertisers are told that it has a circulation of "fifty thousand." It evidently takes much delight in answering self-propounded questions of which in the

February number there is a long string extending through many columns. One subscriber is supposed to ask: “Will you tell me how to cure chronic headaches?" Listen to the answer :

"Place yourself in a deeply calm attitude. Feel still all through your system. Turn attention upon the center of the brain, and try, with your thought, to draw the forces of the brain toward the center. When you feel those forces following your thought, send your thought down through the body toward the feet.

In other words, draw the forces of the brain toward the center of the brain, and from the center of the brain draw those same forces toward the feet. Repeat the process ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes. A few times will usually bring relief. If you are in a deeply felt, calm attitude, you can succeed with this treatment the very first time you try, and when you succeed in doing it right, all aches and pains in the head will disappear completely."

It is interesting in this connection to note that many of those widely circulated publications which gesticulate so violently and proclaim so ubiquitously and vociferously their own self-rightousness, periodicals like the Ladies' Home Journal, are now devoting much of their space and energies to furthering many of these ridiculous "new thought," "subconscious," "hypnotic," "mental healing" fads. These are the same publications which, but a short time ago, made such a vigorous time serving war upon all medical preparations containing acetenilide as if the concoctions were brewed by the devil himself. Philistines!