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No. 9

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HE time to make hay

is while the sun shines and the time to get the summer business is in the summer. The sale

of the seasonable goods that are hot

weather sellers ought to be well under way by this time and the advertising that is to make these goods go should be in full blast. The advertising ought to go ahead of the demand instead of trailing along after it, and on summer goods it should be kept up strong until the last of August and in some localities longer. Bear on hard while the time is ripe and don't think that because business is good advertising won't make it better. Attracting Attention.

There are ways and ways of doing it. You might stand out in front of your store and throw sample bottles of medicine at the heads of passers by. That would be sure to attract attention among those who were hit by the bottles, though the attention might not be of a sort favorable to you and your store. It's the same way with your advertisments. You can use headings that will fairly

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slap people in the face and compel them, willy nilly, to look and see, but attracting attention by such means is not making buyers of the goods. Many readers are disgusted and will not read the ad through. Rough-house methods will never get results to compare with the courteous manner and the quietly introduced argument.

Five and Ten Cent.

The five-and-ten-cent business looks

pretty small to some merchants though perhaps never to a druggist. If it does look small, it is simply because the merchant who so views it does not know its possibilities. In a drug store there must be many of those small sales of bulk goods, but there might be a great many automatic sales of package goods more than there are if the druggists took more pains to keep them displayed. In every store where there is space there ought to be a five-and-ten-cent counter or table of some sort, and on this ought to be a good many good values and a good many bits of so-called dead stock. On every merchant's shelves there are goods that will never sell unless a ridiculously low price is put upon them. These goods fit in on a fiveand-ten counter along with newer and more salable goods, and they move off

dig in and do the best you can where you are, but if you only THINK you can't better it, then you ought to go over every circumstance connected with making a change and see whether the reasons against it are really good reasons. It is not in all men to be able to make a radical change of any sort. They simply lack the nerve. Such men, if they cannot screw their courage up, must continue to be partial or total failures right where they are, It looks like taking chances

to make a change, but if you are not doing more than getting a bare living where you are, you are taking chances to stay where a slight change for the worse will reduce your income below a living. margin. If things are going ill with your business, open your eyes and see if you can't find a place where the same tive of bigger net returns. amount of hard work would be produc

Advance Information.

The man who has the advance information about the market and about what is new in his line is the man who is going to get the new goods business. Unless. you are a mind reader it will be impossible for you, an individual druggist, to find out by your own unaided efforts what is new and what is going to be

in time and the seller is richer, not only pushed and sold during the next six

in money, but in shelf room.

Your Location.

Many a druggist has struggled through his business life in a location that fell just short of giving him a chance to make money because the people weren't there and couldn't be got there. If you positively cannot better your location, then

months. To know what the manufact

urers are to introduce and to advertise to the public in the season to come, you must be in personal communication with them all, and you must maintain a complete news service connecting you with all parts of the business country. It is manifestly absurd to think of accomp

lishing anything like that and there is only one way around the difficulty. That is the trade journal way. By subscribing to trade journals covering all the lines you sell, you can easily and with a minimum of labor keep up to date and give your trade a service that will hold them fast. Don't stop with a drug trade journal, get a tobacco journal if you sell cigars and tobacco. If you sell stationery get a stationery weekly. Follow this up through any lines you carry and you will find that every one of those journals will much more than pay its way every year. You will frequently get one bit of information out of the advertising pages of a trade journal that will make you ten times the cost of the journal and do it quickly.

The Wage Question.

There are two sides to it. If a clerk ought not to get wage crazy and think of nothing but how to earn his money in the easiest possible way, then neither ought the proprietor to keep trying to get the last bit of work possible for the amount of money he pays, and wait until he is absolutely compelled to do so before ever raising a man's pay, The clerks ought to have their pay in full every pay day. There ought to be none held back and they ought not to be docked for every imaginary moment of absence over and above what the law gives them. The man who is decently generous with his clerks will be more apt to find his clerks willing to return the compliment. Pay wages as if you were glad to have the clerk get what's coming to him, not as if every penny was just so much money thrown away. Of course the clerk must

earn more money than he is paid or he will not be a profitable investment for his employer. He cannot expect his pay to be increased as soon as he begins to earn it or a little more. A merchant cannot make money on a clerk who draws all he earns, any more than he could make money on goods sold at cost. In order to keep both parties to the wage proposition good natured, both should take account of the fact that the business must be a money-making proposi tion or it will not last, and it must be run without personal friction or it will wear out the temper and health of all parties concerned.

The Humble Dodger.

For a long time all the advertising sharks have been telling merchants that the dodger is only good for supplemental advertising and works only as a sort of filler after you have done everything else. Of course that is all more or less true. The dodger is not the ideal form of advertising, especially for the druggist. But in the small town, the town where a dodger distribution covers the whole population, a druggist can advertise special sales and get them before the people on short notice and very satisfactorily with a neatly printed dodger, at much less expense than in any other way. Say you wanted to put on a special Saturday sale for a few weeks and the dodger has not been done to death in your village. Distribute thoroughly on each Friday a good dodger and you will start up the sale very cheaply. If your competitor has sprung something unexpected in the newspapers in the way of a special, you can catch up with him with a dodger

that can be put out in a few hours after you get the idea. The dodger is still a live medium and in the struggle to get out handsomer and higher-grade advertising it has been neglected until it is sufficiently uncommon to be valuable again. If you do use this form of advertising, bear in mind that what you say on one of the little sheets must be short and pointed. It ought to be in such form that the person who will not take time to read it cannot miss seeing what it is about if it is turned face up to him for a minute.

Man and His Shoes.

How much a man is like his shoes!

For instance, both a soul may lose;

Both have been tanned; both are made tight
By cobblers; both get left and right.
Both need a mate to be complete;
And both are made to go on feet.
They both need healing; oft are sold,
And both in time will turn to mold.
With shoes the last is first; with men
The first shall be the last; and when
The shoes wear out they're mended new;
When men wear out they're men dead too!
They both are trod upon, and both
Will tread on others, nothing loth.
Both have their ties, and both incline,
When polished, in the world to shine;
And both peg out. Now, would you choose
To be a man, or be his shoes? - Anonymous.

Good Advice.

Never criticise a prescription in the presence of the patient. If there is anything wrong with it don't look at it, but tell the patient it will require some time to prepare it and they can call later or you will send it. If they insist on waiting and you have to reace the physician who wrote it, don't 'phone in the presence of the patient but go to a neighboring 'phone. Don't by word or action do anything that will create mistrust or suspicion in the mind of the patient. If the delay is due to a mistake or an overdose,

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