| Chapter 10
| 0 | |
| "If I am going to explain our way of shopping to you," said
my companion, as we walked along the street, "you must explain
your way to me. I have never been able to understand it from all
I have read on the subject. For example, when you had such a
vast number of shops, each with its different assortment, how
could a lady ever settle upon any purchase till she had visited all
the shops? for, until she had, she could not know what there was
to choose from."
| 1 | |
| "It was as you suppose; that was the only way she could
know," I replied.
| 2 | |
| "Father calls me an indefatigable shopper, but I should soon
be a very fatigued one if I had to do as they did," was Edith's
laughing comment.
| 3 | |
| "The loss of time in going from shop to shop was indeed a
waste which the busy bitterly complained of," I said; "but as for
the ladies of the idle class, though they complained also, I think
the system was really a godsend by furnishing a device to kill
time."
| 4 | |
| "But say there were a thousand shops in a city, hundreds,
perhaps, of the same sort, how could even the idlest find time to
make their rounds?"
| 5 | |
| "They really could not visit all, of course," I replied. "Those
who did a great deal of buying, learned in time where they might
expect to find what they wanted. This class had made a science
of the specialties of the shops, and bought at advantage, always
getting the most and best for the least money. It required,
however, long experience to acquire this knowledge. Those who
were too busy, or bought too little to gain it, took their chances
and were generally unfortunate, getting the least and worst for
the most money. It was the merest chance if persons not
experienced in shopping received the value of their money."
| 6 | |
| "But why did you put up with such a shockingly inconvenient
arrangement when you saw its faults so plainly?" Edith asked
me.
| 7 | |
| "It was like all our social arrangements," I replied. "You can
see their faults scarcely more plainly than we did, but we saw no
remedy for them."
| 8 | |
| "Here we are at the store of our ward," said Edith, as we
turned in at the great portal of one of the magnificent public
buildings I had observed in my morning walk. There was
nothing in the exterior aspect of the edifice to suggest a store to
a representative of the nineteenth century. There was no display
of goods in the great windows, or any device to advertise wares,
or attract custom. Nor was there any sort of sign or legend on
the front of the building to indicate the character of the business
carried on there; but instead, above the portal, standing out
from the front of the building, a majestic life-size group of
statuary, the central figure of which was a female ideal of Plenty,
with her cornucopia. Judging from the composition of the
throng passing in and out, about the same proportion of the
sexes among shoppers obtained as in the nineteenth century. As
we entered, Edith said that there was one of these great
distributing establishments in each ward of the city, so that no
residence was more than five or ten minutes' walk from one of
them. It was the first interior of a twentieth-century public
building that I had ever beheld, and the spectacle naturally
impressed me deeply. I was in a vast hall full of light, received
not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome,
the point of which was a hundred feet above. Beneath it, in the
centre of the hall, a magnificent fountain played, cooling the
atmosphere to a delicious freshness with its spray. The walls and
ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften
without absorbing the light which flooded the interior. Around
the fountain was a space occupied with chairs and sofas, on
which many persons were seated conversing. Legends on the
walls all about the hall indicated to what classes of commodities
the counters below were devoted. Edith directed her steps
towards one of these, where samples of muslin of a bewildering
variety were displayed, and proceeded to inspect them.
| 9 | |
| "Where is the clerk?" I asked, for there was no one behind the
counter, and no one seemed coming to attend to the customer.
| 10 | |
| "I have no need of the clerk yet," said Edith; "I have not
made my selection."
| 11 | |
| "It was the principal business of clerks to help people to make
their selections in my day," I replied.
| 12 | |
| "What! To tell people what they wanted?"
| 13 | |
| "Yes; and oftener to induce them to buy what they didn't
want."
| 14 | |
| "But did not ladies find that very impertinent?" Edith asked,
wonderingly. "What concern could it possibly be to the clerks
whether people bought or not?"
| 15 | |
| "It was their sole concern," I answered. "They were hired for
the purpose of getting rid of the goods, and were expected to do
their utmost, short of the use of force, to compass that end."
| 16 | |
| "Ah, yes! How stupid I am to forget!" said Edith. "The
storekeeper and his clerks depended for their livelihood on
selling the goods in your day. Of course that is all different now.
The goods are the nation's. They are here for those who want
them, and it is the business of the clerks to wait on people and
take their orders; but it is not the interest of the clerk or the
nation to dispose of a yard or a pound of anything to anybody
who does not want it." She smiled as she added, "How exceedingly
odd it must have seemed to have clerks trying to induce
one to take what one did not want, or was doubtful about!"
| 17 | |
| "But even a twentieth century clerk might make himself
useful in giving you information about the goods, though he did
not tease you to buy them," I suggested.
| 18 | |
| "No," said Edith, "that is not the business of the clerk. These
printed cards, for which the government authorities are responsible,
give us all the information we can possibly need."
| 19 | |
| I saw then that there was fastened to each sample a card
containing in succinct form a complete statement of the make
and materials of the goods and all its qualities, as well as price,
leaving absolutely no point to hang a question on.
| 20 | |
| "The clerk has, then, nothing to say about the goods he sells?"
I said.
| 21 | |
| "Nothing at all. It is not necessary that he should know or
profess to know anything about them. Courtesy and accuracy in
taking orders are all that are required of him."
| 22 | |
| "What a prodigious amount of lying that simple arrangement
saves!" I ejaculated.
| 23 | |
| "Do you mean that all the clerks misrepresented their goods
in your day?" Edith asked.
| 24 | |
| "God forbid that I should say so!" I replied, "for there were
many who did not, and they were entitled to especial credit, for
when one's livelihood and that of his wife and babies depended
on the amount of goods he could dispose of, the temptation to
deceive the customer--or let him deceive himself--was wellnigh
overwhelming. But, Miss Leete, I am distracting you from your
task with my talk."
| 25 | |
| "Not at all. I have made my selections." With that she
touched a button, and in a moment a clerk appeared. He took
down her order on a tablet with a pencil which made two copies,
of which he gave one to her, and enclosing the counterpart in a
small receptacle, dropped it into a transmitting tube.
| 26 | |
| "The duplicate of the order," said Edith as she turned away
from the counter, after the clerk had punched the value of her
purchase out of the credit card she gave him, "is given to the
purchaser, so that any mistakes in filling it can be easily traced
and rectified."
| 27 | |
| "You were very quick about your selections," I said. "May I
ask how you knew that you might not have found something to
suit you better in some of the other stores? But probably you are
required to buy in your own district."
| 28 | |
| "Oh, no," she replied. "We buy where we please, though
naturally most often near home. But I should have gained
nothing by visiting other stores. The assortment in all is exactly
the same, representing as it does in each case samples of all the
varieties produced or imported by the United States. That is
why one can decide quickly, and never need visit two stores."
| 29 | |
| "And is this merely a sample store? I see no clerks cutting off
goods or marking bundles."
| 30 | |
| "All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes of
articles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the great
central warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly
from the producers. We order from the sample and the printed
statement of texture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to
the warehouse, and the goods distributed from there."
| 31 | |
| "That must be a tremendous saving of handling," I said. "By
our system, the manufacturer sold to the wholesaler, the wholesaler
to the retailer, and the retailer to the consumer, and the
goods had to be handled each time. You avoid one handling of
the goods, and eliminate the retailer altogether, with his big
profit and the army of clerks it goes to support. Why, Miss
Leete, this store is merely the order department of a wholesale
house, with no more than a wholesaler's complement of clerks.
Under our system of handling the goods, persuading the customer
to buy them, cutting them off, and packing them, ten
clerks would not do what one does here. The saving must be
enormous."
| 32 | |
| "I suppose so," said Edith, "but of course we have never
known any other way. But, Mr. West, you must not fail to ask
father to take you to the central warehouse some day, where they
receive the orders from the different sample houses all over the
city and parcel out and send the goods to their destinations. He
took me there not long ago, and it was a wonderful sight. The
system is certainly perfect; for example, over yonder in that sort
of cage is the dispatching clerk. The orders, as they are taken by
the different departments in the store, are sent by transmitters to
him. His assistants sort them and enclose each class in a
carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerk has a dozen pneumatic
transmitters before him answering to the general classes of
goods, each communicating with the corresponding department
at the warehouse. He drops the box of orders into the tube it
calls for, and in a few moments later it drops on the proper desk
in the warehouse, together with all the orders of the same sort
from the other sample stores. The orders are read off, recorded,
and sent to be filled, like lightning. The filling I thought the
most interesting part. Bales of cloth are placed on spindles and
turned by machinery, and the cutter, who also has a machine,
works right through one bale after another till exhausted, when
another man takes his place; and it is the same with those who
fill the orders in any other staple. The packages are then
delivered by larger tubes to the city districts, and thence distributed
to the houses. You may understand how quickly it is all
done when I tell you that my order will probably be at home
sooner than I could have carried it from here."
| 33 | |
| "How do you manage in the thinly settled rural districts?" I
asked.
| 34 | |
| "The system is the same," Edith explained; "the village
sample shops are connected by transmitters with the central
county warehouse, which may be twenty miles away. The
transmission is so swift, though, that the time lost on the way is
trifling. But, to save expense, in many counties one set of tubes
connect several villages with the warehouse, and then there is
time lost waiting for one another. Sometimes it is two or three
hours before goods ordered are received. It was so where I was
staying last summer, and I found it quite inconvenient."[2]
| 35 | |
| [2] I am informed since the above is in type that this lack of perfection
in the distributing service of some of the country districts
is to be remedied, and that soon every village will have its own
set of tubes.
| 36 | |
| "There must be many other respects also, no doubt, in which
the country stores are inferior to the city stores," I suggested.
| 37 | |
| "No," Edith answered, "they are otherwise precisely as good.
The sample shop of the smallest village, just like this one, gives
you your choice of all the varieties of goods the nation has, for
the county warehouse draws on the same source as the city warehouse."
| 38 | |
| As we walked home I commented on the great variety in the
size and cost of the houses. "How is it," I asked, "that this
difference is consistent with the fact that all citizens have the
same income?"
| 39 | |
| "Because," Edith explained, "although the income is the
same, personal taste determines how the individual shall spend
it. Some like fine horses; others, like myself, prefer pretty
clothes; and still others want an elaborate table. The rents which
the nation receives for these houses vary, according to size,
elegance, and location, so that everybody can find something to
suit. The larger houses are usually occupied by large families, in
which there are several to contribute to the rent; while small
families, like ours, find smaller houses more convenient and
economical. It is a matter of taste and convenience wholly. I
have read that in old times people often kept up establishments
and did other things which they could not afford for ostentation,
to make people think them richer than they were. Was it really
so, Mr. West?"
| 40 | |
| "I shall have to admit that it was," I replied.
| 41 | |
| "Well, you see, it could not be so nowadays; for everybody's
income is known, and it is known that what is spent one way
must be saved another."
| 42 | |
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