How Many Women Are in Trouble Today? I v L , By J. R. HAMILTON J) b ' Former Advertising Manager of Wanamaker'a, Philadelphia J All of you women whose husbands have told you you have been spending too much money, please stand up. Great Scott! Every married woman in America is on her feet. All you who nro earning your own living and spending as much as you cam please stand up. Now we've got the rest of them. "Well," you say, "now that you've got us standing here what are you going to do about it?" I'm going to give you the first law of business : Cut your expenses down first, and then find out how you can do it afterward. Every big institution carries what it calls a "butcher." When the expenses of that institution begin to eat up the profits the "butcher" issues a sweeping order to cut down so many hundreds of dollars a day. lie doesn't ask how it can be done. He knows it has to be done if his business is going to continue, and he leaves it to the people under him to find out how. This cutting seldom if ever ruins a business. It simply sharpens the wits of those who are left. Now let's take your case. Instead of taking the money that you think you ought to have, suppose you take the money that you have actually got. In your case, being both "butcher" and buyer, you naturally have to sharpen your own wits. Therefore the first thing you begin to do each day (just as you arc going to do now in a minute or two) is to open this paper and see what special inducement each store is offering in the things that are necessary for you to buy. You look for the clothes, and the Bhoes, the children's dresses and suits, the underwear, the house needs, and all of the various necessities and luxuries demanded de-manded in your standard of life. The next thing to do is to cut out all those snobbish, exclusive, exclu-sive, little nonadvertising concerns, who find it somehow beneath their dignity to sell their goods at les3 than a profit of several hundred per cent. The third thing you do is to reckon up your savings at the end of a week or two. And the fourth thing you do is to stand amazed at the amount you have saved in spite of the .amount you have bought. Now of course this is letting you in behind the scenes. There isn't a buyer in any store who doesn't have to bring himself up with a jerk or get brought up with a jerk every once iu a while, and who doesn't also stand amazed at what he has been able to accomplish with a smaller amount of capital and a greater amount of energy and a little extra thimbleful of brains. Now don't tell anybody you have been behind the scenes, but just dig into the advertising in this paper quietly for the next few days; cut out the "dropping-in-anywhere" method of shopping; shop-ping; make a business of your household expenditures, and see if this little financial plan doesn't relieve your terrible money strain. (Copyrighted.)