Show THE SAMPLE FIEND he Is not a favorite with wholesale merchants fellows who send for samples of evry thins under the san and never uny a dollars worth the habit haa become a vice merchants in this city says tho new york sun are sorely pestered by cranks and others who write letters asking for samples nothing is too big or too small for the fiends what the merchants call them to ask for any thing of value from a jew sharp to a piano a shred of calico to a roll of cloth a package of oatmeal a bag of flour a paper covered half dime novel a gilt edged bible bound in morocco all have been and are asked by tho sample searchers seir chers A fourteenth street piano house less than a week ago got a letter from a dealer in a western city asking him to ship a sample piano 1 would like to sell the piano you manufacture the dealer said because I 1 have been told that it is the best if you will ship mo one as a sample of course I 1 will pay tho freight and cartage expenses in new york if there the re are any A broadway house got this 1 I am about to lay in a stock of blankets comforters ad a d rugs for the winter I 1 am going to make a special department in my store this winter for this kind of goods I 1 have not bought any of my and I 1 am very busy and I 1 cant spare the time to come to new york and look at things myself wont you please send me of each of the good I 1 want to buy and if I 1 like them I 1 may an order for all my stock another broad way house got a letter almost identical idon from in another town in both cases drummers were sont instead of the samples ane first request was really from a dealer in dry goodsin a small way 1 drummer got an order largo enough to pay him for his trap the other drummer had a different experience when he got to tho town he looked all around for a store kept by tho writer of the note lie fand any lie went to the poat office and there learned abathe man be was looking for wa a clerk in a grocery a tore iio was a young fellow iwho had recently been married ne ald nt have enough blankets he said and he want to buy any iio thought that if tho firm ho wrote to was foolish enough to send him a supply ho would bo abo gainer he soo any thing wrong in asking for them thea threatened to have him arrested for attempting to obtain the things under alse pretense and then left him it is tho demands of tho seekers after things that create tho moat trouble almost all merchants aro to send samples of their small wares to any one who alivs any idea of purchasing but it is that at least one halt of the requests fors imply come from persons who nover buy and who really haye no use for and dont want the simples that they ask for they seem to arito simply with the idea of getting something for nothing abo sample habit i not of recent origin thirty ago at an institute fair a man who had a latent flour to sell mado griddle grid dlo cakes and auf finsand gayo them to visitors as samples that was tho beginning of the thing some years later the proprietors of large retail stores advertised that they would gladly send samples of their wares to persons who lived out of ton and who could not afford to como to new york this enabled purchaser sto see what they were buying before they sent their money through ehg mailys it was these advertisements that fully developed the habit and where it used to take a few dollars or at most a fow hundreds a year to supply the demand for samples it now takes thousands large houses have special departments and employ etra clerks in them keeping them busy at all seasons of the year hundreds of dollars aro spent for age alone and thousands more for abo goods thit are given away are many house in this cita chati receive from to requests for samples a year and there arc several that receive our and avo times that number pully 85 per cent of the como from women and of those 70 per cent aro from married women 2 the habit does not scorn to have taken a very strong hold on men but large clothing houses and tailors say that they get a good many letters and good deal for samples th oya save abood bealby cutting up ohp oad pieces of doth that they canno tison the manufacture of the clothing and sending them as samples the sample habit saia merchant with whom a reporter talked hag about reached its greatest development 1 think the merchants built it ap pp and they will have to kill it off it has become too largo a drain and as eating into profits to an alarming extent of course it will never bo go entirely for it isnec desira bleto dobo some method to by which the who send tor sam pies of things they dont want may found when they are chok ed off we wont complain |