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Show THE 0R0SS-R0AD8 8TORE Next to housekeeping and farming, retail salesmanship engiges more people than any other occupation in tho United States. Tho city corner grocer and tho country cross-roads general store aro fdmlllar rrom Florida to Washington. There are moro people engaged In selling things than in making them more clerks than industrial in-dustrial workers. And retailing is generally general-ly poorly done and tho retailer poorly paid. As Mr. Edward Mott Wollcy points out elsewhere In this magazine, the difference betweon a good merchant and a poor one is very great, and in retailing as in everything every-thing else cheap help is tho costliest in proportion to what It does. It is generally supposed that any ono can "keep store," but it Is rar rrom true. In one city or 30,000 people In the Middle West more than 30 per cent, or the retail merchants rail in every ten-year period. Everywhere tho rato or railurc among storekeepers is high. Retailing is a profession or great numbers num-bers that needs dignifying and better organization. or-ganization. The little stores all over tho country need to learn that to "keep siore" is not merely to get the monoy, but to satisfy tho customer; to understand that tho store exists foi tho customer, not the customer Tor tho store; that profits and wages come rrom service rendered; that & store can do more than only suply the wants or its customers; it can servo them by introducing new things which tnoy ought to have. The department stores and tho mail order houses aro highly organized and their tremendous growth is based upon tho service that they do. But most or the people or the United States spend most or their monoy at tho little stores in which the art or salesmanship is llttlo known and in which tiic cash register docs all the accounting. Tho retail clerk has bcon a poorly paid and unattractive figure in American lire not go much rrom tho Job ho has had as rrom tho way he has done it. And, on the othor hand, the public has been ill sorved. Yet thoro aro enough scattered examples or goo'd servlco in the little towns or at tho cross-roads stores to show what a tre-mondous tre-mondous agency Tor progress thoso establishments estab-lishments can bo. Properly run, thoy rank with the school and tho church, and in many places thoy aro ovon more poworrul, Tor ono way or another thoy aro oxorting thoir lnnuonco every day upon tho material things or country living. Tho World's Work. |