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Show big mail order concerns maintain departments of considerable magnitude magni-tude to check up the towns where the local merchants appear to lack enterprise. There they concentrate their batteries bat-teries of advertising and catalogue distribution. The mail order house never prospers pros-pers in a town where the local merchants mer-chants advertise consistently, because the mail order men know they cannot compete with the local store if the merchant understands his business. The cheapness with which the big mail order man can buy is more than offset by the low overhead the local merchant can get along with. To hold his own, however, the local lo-cal merchant must not hide his light under a bushel. The public needs educating to a knowledge that they can buy at home as cheaply, that they can actually see what they are buying'before they pay for it, and that they do not have to wait sometimes weeks for the delivery deliv-ery of he article they want. The National Cloak and Suit company com-pany reports a heavy increase in its business all over the country, though it is doubtful if this great concern carries anything like the line of up-to-date goods carried by local stores throughout the country. When the merchants get ready to talk plainly to the people they will ,'iave nothing to fear from the mail order man, but if they remain silent, then the outsider will surely burrow his way into their profits. Self-satisfaction has spelled many a bankruptcy. LOCAL ADVERTISING WILL KILL MAIL ORDER BUSINESS Sales totals of the great mail order! house show an enormous increase.1 particularly in strictly farming sec-' tions. This is not pleasant news for the; retail stores in our average small town, but it is what they mey expect. There is only one way in which the insidious mail order campaigns can be combatted, and that is by local mer-' chants frankly explaining their merchandising mer-chandising possibilities to the people by advertising. It is a well known fact that the |