| Show 0 11 uy WILL I 1 i HUNCE OF J C penney says nation needs restoration of confidence J C penney founder of the J C penney co one of the larger chain store organizations of the country speaking before the ki wanas club at brooklyn N Y last week said business at the present time is going to the men or organizations which are most completely adapting themselves to present day conditions just as the economist starts insisting that the world must be rebuilt in general because there is no more business and no way to put life into what little t there here is left someone comes along with the empress eugenic hat bat and the hat making centers of the country go on a twenty four hour bour aday a day schedule the wool industry listens to its own obituary read to it by despairing workers in its own field and then designers begin to call for wool in dresses the wool centers start buzzing with activity and there seems to be plenty of money to buy their output the designers who created the empress eugenie eugenic hats and those who devised wool dresses that pleased public fancy were doing in their own fields just what our store managers were doing in theirs when I 1 they put their finger r on the pulse of local demands in in the their i r c communities 0 mm unities there were merchants in every locality who were doing outstanding s jobs in their commini community and back of these jobs was always positive evidence that such merchants had put their fingers on the pulse of the present situation recent figures used to discuss the present economic situation revealed the fact that there are around people employed in gainful occupations in this country at the present time if each of these people were to spend one dollar a day more than they are spending at the present time the entire shrinkage in trade volume shown in yearly retail sales volume since the start of the present slump in buying would be e ei I 1 i in spending this extra dollar a day those who are at present employed would be bettering their j own jobs and making now new jobs for those who are at present un 1 employed one dollar in circulation is worth about four hidden away in the mattress or in the sugar bowl the start of the present situation came not in the fact that we were spending too many dollars but that we were getting too little for what we were spending the scales of values were not working right As a nation we have become unreasonably acute to statements which suggest further hard times we read that wage scales in in certain industries are arc being cut ten per cent but we do not read that the things which the wages will be spent for have been cut in many instances from twenty to forty per cent that in many of the essential lines of merchandise the prices today are less than they have been at any ti time line since 1914 it is impossible for us to eat cat our cake and have it at the same time if my mv pay check was 10 per ce cent nt less leas than it was for the same month last year how bow is its purchasing power reflected in what I 1 pay for rent food clothes my pay check is in terms of its purchasing power seven peri per cent greater than it was last yeara out of that seven per cent net increase I 1 can contri contribute aper ute to making jobs for other people I 1 can use it to do a little buying of things that are being offered to me at prices I 1 can afford if I 1 am saving seventeen per cent on the aver average a ge on the things I 1 buy wise buying at the present time will pay me better than hoarding boarding my money at lo 10 low W in terest erest returns the greatest contribution to tg th the e common good which we as merchants mere hants can make will come not from our donations to charity which in its effect on the public welfare is a passive force but from our contribution to returning confidence our present situation is not being helped by the many new and ingenious methods which are benig found to impose increasing tax burdens these burdens are already threatening to encroach themselves upon the retail structure of ther the country which is carrying a sufficiently large load at the present time excesses have in some cases v followed the imposition of tae upon retail selling the gasoline tax in most states has hag reached the figure of seven cents a gallon a tax of 40 per cent on the basic retail price of the gasoline any movement at the present time which will impose a penalty on the efforts of any retail organization which is sincerely and genuinely trying to render the service of distribution of the necessities essi ties of life on a basis of tro tzue economy is a thrust at the very forces from which will come the revised and rejuvenated business life of the country |
