"Exactly. And if you tell those facts to your trade, they will buy the better article in just the same way."
"Then, if I am selling more of the better-class goods than the cheaper ones, you would advise me to give Stigler the cheap business—give up the fight for it?"
"No," he returned with a smile. "Don't give up the fight, but fight him in a way that will hurt him most. That is, to educate the people away from the cheap goods."
"I see! Kind o' put him out of business by killing the demand for his goods!"
"That's the idea, and it sounds easy if you say it quickly. Candidly," he said, "I don't think it will hurt your business much. I wouldn't, personally, mind another hardware store opening next to me, particularly if they played the game according to Hoyle."
"But Stigler won't do it!" I cried.
Betty agreed with Barlow that the thing to do was to try to develop the sale for the better-class articles. "For," said she, "if a woman buys a ten-cent egg-beater, you make three cents profit on it. If she buys a dollar egg-beater, you make over thirty cents profit on it, and the sale of one of those dollar articles is about equal to a dozen of the cheap ones."
"By Jove, you're right!" I exclaimed. "Perhaps Stigler's latest move to 'run me off my feet' may be the petard which will hoist him off his own; at any rate, as regards his five-and-ten-cent venture."
Naturally, I could think of nothing but Stigler and five-and-ten-cent competition, and finally I had an idea. This idea was awfully simple—unless it proved to be simply awful.
There were in Farmdale about a dozen stores to rent. I had no thought of renting them; but I was going to see the landlords of those places and see what they would charge me to rent the windows for a week! and then I'd ask Barlow to let me hire his men for an evening to trim each of those windows with the better-class kitchen goods, and then I'd put a big sign in each window something like this: "If you want kitchen goods that wear, you'll find them at Dawson Black's." I'd have smart little talking signs worked up and put on the goods, saying why they were better than cheap articles, and asking customers to come to my store at 32 Hill Street, and we would demonstrate why it paid to get the best. "It pays to get the best." That was to be the slogan, and I would print it on the bottom of all price tickets and talking signs!