My idea was to run the sale on the plan of automatic reduction of price. I had got the idea from a magazine which had said that, if you could offer anything to people which appealed to the sporting instinct that is in every one of us, you would attract attention. So I decided to try to appeal to this sporting instinct by automatically reducing the goods one cent in every ten cents every day, until the goods were reduced to nothing,—and then give away what was left.
I had talked this over with the boys at our Monday's weekly meeting—which, by the way, had been a most interesting one and continued for over an hour instead of the three-quarters of an hour we had planned—and they had been very enthusiastic over it. I had also talked it over with Betty and Jock and Fellows. While Jock shook his head and said, "Ye're takkin' a big risk, mon," Betty had said, "Go ahead and do it, boy!" Fellows just said, "Bully, you're going to be a real man before you're through!"
Larsen seemed to be getting younger every day. When I came out of the store the day after I had announced my plans, he was talking over the idea with the other boys in a very excited and enthusiastic manner.
The sale was planned to start in two weeks hence, and, during those two weeks, car signs were displayed in all our trolleys, worded like this:
"A penny in ten a day,
Till the goods are given away."
DAWSON BLACK'S AUTOMATIC SALE
Begins Thursday, Aug. 26.
Get Particulars.
In addition to this, Larsen and Wilkes tacked these signs on all the trees and blank spaces they could about the town.
Just one week before the sale started, I put the following "ad." in both our local papers for three days, without any change of copy:
AUTOMATIC—THAT'S THE WORD
that describes the big sale
DAWSON BLACK
is running from Thursday, Aug. 26 to ——? You decide
when the sale ceases.