Why should as many people deal at your store, as patronize a shop that makes an endeavor to get their trade and shows them that it is worth while to come to its doors?
Why should a newspaper send as many customers to you, in half the time it took to fill an establishment which advertised twice as long and paid twice as much for its publicity?
This is the day when the best man wins—after he proves that he is the best man—when the best store wins, when it has shown that it is the best store—when the best goods win, after they've been demonstrated to be the best goods.
If you want the plum you can't get it by lying under the tree with your mouth open waiting for it to drop—too many other men are willing to climb out on the limb and risk their necks in their eagerness to get it away from you.
It is a man's game—this advertising—just hanging on and tugging and straining all the time to get and keep ahead. It is the finite expression of the law of Competition, which sits in blind-folded justice over the markets of the world.
[You Must Irrigate Your Neighborhood]
You Must Irrigate Your Neighborhood
Half a century ago there were ten million acres of land, within a thousand miles of Chicago, upon which not even a blade of grass would grow. Today upon these very deserts are wonderful orchards and tremendous wheatfields. The soil itself was full of possibilities. What the land needed was water. In time there came farmers who knew that they could not expect the streams to come to them, and so they dug ditches and led the water to their properties from the surrounding rivers and lakes; they tilled the earth with their brains as well as their plows—they became rich through irrigation.