“Raise the price until it will show a profit, but give full measurement.”
Gardiner laughed. “You wouldn’t sell a barrel in a year,” he said. “The public would refuse to pay your price. They would rather be cheated, and not know it, than pay an honest price, and know it. The public bring these things upon themselves. They place a premium upon dishonesty. They will actually coax a man to lie to them. Tell a man, or better still, a woman, that you are selling a two dollar article for a dollar, and she will fight her way to the counter; but tell her the truth, that you are selling an article worth a dollar for a dollar, and she will pass your store in search of a merchant who has fictions more to her liking. If the public want us to play fair, why do they refuse to set the example, or at least show some appreciation of fair treatment? They are never tired of telling of the dishonesty of their merchants; I could relate deeds of trickery resorted to by customers which make the devices we practise look like the harmless sport of little children. But, to return to the subject, we could adulterate the coal oil and give them full measurement, if that would please you better.”
“But isn’t adulteration against the law?”
“So are turkey raffles.”
Burton winced. He had attended one of these country gatherings the previous evening, and come home considerably lighter in pocket although without any feathered trophies.
“I do not mean to be personal,” Gardiner said, kindly enough. “I merely want to show that, after all, the law takes very little notice of the man who steals in a gentlemanly way. Robbery is an art, and it is the crude thief that gets into trouble.”
“Speaking of adulteration reminds me of one of my employers, who was a druggist as well as a general store keeper. He was an honest, well-intended fellow, but he didn’t propose to let any one get very much the better of him. Now it happened that the rural municipality required a thousand ounces of strychnine, put up in half-ounce bottles, for gopher poison. The drug at that time was worth fifty-eight cents an ounce wholesale, and when the council came to the boss for his price he quoted seventy-five cents, which was not unreasonable, seeing that he had to furnish the bottles and labels and do the bottling—not a job to be desired. But these councillors, being anxious to safeguard the interests of their good friends the ratepayers, and incidentally give a lesson in good bargaining, sent to the city for prices. When they came back and told the boss they could get their supply for sixty cents I expected he would tell them to go and get it, and to make certain other calls while they were about it, but he just laughed and said if the city firm could do it for that he guessed he could, and he took the order. And he cleared three hundred dollars on that transaction.”
“How could that be possible, if the strychnine cost him fifty-eight cents, and he sold for sixty?” queried Burton.
“Because Epsom salts cost him four cents a pound and the gophers never knew the difference.”
Both men laughed, and at that moment the store door opened, and a farmer, furred and frost covered, struggled in with a case of eggs.