To begin with, it is very important to realize to the full the special position of women in the United States as contrasted with the rest of the world. Woman has never before attained, in any country, the psychological position that she enjoys in America. This status is so astounding to visitors from other countries that they often feel a sharp shock of surprise and revulsion; while even some of our young satiric novelists, like Sinclair Lewis and Louis Bromfield, who spend enough time in Europe to note the contrasts, are convinced that American women autocratically “rule the roost,” and that American men exist and labor largely to pour more spending money into their wives’ laps. Count Keyserling of Germany was convinced after his visit here, that woman in America represented a new kind of aristocracy, “queening it” in quite high-handed fashion, and living in luxury and leisure upon the labors of man,—the commoner. He sensed an unconscious ✓ belief among American women that these were her inalienable rights, and that she regarded her position and privileges somewhat as the aristocracy in Europe regards their own special prerogatives.

This is satire of course, but not wholly unjustified satire; for any fair-minded American woman who has traveled must agree that she enjoys great economic advantages and is held in very high chivalrous regard by American men; a condition stemming back to the pioneer days of America when women were scarce and highly valued. She has the widest freedom to enter business even after marriage, and as a wife and mother she is deemed a partner in the family enterprise. Marriage being based on “romance” in America, it is inevitable that women are highly regarded, and that this high regard be extended to financial considerations.

3. The High Status of American Women in Family Spending,—The American male himself often testifies that he labors in order that his wife and children should enjoy luxury and comfort. He seems to enjoy himself most at earning, while content to leave the pleasure of spending to his women. It has therefore become a male American tradition that the wife is the purchasing agent of the family, and on lower income levels men actually turn over intact, their pay envelopes to their wives. Such a condition puts buying power into women's hands on a tremendously broad scale,—so broad indeed that in a research made by Dr. H. L. Hollingworth of Columbia University, the only item that men bought entirely by themselves, without consultation with women, was their own collars! The purchase of not another article of apparel was free from the coöperating purchasing influence of women; and now that men are wearing shirts with attached collars so extensively, even that little island of isolation is being taken from man!

Every article of family use, even those beginning with exclusively male interest, like automobiles and radio, have slowly come into woman's purchasing fold, and their design, distribution, sales and advertising vitally affected by the fact of woman's purchasing standards. Since all but a mere small fraction of income goes for family purposes, it is of course inevitable that woman should dominate family expenditure. The percentage of this domination is a matter of dispute, but the minimum that students of the subject name is 80%. 028 13I am not able to agree with this, and I place it at 90% if we include, as I think we must, woman's increasing voice in investments, savings and the general types of expenditure. The reasonableness of this high percentage is further demonstrated in the chapter on women's wealth and property in the U.S., a wealth which is astounding our bankers.

Surely such a staggering percentage of spending power as 80% or 90% in the hands of woman is something of the deepest importance to analyze. It apparent that women have developed a very special faculty and ability for spending; a fact which any seller will readily grant when he recalls the great differences between men and women as buyers. I was in a photographic material store not long ago and man and wife were at the counter looking at a home motion picture projector. The clerk and the husband were getting along famously talking of how the machine worked and what interesting things it would project right in the home parlor. They were coming close to a sale, when the wife began to ask questions, practical to-the-point questions that snapped out like fire-crackers. “How much do the films cost to rent? ... What! We must buy aa $50 book of tickets! And one feature film costs as much as $10? And how long can we keep the films? Only one day and pay extra if kept longer? Heavens! Absurd! And we pay express both ways? John, we don't want it. Don't you see what we'd be letting ourselves in for? Come along—we can't afford it!” And John went “along,” while the clerk looked daggers after the wife. He would have made a sale to the husband, who was like a boy fascinated with a new mechanical toy; but Mrs. Consumer had other fish to fry with the family dollars—and who is there among the male sex to fully appreciate how right Mrs. Consumer probably was? She and she alone probably carried in her mind the practical relativity of values of their family income; only she knew the dividing line between what was sound expenditure and unwise expense. She probably was planning to buy an electric refrigerator or a new rug or foresaw mentally the tuition bills that would soon come due for Mary and Philip at college.

4. The Explanation of Mrs. Consumer's Buying Power.—Out of this psychology rises Mrs. Consumer's great buying power and the American man's content that she exercise it. Her mind is daily busy weighing these merchandise buying considerations, whereas the American man is thinking in terms of ideas and achievements and more earning, and is frankly a rather easy mark as a buyer, and admits it. Who that knows selling has not seen a man in a haberdashery? “Wrap me up a dress shirt, size 15½” he will say; or “Give me that tie.” No inquiry about price or quality—just swift and snappy decisions. The European man is not like that, of course—neither are more sophisticated or off-standard American men; but in general the American man, however remarkable an industrial purchasing agent he may be, is not especially competent at personal or family purchasing. It is he, not his wife, who patronizes the fake oil stock salesman, who falls for the sets of books he will never read, who gambles in Wall Street and loses like other lambs, and who buys cat-and-dog stocks and various other useless appendages which sap the family patrimony. Some American men are exceptions of course, but we are speaking of the American man en masse. These men secretly realize what the situation is and permit their wives, with their more conservative point of view, to take the family financial reins out of their hands. Some of them have learned to do so only after some rather humiliating experiences, while plenty of others have not yet realized it, but will. True, there are husbands cursed with irresponsible, extravagant wives, but these by no means represent the average family on the comfortable or lower income ranges. In the case of the higher levels of income it is natural that the husband, whose business acumen is attested by his higher income, ranks above his wife as a caretaker of the family exchequer, but there are many exceptions even here. Any number of American men are brilliant money makers and yet very untrustworthy custodians of their earnings. They are safe if they have wives who can conserve these earnings, but if not they live on a very erratic economic plane.

Women are by nature conservers of values. It is their 030 15oldest instinct next to mother love. For millions of years they have had to make sure that seeds were planted and harvested and that there was food and shelter and supplies, while man lived in his world of ideas and adventure and even disdained to cut up the animal he shot for food. Woman's economic, and even political and social dignity and status, has always been high wherever she had an important share in the domestic arrangements. The American Indian squaw has always fed and clothed and housed and taken care of the Indian and the family, and because of this enjoyed a greater degree of liberty and equality than even her civilized white sister did until recent years.

In drawing this picture of woman's status and buying power in America I do not mean to overvalue her or make her out a prodigy, but merely to get the facts in a true focus. Woman is of course powerful in buying largely because of her secondary position to man. She is not man's equal in earning and doing and building, therefore she gravitates toward the position of quartermaster rather than general in their mutual organization. She takes charge of supplies largely for the very reason that she can't lead the forces in the field. But then we have Napoleon's word for it that “armies move on their stomachs,” and it is, alas, even more true that families move on their market baskets!

A civilization like ours—unlike that of the Roman or the Greek— centers its genius upon improving the condition of life. It secures its thrills from inventing ways to live easier and more fully; means to bring foods from more ends of the earth and add to the variety served on the family table; methods to bring more news and entertainment to the family fireside; ways to reduce the labor and hardships of living; ways to have more beauty and graciousness in the domestic domicile; ways to satisfy more of the instincts of more of the family group.

Inevitably in such a civilization woman's influence grows increasingly larger; for woman is the logical center of peaceful living, the improvement of civilization and the gratification of instincts. Even man's “adventure” in a peaceful civilization 031 16focuses logically upon increasing the value and variety and complexity of the home nucleus, so that he becomes, in the mass, no longer a warrior or an adventurer into far places, but an organizer and a fetch-and-carry man on a glorified scale, for the purposes of domesticity. As a writer recently facetiously put it:

“The Anglo-Saxon male tradition is slipping! Our civilization is lush soil for the feminine, but barren soil for the masculine characteristics of history and legend.

“We make much ado over our so-called modern industrial age, but what is it except kindly taking in women's washing and calling it a laundry—doing women's scullery work and calling it a food factory—taking in women's sewing and calling it a textile industry? So we busily mix dough, ply the needle and bustle about with soap and laundry machinery and call ourselves he-men!”

To this Mrs. Consumer can only reply that both men and women seem to be agreed upon what constitutes real civilization, especially since the World War so apparently finally warped and destroyed the last vestige of the male's romantic notion about war. Man has decided to glorify the fireside rather than the God Mars, and to graft upon himself some of the more humanitarian principles with which women have always been concerned. He will fight nature, not himself; make war upon disease, discomfort, ugliness, hunger, ignorance, proverty and misery rather than upon other men. He will live gorgeously and luxuriously, not upon goods taken from others is conquest, but upon goods which he himself manufactures and distributes. If this be feminine, then make the most of it! is woman's reply to the iconoclast. If it seems to some to lack the lift and glory of traditional war and conquest,—then we should admit that a new concept of glory which is neither male nor female but human is being substituted by the American man, in which the prize is the lifting of living standards in this country, as well as in the backward countries of all the world. Here is glory and adventure of a kind which woman can applaud! Adventure which is constructive, and in which women and the family can share 032 17mightily. That it makes Mrs. Consumer the pivotal center of modern life is simply the logic of nature.

5. The Figures Showing Mrs. Consumer's Buying Power.—Having now presented the psychological picture of the basis for Mrs. Consumer's great buying power in America, I want to discuss some of its exact measurements and extent.

The 1928 pay envelope of the American people totaled approximately $92,000,000,000. Of this, as admitted by the Director of the U.S. Bureau of Standards, $52,000,000,000 is spent by women for food, clothing, shelter and other services. Taking this figure as representing the most conservative estimate of what women buy, we have one billion dollars a week passed out from the hands of Mrs. Consumer. This is 166 millions per business day, or almost about $21,000,000 for each of eight hours per day. Twenty-one millions of dollars per hour, or $350,000 per minute, or almost $6,000 per second is the breath-taking speed with which Mrs. Consumer spends money in America.

How this volume of spending is broken up into divisions is a calculation which cannot very trustworthily be made. But the larger portion of it may be accounted for in the analysis of retail expenditures, which according to Dr. Paul H. Nystrom, professor of marketing at Columbia University, reached a total of $41,000,000 in 1928. The consumer's retail dollar was split up in the manner shown on the adjoining table of statistics. This is a most important and revealing table, for it discloses those “relatives” of purchase which woman the practical family purchasing agent must observe according to her budget. Naturally this does not represent a typical consumer's dollar, but the total retail dollar for the entire nation. 80% to 90% of this is purchased by women.

The Consumer's Retail Dollar

6. Baby and Children's Market.—It is estimated that in 1929 there will be approximately 2,500,000 babies born. The first year expenditures for the little newcomers will amount, in all probability, to about $150.00 each, which makes a total of $375,000,000 a year which American women spend every year for just the little one year-olds. The total baby bill is of course much greater than this; roughly about two billion dollars, when one counts in the little toddlers up to five years of age. The special catering to this purchasing power is to a certain degree neglected, and live druggists and drug manufactures should bestir themselves. A few live druggists and department stores go so far as to hold a series of informal meetings for mothers, at which physicians, nurses, etc. speak on baby care. This is the kind of consumer contact I thoroughly believe in.

Each year 400,000 high school students graduate, 2,064,000 adolescents come of age, 1,250,000 couples marry, 2,000,000 families move into a new house, 2,000,000 farm folk move to the city, and 1,000,000 city folk move to the farm, and 1,400,000 people die. Thus does this world creak on, creating changes calling for new merchandising needs.

“Average” individuals or families do not exist, of course. They are statistical abstractions. The “average” family has, for instance, 4.3 people in it, but I have never yet seen a three-tenths person!

Still, it is necessity in selling to find common denominators and visualize a composite picture of the mass, or at least certain particular levels of the mass. For that reason I believe it is worthwhile to try here to visualize Mr. Consumer in a more personal manner. It is extremely easy for a seller of goods to suffer from mirages about Mrs. Consumer. I have found innumerable advertising men and marketing executives who carry in their minds completely erroneous pictures of Mrs. Consumer in the mass. Unconsciously they tend to think of her (because they would like so to think of her) as a woman of their own class or nearly so. The executive higher up in business is guilty of the same thing, only more so! Neither make as a rule an accurate study of just what levels of Mrs. Consumer they must address, and what she is like on those levels. They are often as a matter of fact, somewhat romantic 035 20in their point of view about Mrs. Consumer, their customer. They gild her and embroider her and doll her up for their own delectation. Editors of women's magazines, before the day of large circulations, did the same thing. One I knew always spoke a little feelingly of having visited in a small town in Ohio one day and suddenly seeing there a particular home and a particular woman with her children, attending her flower pots on the veranda. For years after this haunted him and fixed in his mind the one woman for whom he edited the magazine. She was an ideal, of course, and undoubtedly far too refined, well-to-do and exceptional to be the real Mrs. Consumer-reader for a magazine which hoped to have millions of circulation. He endowed her with an education, a personality and a sensitivity which she did not posses, and before the millions of circulation could be obtained another editor far more cynical and realistic in his understanding of the masses of Mrs. Consumer was necessary.

Men in the U.S. are well known to be over-idealistic and chivalrous in their ideas of women. The foreign man sees his womenkind far more cynically—doubtless too much so. But when you must sell to Mrs. Consumer it is just as well to have courage for the “low-down” about her. Newspaper publishers in the U.S. have increased their circulations with every move to cater to the American public as it really is. Pulitzer's New York World began, Hearst's Journal continued, and The News and the Graphic tabloids (it is to be hoped) completed and have even gone beyond the average level in the journey downward to the plane upon which the masses of the common people appear to live and throb. The seller of universal consumer goods is in no essentially different position; he must be able to speak on a par with the average Mrs. Consumer, and from her point of view, with full allowance for her position.

What, then, can be told about Mrs. Consumer? I have already elsewhere described her buying psychology. Here we should deal with her education, and literacy, vocabulary, social status, her physical characteristics, etc.

7. The Average Mrs. Consumer's Education, Literacy and Vocabulary.—I have many times raised a laugh as well as 036 21astonishment in stating that Mrs. Average Consumer has a vocabularly of only about 1,200 words, but adding that though her stock of words may be small, she has a rapid turnover! There is of course no official way to determine how large the average woman's vocabularly is, but when one must calculate an average from 35 million women of all kinds and types, including negroes, poor whites and foreign-born women who cannot speak any English whatsoever, I really believe that the average woman's vocabularly would be only 1,200 words. The high school graduate has a vocabularly of about 13,000 words, but of course only a small fraction of women are high school graduates. On the levels from the comfortable upward, ✓ doubtless Mrs. Consumer has a vocabularly more nearly that of the average mechanic, which is 7,500 words; but this leaves other millions of women on the lower levels to be accounted for, at a much lower vocabularly.

As for literacy, we must not overlook the fact that the number of illiterate women in the U. S. is today close to 3,000,000. About 12% of foreign-born women are illiterate.

From college education, Mrs. Average Consumer is of course still further removed. There are only about 2,500,000 women in the country who are college graduates or have taken some college work. Mrs. Average Consumer's education consists approximately of a sixth grade school education. 95 or ✓ 96% of Mrs. Consumers know only what the grade schools taught them, and many have forgotten much of that! Mrs. Average Consumer does not know more, intellectually, than the present 14 year old adolescent, if as much. * She would not know how to define the word “philanthropy” or “courage,” or describe the difference between “poverty” and “misery” (although she may be feeling it) or between “character” and “reputation” or “laziness” and “idleness,” or between the words “revolution” and “evolution.” She has a “memory span” for only seven digits. Since only 30% of American people brush their teeth, it cannot even be claimed that Mrs. Average Consumer brushes her teeth! Of course this does not * This is based, on the authority of Dr. H. L. Hollingworth, of Columbia University, on the Stanford-Binet test. 037 22apply to Mrs. Consumer of the Comfort Level and the levels above.

8. General Character of Mrs. Consumer.—In order to rescue Mrs. Consumer from the apparently low status given her by intellectual tests, we must remember that this low status is a characteristic of any average person in a great country like ours. It is, after all, far above the status of the women of any other large country. The thing to remember is that Mrs. Consumer's intelligence is of a native kind, rather than a mere school-rated kind, and that this native, instinctive, practical intelligence is most competent, shrewd and effective. It comprehends much more than it understands in detail. I know many college educated women who are still very hazy as to what the germ theory is, but you may be sure that in their daily family work they meticulously act upon the assumption that germs must be outwitted. The mounting sales of antiseptics and germicides surely prove this.

Mrs. Consumer habitually proceeds more along the lines of instinct than upon theory or reason, and accommodates herself more readily to practical realities. Man is more stubbornly theoretical. She is adept at matching one desire against another and evaluating her emotional and instinctive reactions. The logical-minded social worker who severely criticizes a woman of a very poor family when she “blows herself” to some cut glass for her sideboard is entirely forgetful of the fact that the cut glass bowl may make the woman's hard life bearable through the pleasure it gives her. Without it, she might “break” under the severe economic pressure. She knows life “in the round” better, perhaps, than the social worker.

On a higher plane many Mrs. Consumers do equally “illogical” or “unreasonable” things in their spending. Women understand such acts, but only a few men ever do. They often revive their spirits and youthfulness and their zest in life with such “foolish” purchases. One reason why so many women have failed to get a thrill out of scientific training in home economics or budget-keeping is because it is too strictly logical. It is mechanistic, and women have never felt much in common with mechanics. They live emotionally on a pulsating rhythm, 038 23not on a flat plateau, such as is more characteristic of men. Their moods are of shifting hues, not of one set color. The emotional consideration is to them always the vital consideration.

Mrs. Consumer has changed very markedly in character from the last generation; that is now a truism. This change came about through a release from several cramping pressures of tradition, which have made her much less suppressed and less fretted with a sense of social, religious, political, sex and mental inferiority such as women of the last generation suffered from. The present generation of women are not bound much by religious controls, nor by the controls of social position and caste, nor by the feeling of being below men in political rights, mental ability or sex inhibition. It is quite amazing what sudden, far-reaching changes these represent. They very naturally alter every woman's outlook and thus alter her purchases and ideas of living. She is less sentimental, and more aggressive and sure of herself and her tastes. She is not afraid to be individual, and this reflects itself in desiring specialties and novelties and new patterns and colors. She knows precisely what she wants, even in color and line, far better than the older generation; and of course this is why all sellers are finding that consumers, not sellers, decide trends today.

There are undoubtedly four distinct age periods for women consumers, and I classify these as follows:

16 to 22: Narcissistic and Self-Gratification Period: In this period general family goods is more or less uninteresting, and appeals made to economy, logic, health and sometimes even sanitation are not very powerful. Personal adornment, pleasure, vanity, excitement, style,—these are the predominating appeals.

22 to 28: Romantic Home Building Period: This covers the period when young couples are thinking about or actually setting up new homes, and is a most important consumer period, for it marks the creation of the new generation of homes, often with distinctly individual ideas of change from the old generation. The new and radical are the most powerful appeals in this period.

28 to 38: Alert Home-making, Cooking and Housekeeping Period: This represents the apex of the modern consumer attitude; the period when women are most approachable and suggestible, alert and open-minded. They are still ratable, in America as young women, and they are still energetic, youthfully and fashionably dressed. Furthermore the appeals of logic, economy, health, sanitation, hygiene, labor saving and efficiency have their maximum opportunity in this period, while fashion, personal appearance, pleasure and up-to-dateness are also still appeals of great power.

38 onward; Parenthood and Relaxing Period: In this period luxury attains a higher place in consumption because of the gradual accumulations of wealth and earning power, and appeals to luxury and comfort, travel, new housebuilding, health, etc., bear good fruit. In sheer volume, this is the maximum period of consumption, but conservatism, habit and preference begin to rule out consumption of certain goods on which younger women will take a chance. It is doubtless with accurate knowledge of this that our women's magazines have in recent years taken very particular pains to emphasize quite pointedly that they edit for young women, for women under 35. New goods, new ways, new standards of living have not such a responsive appeal to women of this age.

9. Types and Classifications of Women Consumers.—Naturally an effort to classify women consumers is largely guesswork. A former president of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs made such a general classification some time ago, as follows:

20% of American wives are of the jazz or “can-opener type.”

This, coming from a woman, indicating that 70% of American married women, or nearly 17,000,000 wives, are of a kind that is below an admirable standard, is certainly frank and a bit devastating. It leaves only about 7,200,000 wives in 040 25the admirable class. But, of course, this classification was for controversial and critical purposes, and if so many women are of the nagging, drudge, jazz or baby doll type, doubtless their living status and their husbands have much to do with it.

More important for purposes of classification is the seggregation of women into more practically useful types for the seller. This has been done for the guidance of textile and fashion goods sellers, but it is useful for any seller. Here they are:

Youthful

Middle Aged

Matured

Naturally the youthful or unmarried type indicates a wider variety; Mrs. Consumer tends to mould herself more to a pattern after she is married—but not even then until she has children; often not until she has two or three. It is one of the marked characteristics of Mrs. Consumer of today, that she insists on being somewhat girlish even until past 35. She “dies hard” so far as her youthfulness is concerned. Women in other countries settle down to matronliness as early as 25, but there are grandmothers in America who belong to the “jazz” type, and since weight is such a tell-tale, they have violently concentrated on holding down their figures. There are any number of mothers who are less serious and more playful and girlish than their own daughters, who so often at 18 or 20 are in a “serious” or intellectual mood.

Of course, such persistence of youthfulness presupposes living on the Comfort Level or above it. Economic pressure, as nothing else in the world, crushes women's youthfulness. Even child-bearing is not so relentless an aging factors as struggle for existence. Therefore as more and more Mrs. Consumers attain the Comfort and upper levels, we will naturally 041 26have more youthfulness and more purchasing that caters to youthfulness. I should say that the real hope of the textile industry to lift itself out of depression is to cater to the constantly enlarging number of women at the later ages, of 45 to 70. This group is not only being increased because more women live to be older, but because they wear more lively clothes at older age-periods. My own grandmother took to black alpaca at 40 or 45 and never once deserted it until her death at 80. The grandmother of today is a very different Mrs. Consumer. I'm told a tale of a famous old New York store which fell into new hands and found a large roll of alpaca on the shelves. “Throw it out” was the laconic order. “Oh, no,” said the excited clerk, a graybeard, “Mrs. Van Umpty-Ump comes here every spring and fall as regular as clockwork to buy some.” “Out with it!” was the positive order; “it would have been better if you had paid Mrs. Van Umpty-Ump to stay away, because that is exactly why young women stopped coming here! And older women, too!”

10. Statistical Analysis of Women's Sizes and Types.—It is of no small usefulness to know what Mrs. Consumer looks like physically, in the average. Naturally those who make clothes for Mrs. Consumer are obliged to know, and this information may be utilized in various ways.

In general only 22% of women are slender (and this is a genuine revelation, for with all our reducing agonies, less than a quarter of women have evidently achieved their goal!). 50% are of normal figure, and 28% are “heavy.” 9% are shortwaisted, 7% have large busts and 6% have large hips. 21% are short, or under 5′3″. 50% are medium, or between 5′3″ and 5′6″, and 29% are tall, or 5′6″ or over.

The details under each classification are as follows:

Slender: 5% of all women are “short-slender” (bust 30-34); 11% are “medium-slender” (bust 30-34); and 6% are “tall-slender” (bust 30-36).

Normal: 10% of all women are “short-normal” (bust 34-36); 25% are “medium-normal” (bust 34-40), and 15% are “tall-normal” (bust 36-42).

Heavy: 6% of all women are “short-heavy” (bust 36-46); 042 2714% are “medium-heavy” (bust 38-46), and 8% are “tall-heavy” (bust 40-48).

Statistically, this works out as follows:

Slender: 1,800,000 are short-slender; 3,960,000 are medium-slender, and 2,160,000 are tall-slender.

Normal: 3,600,000 are short-normal; 9,000,000 are medium-normal, and 5,400,000 are tall-normal.

Heavy: 2,160,000 are short-heavy; 5,040,000 are medium-heavy, and 2,880,000 are tall-heavy.

The total number that are slender is 7,920,000; the total number that are normal is 18,000,000; the total number that are heavy is 10,080,000. Grand Total, 36,000,000.

11. Guessing at Mrs. Consumer's Character.—Another curious bit of interesting sub-division of women into arbitrary classes has been made by Needlecraft Magazine. It attempted no percentage or statistical grouping, but it presented, with photographs four “types” (1) the Indolent Rich, (2) the Overworked Poor, (3) the Clinging Vine, (4) the Creative Woman. I regard this as a shrewd classification, and shall make so bold as to submit my percentage estimate, based on these types:

1. The Indolent Rich Woman, 1%, 360,000 women.

These classes overlap, of course. The “clinging vine” type is often also an “indolent rich” type—but she may also be in other classes. The creative woman, as I see her, is any woman who works, whether at home or elsewhere. I do not attach any importance to the above—it is merely interesting speculation. As a matter of fact one might profitably enter into some deep-going discussions as to the greater ultimate usefulness of these various types of women. It seems that many “feminists” of today are somewhat disillusioned over working. There is something profound to be said of the relative effects on man of the creative and the indolent types of women. It is a philosophical problem as to whether men are 043 28spurred to their utmost in accomplishment by one or the other type; also whether we wish a civilization in which women work and create, or one in which women merely consume. In my own opinion this depends on how well women solve their work and personal problems; how well they are able to maintain the male sex tension by working. If they fail in this, we may move toward the more savage standard, where only women work.

Change is in the very air Americans breathe, and consumer changes are the very bricks out of which we are building our new kind of civilization. To discuss consumer changes with complete adequacy would mean discussion of America, its genius and destiny, its significance in civilization.

But, I am confining myself to the market-basket point of view, taking the changes as I find them and not attempting to discuss them all, which would clearly take several volumes. Consumer changes rest largely on increased income and greater diffusion of income; but they do not rest on these factors alone. I choose to account for them also in part as due to the increased alertness, sophistication, and power of American women. They have evolved new sets of values and criterions.

12. The Six New Criterions of American Women.—Let us list a few of these outstanding new criterions, inadequate though such an effort must be:

(1) American women have arrived at a new kind of adulthood and no longer consider themselves the timid “wards” 045 30and dependents of their fathers and husbands. They consider themselves individuals, citizens and responsible persons, without trace of a sense of inferiority or fear of taboos. They are less negative and passive, and more positive and aggressive toward life.

One has only to run rapidly over these six new criterions, which have had so marked an impetus in the last dozen years, to realize how truly numerous and remarkable have been the changes they have wrought. All of these changes very pointedly have to do with woman as a consumer, for it is in her purchases or her failure to purchase, that Mrs. Consumer has most authentically indicated her preferences and tendencies.

13. Food as an Index of Consumer Change.—Because food bulks so large in the American budget, it is natural that food purchases should reflect to a very considerable degree all these changes. The American woman sets an astoundingly diversified table today, and will set an even more astounding table tomorrow, when the new methods of preserving and refrigerating food are more widely applied.

The outstanding fact is the very much larger place in the family budget which today is occupied by food. Ten years ago in lectures on family budgets, I and many other home economics authorities considered that 20% of the family income for food was as much as good nourishment and good economics demanded. It would appear from our figures that, whatever may be a sound or frugal ideal, the American family spends 27% of its total income on food. I am inclined to believe that the actual percentage of the average family budget spent for food ranges from 35% to 40%.

How does America's high ratio of food consumption compare 047 32with other countries? According to Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor, an international food expert, * America and traditionally wellfed Germany were on a par in pre-war times. Each nation consumed approximately 3,650 calories per capita per day, whereas the United Kingdom consumed 2,860 and Italy 2,560. The per capita calorie consumption for the United States in my opinion, is today about 3,800 or 3,900; although it is true, as Dr. Taylor says, that increased income tends toward more varied diet rather than increased in calories per capita. But still there is an increase, since a generous table always superinduces a measure of overeating. We see the reflex of this in the widespread concern of the more fastidious American men and women in regard to overweight. Dr. Taylor himself estimated that 10% of our population consumed more than 4,000 calories, without the hard work which justifies such an intake. I believe this estimate low. The working classes are notably heavy eaters. On the New York East Side, four meals a day are the rule: while among factory and farm populations generally, the intake of food of high calorific value is very heavy. Among working classes, even with the high wages received, the food ratio of expenditure in often 40% to 45% of the total income. In my observation, the steak-eaters and the scorners of salads and vegetables and cheaper cuts of meat, are principally well-paid mechanics.

14. Growth of Eating Outside the Home.—Consideration must also be given to the rapidly increasing amount of food eaten outside the home, in restaurants, at soda fountains, etc. There are today about 125,000 hotels and eating places—an increase of at least 40% in 10 or 15 years. The habit of eating a fourth meal, a late supper, grows with increased prosperity. So serious indeed did the new family habit of eating out at cafeterias and restaurants become in a large western city, that a few years ago the local gas company asked me to develop for them an extensive home cooking 048 33campaign to induce women to go back to their kitchens to prepare food!

The soda fountain has emerged as an eating place and “soft drinks” take rank with candy in the revised eating habits of the American family. The rapid advance in consumption of sugar is another American romance. Back in the days before the Civil War, the consumption of sugar per person was scarcely a few dozen pounds per year; today rising from 79 pounds in 1910 it is now close to 100 pounds per person.

The 85,000 confectionery stores of the country sell 18 pounds of candy per person to the people of the United States —a rise of 300% in a few decades. Candy and soft sweet drinks comprise about six per cent. of our food bill.

If we include candy and sweet drinks in the family food bill, we have a total of 19 billion dollars, or a little less than one half of the country's total retail expenditure, or approximately 33 1/3% of the total family budget. Our expenditures for what we put into our mouths, including tobacco, are today more than our expenditures for all else that we buy in retail stores.

The tendencies disclosed by these and other facts cited, have, of course, produced vigorous reactions from the business interests affected. Some such efforts may be able to halt consumer tendencies slightly, but others are rather hopeless. Mrs. Consumer has in such cases made up her mind somewhat firmly and she is not likely to be dissuaded. Her declining use of bread, meat and potatoes for instance—the latter now being down to two bushels per capita.

15. The Decline of Meat.—There is a growing scarcity of meat, especially the choice cuts, which are all the average person seems to care for. There are also added dietary reasons for reducing our meat diet, because an increasingly urban, sedentary population should not eat so much meat. Meat has in the past been by far the largest food item on the American menu. We have been in the habit of eating a good deal over two billion dollars’ worth of meat of all kinds (not including poultry and fish); and intelligent hopes are for no less than a reduction by one half of the per capita consumption. Even 049 34now, meat is one quarter of our entire food bill. It is a fact astonishing to contemplate that we have spent more for meat than we have for clothing of all kinds. When it is realized that America is still the best dressed nation in the world, the true proportions of this stupendous fact will be noted.

We spend about seven times as much for meat as we spend for bread; and about five times as much for meat as we spend for our public schools; and over ten times as much for meat as we spend for our churches. A rearrangement of our family budget in the direction of more vegetables and fruit and other forms of food is inevitable, and is, in fact, desirably taking place.

16. Frantic Efforts to Stop the tides of Change.—Sellers of the neglected foods are very much worried. The flour millers are trying, with an “eat more bread” propaganda, to raise per capita consumption up to 220 pounds per year. We eat hardly a third of a loaf of bread per day per person today. Milkmen are trying to bring up per capita milk consumption to one quart per capita per day—it is less than a pint per day now. The butter makers want to bring up per capita butter consumption to Australia's high level of 10 pounds above our own. Cheese makers want to raise our cheese consumption by 22 pounds per capita, to equal Switzerland's. All of these efforts are indicative of the American family's desertion of old and cheap forms of nutriment for more attractive and varied new foods. The tremendous impetus given to fruits, vegetables, nuts, apples, raisins, and prunes by grower's coöperative marketing associations is developing a marked change in our diet; while refrigeration cars and ships are bringing to America quantities of other delicacies and tropical foods, all of which are further altering standards of consumption.

These artificial stimulations to consumption are not confined to flood fields. Many articles once strongly desired, have been neglected for other preferences. Cotton goods have made way for cheap silks and the young lady of whatever social station wearing cotton hosiery is today a rarity! Enamelware for the kitchen became overshadowed in popularity 050 35by aluminum, just as tinware had been displaced by enamelware,—until the enamelware makers bestirred themselves with color. Suspenders were almost displaced by belts, carpets by rugs, lace by cretonnes, washtubs by washing machines, bar laundry soap by soap chips. Always the trend is toward something better, but also something more expensive, resulting in always a lift to the sum total of the family budget.

17. Taking it Out on the Textiles.—According to one estimate we spend only about $75 per person per year on clothing. On a family basis, this is about $322 per family per year (using the census figure of 4.3 persons to a family). This is a lower percentage of the present-day family budget than clothing has been accustomed to enjoy in other days, and is a significant social change. How can it be explained?

We are now arriving at a point in this nation-wide saturation of the family budget with new wants, when some old wants must be sacrificed to make room for the new, even if there is no question of price involved. The National Association of Retail Clothiers asserts that the average man no longer cares much about clothing, but centers his interests in his automobile. Iowa, according to this Association, leads in the number of automobiles, but also in careless dress appearance! In a New York State town a clothing store made its annual sales drive selling only 17 of the usual 150 suits sold; whereas across the street in the same interval 25 cars were sold! The shoe manufacturer's plaint is the same. People don't walk much any more thanks to the automobile, so their shoes last too long! Although population has increased 16%, shoe consumption increased only 10% since 1910. We are not so fussy about our footwear—even women, from a quality point of view, as we seem to prefer fancy novelties made of cheaper materials.

We thus see at work some of the social changes due to new types of merchandise and new wealth. Time was when well-to-do farmers’ sons spent a lot of money on fancy watches, guns and clothes; but today they prefer automobiles. A certain level of workmen even in recent war years heavily bought 051 36silk shirts—until their income and surplus reached the Ford car level! The farm woman once wore little else but gingham and black alpaca. Today, she buys copies of Fifth Avenue models and her daughter, whose face was formerly innocent of aught but freckles, now possesses our standard laboratory of toilet articles and not one, but several types of face creams and powders!

There seems little doubt that the newer comforts and luxuries are making far greater headway than the basic industries or the “necessities.” Staple foods like rice have declined markedly. Cotton, like a poor orphan, has been crowded to the side by the brilliant performance of marvelous all-purpose rayon, which is now consumed at about the ratio of a pound per capita, as against half a pound only a few years ago.

That people skimp on familiar types of expenditure in order to obtain new and more exciting satisfactions is obvious. Umbrella sales have declined 15% in these last two years. Even candy, a luxury, has suffered. In clothes we women have trimmed ourselves down to an almost “irreducible minimum,” spending nearly one-half less per dress than formerly, and thus lowering some items of clothing still further down into the lowly “necessity” class. The millinery people have long writhed under the vogue of the economical felt hat which rules out feathers and frills. Even men are no longer so particular about their shoes and hats but patronize mass production chain stores, thus pressing these items lower down into the narrow-profit-necessity class.

Home furnishings have also suffered. There was a further decrease of 12.8% in carpet and rug manufacture in 1927 over 1925, thus the American family evidently spends only $7 per capita annually on carpets and rugs. Indeed only 3½ cents of the consumer's dollar goes for all kinds of house furnishings (excluding furniture, and it too has suffered badly.)

18. The Things That are Gaining.—Meanwhile we use far more cigarettes—1,000 per capita—and buy 177 million dollars’ worth of toilet goods (wholesale), and purchase far 052 37more packaged food, bakery goods, tea and coffee. We spend 11¼ cents of the consumer's dollar for automobiles, 4½ cents on tobacco. The entire toilet goods field has moved up rapidly, the per capita consumption (calculated on wholesale value) being now about $1.75. It was $1.50 at the last (1927) census.

Budget Figures Showing Increase Since 1913

Education is another “luxury” that is gaining rapidly—as is radio, amusements, sports, travel, etc. Ice cream, soft drinks, restaurant eating, smart shoes for women, furs, jewels, etc., are all showing decided upward trends. Even chewing gum grows and grows! More service of all kinds is bought than ever before. The steam laundries have multiplied their volume by five in 16 years. Their 600 million dollar 1928 053 38volume is expected to go to a billion in 1930. Hair dressers, beauty parlors and other personal services have grown in widespread popularity.

Perfume and face powder have become rarified luxuries beyond all expectations. There are now actually 2,500 brands of perfume offered for sale, and perfume for $25 a bottle is sold as never before. There is also color in face powders; Guerlain of Paris makes 28 shades! Another face powder advertiser recently capped the climax of the esoteric appeal by seriously offering “a different face powder for every mood!”

Meanwhile soap languishes somewhat, and so do a long line of basic necessities or “backward industries,” as they are termed in Wall Street. Yet in the past six years the public has spent two billion dollars for radio; a perfectly stupendous sum, every dollar of which has naturally had to be diverted from other goods on which it would have been spent had radio not been invented.

19. General Consumption Changes.—I can do no better than to summarize an important survey completed in May, 1929, by Dr. Leo. Wolman * in which he says that the most sweeping changes are the increased use (1) of foodstuffs; (2) of manufactured goods; (3) of the automobile and radio; (4) of the volume and quality of housing. More minor changes of importance, he reported, are (1) increase in value per square foot of residential floor spaces; (2) an 80% electrification of homes other than farms; (3) rise to 11,350,000 residential telephones; (4) installation of 1,000,000 bath tubs in homes; (5) a domestic water consumption rate two to three times greater than that of any city in Europe; (6) great gain in expenditure for education, charity, social services, health (more than trebled since 1915).

Dr. Wolman also calls attention to vastly increased consumption of silk, rayon, knit goods, carpets, millinery, lace goods, men's furnishings.

As for the farmer, he finds that farmers on “high-value” 054 39farms have kept pace in consumption with the rest of the population, but those on the “low-value” farms have not improved since 1922. There is an annual movement of 2,000,000 people from farm to city, and, on the other hand, a movement of 1,000,000 from city to farm.

20. Changes in Attitude.—It is most apropos in this connection to digest the words of one of the most convinced modernists and style merchandisers in consumer's goods, Mr. Oswald W. Knauth, executive vice president of R. H. Macy & Co., New York, speaking before the American Management Association, April, 1929. It was in Macy's that the “color in the kitchen” movement was actively set in motion. Mr. Knauth's general ideas of consumer attitude and demand are of importance.

“Any changes that have taken place must concentrate on color, style, price, time payments and brand or reputation. In regard to each of these, there has been a very definite change and these changes on the part of the public have seriously affected the whole fabric of merchandising.

“Let us take color and style. During the last decade, the increased circulation of magazines dealing in color and style has been astonishing. The increased attendance at museums has taxed their capacity. The increased bookings of European liners is in index of the greater traveling habits of America. Lectures at women's clubs are a definite part of American life. As a result of all this, we are developing a very definite style of our own, both as regards dress and as regards home furnishings.

“The colors which we demand are neither the garish types which came out of Russia and which were taken over by the French modern movement of five years ago, nor are they the shadowy uncertain shades and mixtures which we associate with somberness. They are, generally speaking, clear colors, stronger than pastel shades and yet not vivid. They are decidedly bright, but not garish. They are positive, and in no sense muddy. The patterns are similarly clear and clean cut. They are rather simple than ornate. But above all, they are positive in their expressions. There is nothing of 055 40Oriental splendor either in color or design which appeals to the American people. Perhaps this can be best illustrated in the purple shades which Americans like as against the more sumptuous purples of a past generation. The purples of today are clear and rather bluish in tint, the purples which we do not want are warm and sumptuous. In these respects of color and style, the modern demand of consumers runs exceptionally true to form. The percentage demand for articles which follows this general description is overwhelming and increasingly significant.

“Now the results of this change can be seen everywhere—in rugs, the imitation Orientals with large flowers and centers have given way to small allover patterns and plain carpets; in women's dress, the fussiness of the past has given way to plain colors and flowing lines; in upholstery, the straggling patterns, the big flowered chintzes are replaced either by plain colors or by small snappy patters; woven goods with their vague outlines are less popular than the clear cut lines of printed goods; the varnished icebox is almost unmarketable—it is a somber note in the kitchen and today's demand is for clean white or a clear green. Look at any novelty jewelry store and note the preciseness of the patterns as against the filigree work of the past. Look at the bathrooms of a recently built house and compare them to the bathrooms of even a few years ago—the change is remarkable, and who can deny that it is for the better? It is clean, neat and attractive. Might we not even venture the generalization; The American people do not like sumptuousness, they do not like richness of texture, they do not like dirt or anything that suggests it. They do want clean, neat, sophisticated, and appropriate articles. And I think you will agree that such a generalization could not have been made 10 years ago with as much positiveness as it can be made today.

21. Mrs. Consumer is Looking for Effects.—“This very decided shift of demand has brought about equally great changes in our merchandising ideas. People are looking for effects today as their primary consideration, whereas a generation ago they looked for quality as their primary consideration. 056 41It is not that they neglect quality, but that they take it for granted. To meet this change the articles which merchants have today must be selected with a degree of skill never before required, and the articles which manufacturers make must be designed with a degree of skill never before required. To fall down on this requisite means almost certain disaster, for price is a less important consideration than formerly, if an article is not just what is wanted. I think a safe generalization might be that just as the public takes quality for granted, so it takes price for granted—it expects to get the designs and effects that it wants, at reasonable prices. And when it expects all this, it doesn't wish to pay anything for an article which is merely useful.

“For the last few years consumers have gone their own sweet way in regard to lengthening of the skirts, to laces, to ribbons and to artificial flowers. If anything is true today, it is that staples have ceased to exist. Demand jumps around from color to color, from fashion to fashion, from pattern to pattern in a most unexpected way. Records of comparative sales of different types are baffling to study and they add a new terror to manufacturing and merchandising. Nothing that has been attempted has changed their point of view. As a result of this, the stylists of yesterday have been transformed into the fashion forecasters of today. The stylists of yesterday determined authoritatively either by hunch or by necromancy what was fitting and what was not. The fashion forecaster of today works through serious studies of trends and attempts to forecast the demands of tomorrow from the tendencies of today.

22. Changes Toward Price.—“It is worthwhile to discuss briefly the change in regard to the general attitude toward prices. This is a subject which in view of its importance has been too much neglected, yet it is worthy of concentrated study. I think a safe generalization can be made that the past generation of consumers felt that they had to look for reasonable prices; where they could not bargain, they just kept on looking. Today in its normal run of purchases, the public takes the fairness of price for granted and only estimates 057 42whether or not the price asked is within the possibilities of its pocketbook. That is a broad generalization and not always true, but in the main I think it holds; for a really successful merchandise establishment is based on fair prices for everything. It repeatedly sacrifices possible super-profit for the sake of instilling in its customers the conviction that all its prices are fair. It is the intent, and on the whole with success, to change the attitude of the customer from, ‘wasn't I lucky to get this,’ to ‘isn't it wonderful that I can get so much for so little money.’

“Fixing a price on any article is not selling it. The potential buyer has only the choice of taking it or leaving it, and when he leaves it, there is no sale. Now the really successful retail merchant must go a point further than charging a fair price. The price that he charges must also be within the limit of the pocketbook. It is this point which has not been sufficiently studied and understood. A fair price, after all, cannot be an exact amount, but it must fall within certain well defined limits. The exact cost per article in any establishment which deals with a vast variety of articles, cannot be mathematically determined. There are too many arbitrary features. But cost accounting has progressed to a sufficient point to enable us to get certain fairly clear ideas as to what the limits of fairness are in relation to cost. Further consideration is the limit of the pocketbook. Within these ranges of fair price there are frequently the most astonishing differences in the rate of consumer demand at different price levels even when these prices levels are not far apart. We have done considerable experimenting along those lines and we conclude from these experiments that the average customer has a pretty clear ratio as to his spending ability for the various types of articles of consumption.”

These are the days when the veil of woman's “mystery” is being torn off, and it is high time, for there is no real mystery in woman's psychology, although there is paradox. Woman, I must contend, cannot be expected to be wholly reasonable because of two or three facts. First fact: as a sex, woman is predominantly emotional, due to her well-authenticated greater emotionality, arising from her nature as a woman. She therefore lives a life closer to instinct than man. Gina Lombroso, the famous Italian woman psychologist, makes the interesting distinction that men get their satisfactions from within themselves, from more abstract and impersonal subjects. Woman's satisfactions and stimulations on the other hand, from the objects and people immediately about her. Doubtless this is why Mrs. Consumer is the heart and center of the merchandising world, the great family purchasing agent, who spends most of the money men earn and who is deeply concerned with all the details of ten thousand little items of merchandise, which can be more thrilling to her than men usually realize.

Second fact: women are born into an anomolous position, as second fiddle to man in the game of life. Their rôle is thus made into a psychological paradox; how to be independent, though inexorably dependent; how to be demure and “feminine” and yet aggressively attain her ends; how to retreat at the same time that she advances!

Third fact: women are not persuaded, as men are, that logic and reason are the only factors with which on should guide oneself. She has backing in this from the new psychology, which has shown that we can so very easily “rationalize” ourselves into thinking what our emotions subtly suggest that we think. The conscious brain processes are now known to be not only less powerful, but less important in making a rounded success in life. This does not mean of course, that women are using less reason and intelligence. Indeed they are using more. But emotion and instinct bulks extremely large.

23. A list of the Instincts of Woman.—The first task therefore in coming to grips with the “psychology” of Mrs. Consumer is to make some endeavor to list and rate the instincts and emotions of women, as they bear on purchasing. Woman's purchases are exceedingly near to her instincts.

The psychologists have gone a long way in recent years in studying the human emotions, and they have dug up tremendously interesting material which is especially useful in studying the feminine buyer. Psychoanalysis is something I recommend to the intensive student of the woman buyer. The basic fact of importance is the greatly added significance which our new knowledge gives to the emotional reactions (the unconscious) as contrasted with our supposedly “intellectual” or logical processes of thought. The human instincts are given a far greater dignity and power now that we have learned what Freud, Jung, Adler and even Watson have added to our knowledge. We have always assumed that men, even if not women, bought goods on a basis of logic and reason; but the findings of psychoanalysis now show that men as well as women, are thoroughly ruled by their instincts and emotions, although it is undoubtedly the truth that women are more definitely ruled by them.

In the order of their strength among women (according to my own estimate and experience) I list the following instincts:

1. Sex Love.

It is true that psychoanalysis is not yet a perfected science and that one must tread cautiously in its mazes, but sufficient has been authenticated to indicate that it has greatly changed our outlook on all matters. I shall speak of only a few of the possibilities of the study of women as buyer as opened up by psychoanalysis. The emphasis I place, as above, on a study of the instinct which are especially strong in women, is the first great step. I believe a seller of family goods should definitely see to it that he aims at specific selections among the eighteen instincts listed, and make every selling or advertising appeal square with them. I further believe that every seller of family goods should make a especial analysis of the instinctive appeals his goods carry, and rate these appeals on a scale. He can do this with excellent effectiveness with the technique described in the chapter on consumer research.

24. The Error of Wrong Appeals.—I see so much advertising that is misrated in its appeals,—a kitchen device featuring mechanical ingenuity when it should be featuring sanitation; a modernistic home furnishing article featuring its foreign origin, when it should be appealing to woman's love of change and novelty. It seems to me that much selling appeal that I see, is as result like machinery from which the power belt is slipping or which has come off entirely. The full power of the article's possible innate, instinctive appeal is not being applied, with resulting loss in sales.

In other cases the wrong appeal is used or given exaggerated emphasis. The case of a certain talcum powder comes to my mind; a new talcum was about to be launched on the usual, habitual appeal of “purity.” But when a careful analysis of Mrs. Consumer's reactions was made it was discovered that odor was an immensely more powerful appeal; women loved their talcum perfumed. Therefore it is my urgent recommendation that all sellers of family goods leave nothing to guesswork as to which appeals are most powerful for their goods, and to specifically determine how powerful each is.

25. The Importance of Woman's Unconscious Self.— ✓Psychoanalysts make of unconscious; that part of us which feels and thinks below the threshold or our conscious mind. In my belief Mrs. Consumer's mind is an especially ✓unconscious mind. For age women—because of the paradox of their lives I have previously mentioned—have suppressed much of themselves. They have far more “inhibitions” than man, and are content to do far more things on the basis of intuition, emotion or unconscious motive than man. Early in a girl's life her mother, teachers, church, society, outfit her with suppressions and inhibitions one after another—the heritage of our sex. She rarely parts with them even after growing up—they are part of feminine psychology. There are more words that she hates to hear mentioned; more objects, ✓acts and ideas toward which she has a revulsion, more things she doesn't like to do, more limitations she imposes upon herself than man ever dreams of being bothered with. It is authenticated by psychologists that women's characteristic 062 47attitude is dislike, while man's is like; women respond more quickly to appeals to their dislikes; while men respond ✓readily to their preferences.

For these reasons I make bold to say that the strategy of appeal to women should make frequent and full use of her unconscious self. In practice, of course, many advertisers do this (themselves often unconscious why). I learned recently, for example, that a great many young unmarried women were reading Children, the parents’ magazine. This would puzzle you until explained with the key of the unconscious. These young women are dreaming of a home and children in their unconscious, but they wouldn't admit it. Probably if you spoke to them about it they would display a younger generation bravado and cynicism about it—but the truth, the unconscious truth, is that they are interested in reading about children. Try to bury the mother-instinct!

26. “Unconscious” Selling Campaigns.—The cigarette advertisers are subtly appealing to the unconscious with their cryptic phraseology “She's a Lucky girl,” etc. and the pictures of women with men who are smoking. The conscious judgment of many women is that they don't like to see posters and advertisements of women smoking—even though they smoke. Here again, as in so many cases, the child enters the equation, for mothers don't want their daughters to learn to smoke at too early an age, if at all.

The Listerine advertising, a famous campaign to women, was to a degree an unconscious campaign. So have been many others. It must ever be kept in mind that woman's thought processes are not as a rule direct like a man's. Or, if this seems like characterizing women too sharply, let us say that women are not uncompromising logic-choppers like men. Being far more practical humanists and diplomats, they use more gentle strategy and circuitous methods their wonders to perform. Woman is rarely direct; she actually prefers indirection; it is more suited to her emotionality and to her anomolous position in life. Attempts to secure a direct reaction from us often rouses our anger and resentment, especially if it is in regard to a deep-lying instinct.

27. Woman's Passivity and Negativity.—The passive role fits her better than the active; the negative more than the positive. Every man of insight and understanding of feminine psychology since Casanova has known that it is a special unmanly folly to ask a woman for a kiss! Think of the woman's predicament from a woman's viewpoint. She cannot say “yes” without appearing out of character as somewhat aggressive, and as assuming more responsibility than she wishes, nor can she say “no” without appearing unresponsive. She hates both alternatives; so she prefers indirection! even if she is a modern flapper with a veneer of seeming aggressiveness. There is at present a reaction to the feministic pose of directness, like man's. Women are retreating from it. All who deal with women should be thoroughly aware of these unconscious attitudes, half-expressed states of mind, and fundamental feelings. They are quite as powerful in woman as a purchaser as in woman filing any other rôle in life.

28. Mrs. Consumer and Inferiority-Superiority Feelings.—The inferiority-superiority feelings, so prominent a part of modern psychoanalysis, are very powerfully present in women, far more so than in men. Men have achieved a more normal expression of their ego in work, but women have had a harder path to tread. First, there has been the inferiority bred in her because of her subjugation by man, and following that her sense of isolation from the work of the world. As a result women have built up a very powerful social snobbery—a method by which they secured a seeming sense of superiority. “Society” and “woman's cruelty to women” were the result. Today when millions of women, even women of the upper classes, are working, “society” is decaying—mainly because the sense of inferiority has declined. The suffrage campaign was an expression of a sense of inferiority. Once obtained, women have done little with suffrage—but the ballot was great satisfaction for their egos. The appeal to snobbery has definitely declined in power—but it is of course still very strong. It was once all-powerful. The decline of the “inferiority complex” is reflected, I believe, in the decline of the textile industry. Women are not so rabidly interested in dress as before, 064 49and do not make it such a fetish. They have other interests. In the days of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, (who wore, I believe, 14 petticoats under her inaugural ball gown,) and later during the days of Ward McAllister and the Bradley-Martin Ball in the Mauve nineties, women crucified themselves as persons on their inferiority complex—and literally tried to cover it up with textiles! Today they do much more as they please about clothes, and make Paris nervous and jumpy with their calm refusal to do its bidding, whereas once they were its abject, obeisant slaves.

29. Woman's Suggestibility.—Along the lines of more orthodox psychology there are findings of practical importance to note. Women have a greater suggestibility than men; they ✓ are more receptive; men being more stubborn and unadaptable. This is doubtless why the advertiser of family goods has made such phenomenal progress. Mrs. Consumer in America has a very volatile character—far more than the women of other nations for very obvious reasons. She is a new race-mixture without fixed social roots or traditions in a new and democratic country. There is nothing whatever to stop her from reaching any level of wealth or social position or even personal advancement of which she is capable. The American man is alert for business—Mrs. Consumer is alert for cultural and social felicity and advance. That is why she is a “culture hound”; that is why she wants just as well-equipped a home or kitchen as her husband desires a well-equipped factory or office. Of course she is suggestible—and the reason she is more so than man is that there are more male traditions to bind the man. American women feel far less bound.

But for the very reason of this high suggestibility, Mrs. Consumer's attention, although easy to get, is hard to hold. Her variability of mood and tense and interest make it particularly important for the seller of goods to plan more carefully to hold her attention than to get it. That was why a colorful poster with the words “Use Pears Soap” in olden days was inadequate, and why all pure “general publicity” is inadequate today. She must be held, and it cannot be done with stilted name publicity. She can only be held by elaborate 065 50approach to her instincts, even logic being insufficient. The personal appeal is far more certain to hold Mrs. Consumer; and it is precisely the selling campaigns based most decidedly on the personal appeal, that have been most successful in recent times. (“The skin you love to touch”); “she never knew why,” etc.)

There is a further interesting distinction. Men apparently respond most readily to action-appeals—women to visual-appeal. A man is very greatly interested in what a thing does; whereas Mrs. Consumer is much more interested in how ✓ it looks. The automobile, the radio and the phonograph are classic examples of this difference. Women disliked these “contraptions” (for such they were at the beginning) and they did not attain their present widespread vogue until they were designed and built to please women. I remember how I resented it when my husband first brought into the parlor the messy-looking box called a radio set, and how I was annoyed ✓ lest the acid from the battery spoil my rugs. The pleasure in hearing it did not compensate for my dislike of its unsightly appearance. Now, of course, radio is an elegant, decorative article of furniture—and the same evolution occurred in the case of the phonograph. The self-starter, the closed car, the luxurious fittings were what brought universality of use to the automobile industry.

30. Women and Eye-Appeal.—Which brings me in general to the “eye” appeal so highly developed in women as often to be a grave fault. It has made her an addict to white bread, white rice, and other less desirable food forms, solely bought on a basis of eye appeal. Women are exceedingly sensitive to how their food looks on the table—often far more sensitive than they are to sanitation or sound nutritive considerations. Women react very sharply to the appearance and exterior of articles or merchandise, are often indeed hypersensitive on the subject. Every seller should realize this clearly and plan his merchandise and advertising accordingly. Further, women are much keener for pictures than men, as Gale showed in his experiments.

Indeed, women definitely have a greater sensitivity to all 066 51sensory impressions. Their senses are very likely to be sharper and less robust than men's. They will be unpleasantly affected at an odor which men barely notice, and become nervous at sounds men ignore. Women have far more dislikes in common with each other than they have likes in common, while the reverse seems to be true of men. Women are also less prone than men to be influenced by appeals to social solidarity such as guarantee, union made, sympathy, recommendation of others, etc. *

Woman is not a “mystery.” I do not subscribe to the usual mystery hocus pocus by women who believe that no man understands them; on the contrary, I am sure that many men understand women very well in her buying attitude.

31. Men's Understanding of Women.—I do believe, however, that the psychology of the woman buyer is a far more subtle thing than the average male is able to grasp, and that the next five to ten years are going to be years of greater study of the consumer—which necessarily means, to a large extent, the woman consumer.

It is well to keep constantly in mind the peculiar and innate sense of relative values which women have. It is often particularly puzzling to men to see women unusually extravagant in some things and unusually penurious in others. As a rule men explain this with the simple formula that women are extravagant about their clothes and toilet but stingy in the purchase of other family goods. Like most generalizations, this is really not correct. The proof lies in the fact that manufacturers of clothes are complaining today and that the high class department stores have been compelled to put in “inexpensive dress departments.” In fact the department store men of England the other day adopted the pathetic slogan “Wear More Clothes.” The truth is that women are tremendously clever compromisers in purchasing and are always juggling their “consumer dollar” around in some new way to make it enlarge or double to meet new desires; and since woman is predominantly emotional, she shifts her desires frequently. Men are notoriously rigid in their purchasing psychology, 067 52clinging in some instances to one haberdasher and one kind of clothes for a lifetime; whereas few merchants can count on a woman customer for longer than they have special attractions to offer. Change is the great keynote to feminine character.

32. Bargain Psychology and Mrs. Consumer.—Even the old doctrine that woman is a born bargainer is only another partly erroneous generalization, because women with a good deal of money are not always bargainers, and the significant truth is that the American woman is every year going further away from the old bargain counter psychology. Recent comparative studies have shown that women are no longer falling for the “comparative price” advertising psychology and its sister, the “bargain counter.” They are also no longer so concerned about the cut prices of chain stores. Live department stores are now preaching the doctrine of selling the women the entire store as an institution, rather than special bargains. Modern woman is more discriminating, and not a mere bargaining penny-saver.

33. Women as Learners.—Women today are avid learners of new domestic techniques. I am naturally speaking here of the younger generation of women under 35 or 40. Our remarkable household science columns in our women's magazines and newspapers have been doing a great educational job for the past 20 years, and the results are becoming evident. Woman is a thorough-going revolutionist in spirit,—even in the spirit with which she approaches her most traditional job—home-making.

I do not think any more striking example can be given than the speed with which women made use of the new information as to the vitamin content of liver. Meat men tell me that within a few weeks after this information became public, liver became a prized article, and in New York at least, it is now almost necessary to make a reservation for your liver as you ✓ do for a popular play sold out for weeks ahead! The American advertiser has taught the American housewife to think constructively of her job. The truth is that these old saws about woman's psychology have succumbed to the greater application of reason and intelligence among women shoppers.— 068 53always bearing in mind that “intelligence” also includes emotional intelligence, which is the tremendously important quality in a woman's life.

Women are speeding up change in America, and they psychologically love change. Every woman shifts her furniture frequently, and her draperies, while men look on amazed—they were satisfied with the old. Mrs. Consumer often has to take away from men, almost by force, their old shoes, old hats and overcoats!

Because of the importance of the woman factor in an ever-increasing range of purchases, it is of real consequence to know the facts in detail as to what articles are purchased (1) by men only; (2) women only; and (3) by both men and women together.

Some years ago I aided in such a research made by Dr. H. L. Hollingworth of Columbia University. This for the first time, resulted in some detail measurement of the differences between men and women in family purchasing. While these figures are doubtless not perfectly up-to-date, the direction of the later developments must be said to be toward still greater buying participation by women. The figures should be exceedingly useful. The research was made among New York people of incomes from $2,000 to $6,000. The figure for “None Purchased” means that to the percentage indicated none of those families which were investigated bought this type of goods at all.

34. Statistics or What Women Buy.—The summary of the entire research is as follows, after which is presented each of the divisions in detail

35. Statistics of Retail Purchases by Men and Women.—Another more recent survey, also made in New York City, developed a new set of percentage of purchases made by women. Out of the twelve classifications, in only two were men more prominent in purchasing than women—hardware and automobiles. Here are the figures:

36. Sex Differences Disappear at Upper Levels.—There are definite signs that among the upper and more intelligent levels of women sex differences in buying are disappearing and that women on such levels react more and more like men. This means that they are busier, more curt and analytical 074 59in their attitude toward buying, and are to be approached with the same “reason why” attitude. Domestic Commerce, issued by the government, printed a communication from a seller clearly showing this:

“With the woman buyer playing so large a part in the purchase of consumer's goods, it seems that attention could profitably be paid to both the more permanent angles of the woman buyer's psychology and the attitudes created by changing conditions. Where formerly the woman's place was settled upon as being in the home, now it is more and more the case that women are choosing a business career, or are taking part in activities which either call them away from the home or engage their time. The salesman or business man dealing with the woman customer still seems to think she is always at home and possessed of boundless leisure. He refuses to make a definite appointment to repair the plumbing, and cannot understand that he should be specific as to what hour the groceries will be delivered. Canvassers appear indignant when the woman at home, who may be writing advertising copy or tending a sick child, says she is ‘busy.’

“As another instance of need for proper regard for the woman buyer, there may be mentioned a condition which is particularly impressive to the woman who is called upon in her business capacity to make purchases for the office or concern for which she works. When she comes to buying for her home she is unable to find out much about the quality of the food or household appliances she intends purchasing. The chief appeal is to the emotion. It is not possible, for instance, to procure a catalog of furniture to be studied at leisure. When the article is as expensive as a refrigerator or vacuum cleaner, the salesman may exhibit astonishment if the woman purchaser lets it be known that she is comparing several different makes before a final decision. On the other hand, for a man buying file cases for the office, such a procedure would be a matter of course.”

So many mistakes are made in attempting to influence women that it may be of some aid to give consideration to the relative strength of appeals. In another chapter the instincts of women have been valued and enumerated, but of course appeals may or may not be to instincts. Appeals may also be argumentative as well as instructive; of a surface nature as well as deep-going.

I would certainly recommend that all appeals directed to women be tested, and the various possible appeals worked out and valued. There is no common sense in making an appeal to women unless it is first tested, as it is wasteful of the seller's money and the consumer's time. Consumer interest should meet seller-appeal as precisely as the two sections of a well engineered bridge or tunnel dovetail. We live in an engineering age. It wearies me to read advertising which has a futile appeal, and it irritates me not to be appealed to in the instinctively right way, as when a nursery swing manufacturer stresses the color of his swing, when the appeal should be the safety of the child.

37. Precise Ratings for Sales Appeals to Women.—Undoubtedly the most useful study of appeals is one I show here (Hollingworth) which rated appeals to women without reference to a specific article of merchandise. Therefore the ratings represent the basic general standing the power of all appeals. Naturally, the moment a specific article of merchandise is introduced the more powerful appeal for that article acquires special strength and precedence. Here are the appeals and their rating with women; also their rank with men only; and their rank averaged for both men and women. These appeals are separated into three groups, clustering around three levels for the ratings:

38. Analysis of Breakfast Food Appeals.—In another test of appeals (Strong) on a specific article, breakfast food, appeals worked out as follows:

Appeal Grade

39. Study of Toilet Soap Appeals.—Still another test of women in New York, on toilet soaps, indicated the following appeal strength:

Appeal Grade

I happen to have had a great deal to do with the development and application of consumer market research, over a period of twenty years. My observation is that it has rarely if ever failed to be of primary importance in more successfully reaching and influencing the consumer. The manufacturers and distributors who are closest to the consumer, and who research consumers most frequently are the most successful.

48. “X-raying”the Consumer.—An “X-ray” of the consumer, via market research, is as logical in selling as in medicine. Consumer market research is the bridge that covers the great gap by which most business firms are separated from the consumer. This gap has long been accepted complacently. In particular the textile industries operated at an astounding distance from consumer knowledge; no officer of the mill being in the slightest degree informed, as a rule, even about sales, much less about ultimate consumers. Thousands of others who sell goods through jobbers have been out of touch with consumers, and even those who sell through retailers.

I do not believe that either the department store, the mail 105 90order house, the chain store or the house-to-house seller would ever have secured so great a place in modern business if the manufacturers making goods used by the public had been more alert and active as regards consumer habits, desires and preferences.

I presume that one reason for the widespread neglect of consumer research until recent years is lack of familiarity with the technique of it, which is rather new. It is not a simple thing to make a competent survey of consumer reaction; in fact the job is full of pitfalls for the unwary. At the same time I do not for a moment consider that only university professors and psychologists are able to make consumer surveys. In fact, I do not even believe that they are the ones to undertake it. The best method is the work of an organization trained and established to do such work. There are now several such.

49. The Twenty Uses of Consumer Research.—In my opinion consumer research is a tool of very wide practical usefulness, for many purposes, small and large, for matters both of little and of great importance. I list a few:

1. To establish the basic need or place for a proposed article.

50. The Usefulness of the Consumer Questionnaire.—In nearly all cases the very best technique for consumer research is the questionnaire technique. I am aware, of course, of the occasional criticisms that have been made of questionnaires, but boiled down such criticisms have been only two: (1) that there are too many questionnaire surveys, and (2) that they tell little and the consumer replies what he is expected to reply. These are after all superficial criticisms, of no real importance, especially the first. Mrs. John Consumer living in a particular house in a particular town, rarely encounters the questionnaire. It will be a long time before consumer questionnaire surveys crowd each other. The matter of Mrs. Consumer replying what the investigator wants her to say is, of course, simply a question of how experienced and capable the managers of the survey are. It is absurd to suppose that they do not know their business, just as engravers or automotive engineers know their technique. Obviously it is folly to put answers in Mrs. Consumer's mouth; but I have never had anything to do with makers of surveys who were as simple-minded or dishonest 107 92as this. There is an intelligent technique for making consumer surveys, and if it is followed, immensely useful information is to be obtained. In fact the astounding thing to contemplate is that for all these decades business men in offices and factories have sat at handsome desks guessing crudely what Mrs. Consumer thought about their goods, and the conditions surrounding their use, while few ever thought of the simple, common sense idea of going straight to Mrs. Consumer and having a nice little family chat with her about matters of such obvious mutual interest. Such a chat becomes a formal “questionnaire” only for reasons of system and accuracy, to prevent the interview from becoming a mere vague blur of general impressions. Many times, when the questions on the questionnaire are few enough in number, the experienced consumer investigator does not even show the questionnaire to the consumer in order not to make the visit seem formal or self-conscious.

The coming of the more analytical mind into business is responsible for the far more frequent use of consumer research today. Such a mind is not interested in opinions. Like Mr. Kettering, of the General Motors Corporation, it wants opinions only when there are no facts obtainable. Naturally it is absurd to say there are no facts obtainable about the Mrs. Consumer. She is no deep mystery at all—she is sphinx-like only to the business guesser, who has never had imagination enough to think of collecting consumer reactions and averaging the specific answers and thus get a collective reaction from Mrs. Consumer.

51. The Cost of Consumer Research.—The method is applicable at such low expense that there is no excuse whatever for business houses to use the old guesswork method. For a cost of only fifty cents to a dollar per consumer, and even in groups of as few as 100 consumers, for some less important matters, accurate answers may be worked out to questions. Yet even today some business men seem to be willing to stake hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditures on no more of a “consumer survey” than the opinions of their stenographer, their aunt, their wife or grandmother—if indeed they deign to go that far. I am speaking from remembrance of scores of concrete 108 93instances when I say that sellers of household goods are constantly making the most astounding errors, which any dozen intelligent Mrs. Consumers could have prevented if they had been asked beforehand. It stirs one's pity and incredulity to see so many men investing large and small sums of money with great hope of success, in ways so utterly stupid, from Mrs. Consumer's point of view. As an instance of failure to research even the practical application in use of an article, I recall a firm that put out a patent cake-cutter, modeled after the principle of an excellent apple-cutter now on the market, which when pressed down on an apple cuts it into six parts. This new device was based on the idea that you could do this also with cake—which you can't without smashing the cake!

But this manufacturer had dies made, organized a company and started salesmen out hopefully to sell this absurdity! Scores and scores of other instances I could name, of merely mechanical stupidity due to failure to research; yet this is so very obvious. What is not so obvious to many is the need for consumer research which will bring out family conditions militating against the article, or for the article, if known. For years women wished for packages containing smaller quantities of various foods like cheese or butter, but it remained for a manufacturer who made a survey to discover Mrs. Consumer's wishes and act on the fact and reap an excellent advantage. There is so much tradition and habit in the way consumer goods are put out. Mrs. Consumer, as I have said, is not vocal; she says nothing and suffers in silence, as a rule. You must dig out of her these reactions, some of which she has never even formulated to herself, but which she would formulate if asked the direct question.

52. Swift Consumer Changes of Today.—These are times of many consumer changes, and Mrs. Consumer is today so swift on the trigger with changes that even on the score of rapidly changing habits and conditions manufacturers need to make consumer researches. Certainly I would give different answers to the same question today from five years ago, so changed are family conditions of buying and use. Why I drop one soap for another, one disinfectant for another, one 109 94method of vegetable preparation for another, one method of cleaning and polishing for another, one kind of breakfast for another, even one general plan of a meal for another, is and must be of the greatest importance to the seller both of the goods I drop and the goods I now use in its place.

53. Recording a Consumer's Buying History.—One of the

WATCH INVESTIGATION (Consumer)

CONDUCTED BY THE BUSINESS BOURSE 347 Fifth Avenue, New York

Man

Woman

Name

Address City

Occupation Date

(1) What makes of watches have you used?

(2) What is the lowest and highest prices at which an Ingersoll Watch sells?

(3) What is your own and your friend's opinion of the Ingersoll Watches as they are today?

(4) What does “Radiolite” mean?

(5) Can you get it on other make of watches?

(6) Where do the Ingersoll Watch people advertise that you read?

(7) What is your theory aboutthe kind of watch to carry?

most interesting of the types of consumer investigations, to my way of thinking, is one which takes the consecutive buying history of a consumer regarding a certain product. An example of questionnaires of this nature is shown herewith, with four spaces on it watch buying history. The plan is to secure from the consumer the record of four or more specific consecutive purchases, asking similar questions regarding each of the four or more purchases. From such data it is possible to see the trend, if any, of that consumer's buying. For instance in the case of Ingersoll watches it was possible to note a tendency from expensive watches toward cheap watches, or vice versa. It is naturally most important to know, from the facts themselves, rather than from the consumer's opinions, in what direction her purchases are veering. She may be preferring one general competitive trend to another, acquiring a philosophy of buying often, and at a low price, rather than buying high quality, long-lasting goods. She may be turning from private brand to nationally advertised goods, or vice versa, and she may be sticking to one brand or discontentedly trying something new each time. These are most important disclosures, especially when a large enough sample of consumers is researched, and general trends are disclosed.

54. Use of Consumer Research for Trade Selling.—Another unusual use of consumer research—possible of course only by certain firms—is to secure evidence of consumer preference and practice in a manner that is impressive to the trade. A brilliant example is a survey made in 1929 for the American Metal Cap Co., manufacturers of metal seals for glass containers. The salesmen had for some years told packers and food manufacturers that housewives preferred goods with metal caps, but the salesmen's words were discounted as natural bias.

Then a consumer survey was made among 8,028 housewives in 46 cities in 26 states. The investigators, who did not know the client or the purpose of the investigation, placed five jars before each housewife, each with a numbered cap, and the women were asked to imagine themselves in a store 111 96choosing between them. The company's product came out at the top of the test, with 5,575 or 69.5% of the women preferring the Amerseal cap. This consumer survey data was then made the basis of a vigorous campaign, in trade journals, direct advertising, etc., and a booklet containing the results of the survey was printed. The survey made a deep impression on the company's trade.

There are plenty of other parts or “ingredient” manufacturers who could profit greatly by just such a survey. The automotive parts and supply concerns very frequently make surveys of automobile owners, and such information is of very real importance. It must increasingly become important for parts or supply companies in the family goods field to secure factual evidence of consumer preference or prejudice or consciousness.

55. Analysis of Volume of Consumer Buying.—Just merely the question of volume of purchase of certain items is an important reason for consumer research. The per capita or per family statistics for the entire country are only mathematical, abstract averages, and the real figure important to secure is the typical consumer's annual volume of use, on various levels of income, or in various localities. This is not possible to secure by calculation from existing statistics—it can be most reliably accomplished only through careful consumer investigation by the questionnaire method. Such data is often most surprising, and enormously useful in studying possible consumption. If I use 120 cans of Campbell's tomato soup per year in my family, and the average per family in the entire U.S. is only 3.9 cans, it is obvious that my family is enormously above the average, and comparisons become possible with other typical families on various levels, for the setting of territorial quotas, etc. In the case of many household items, where much unbranded, bulk or unknown goods in a certain line is purchased, it becomes particularly important to study average family volume of consumption. I have heard some perfectly ludicrous debates among business men on questions of family practice indicating that they labor under the most absurd illusions concerning family buying 112 97 in their own field. They confess themselves entirely without any information about the consumer. My standard “line” when I address a sales conference or convention for a particular firm, has been to find out beforehand the things it doesn't know about the consumer, (which are usually many) and then, out of my practical observation, or previous research, make statements about the consumer which upset and surprise them. (I wish courtesy did not forbid the mention of some names of famous American advertisers and the details of my remarks, as they would make entertaining reading.) I have had more than one instance where substantial bets were placed that I was wrong, so utterly certain were these men. And yet with no especial credit to me, they were shown later to be wrong. I mention the matter only to reinforce my point, that the last outpost of business ignorance is concerning the consumer, and that consumer research is the direct means of remedying this ignorance.

56. Amateurish Consumer Research.—There is one type of seller of family goods who salves his conscience about keeping in touch with the consumer. He makes periodic trips and he proudly reports that he goes into retail stores and listens to Mrs. Consumer talk to the clerks. This is his “consumer research,” casual and incidental and without design or plan. It is a tiny bit better than nothing, true, but what a travesty upon the importance of such a matter!

Another “salving” way is to hire some young domestic science graduate and make her represent the consumer to the firm. This is, indeed, a further advance, but an inadequate one, for young domestic science graduates represent the abstract theory of family buying, not the actual practice as it is in the shanties of “poor white trash” or the Nebraska farmer's wife or the East Side family, where the goods in question may largely be consumed. Field knowledge of Mrs. Consumer as she actually is and breathes and does, is needed, not the copy book maxims of the dainty school-taught art of domestic science, nor any individual's opinion, including my own. It seems such a struggle to lift people up to that level where they comprehend and act upon the great basic difference 113 98 between fact and opinion. Facts about Mrs. Consumer must almost invariably be obtained from questionnaire studies.

57. Vital Style Research.—On the question of styling, also, consumer research has been demonstrated to be a highly successful investment. Women being admittedly style-conscious as never before, the problem of styling family goods is no small one, for makers of goods in which style never before figured much.

A telling example of consumer research on style goods is that of the DuPont Viscoloid Co., as told by C. F. Brown, sales director. In 1927 its “pyralin” toilet sets were losing ground. It was believed that it was not properly styled, and that no artists’ or executives’ ideas as to the new styling should prevail, but the decision of Mrs. Consumer herself. A year was spent to discover Mrs. Consumer's wishes. A cross-section of Mrs. Consumer was made up, consisting of (1) business and professional women, (2) club women, (3) college undergraduates, (4) art students and instructors. The variously newly-designed sets were displayed; each was numbered and women given a ballot, on which to record, first, second and third choices. To get club women to coöperate prize sets of toilet accessories were offered. A total of 1048 votes were recorded, 71% of which were for the new “Lucite” set, and 29% for the old “Pyralin” sets. Perhaps the most interesting sequel to this is that after a year of marketing the new “Lucite” sets, the ratio of “Lucite” sales to “Pyralin” stood almost as the women had voted—65 and 35%. Here is unassailable proof that it pays well to consult Mrs. Consumer, and that when she is consulted, she knows what she is talking about, and buys as she votes.

58. Rivalry in Consumer Knowledge.—Retailers have always claimed to know more about the consumer than the manufacturer. In the past this was true, but consumer research technique and the use of home economics consultants has changed all this. I therefore do not at all agree with Oswald W. Knauth, executive vice president of R. H. Macy & Co. when he says: “No manufacturer can possibly have the daily contact with the public nor the resources to make adequate 114 99experiments which could lead him to sound conclusions concerning the effects of a given retail price. There are questions of locality. There are questions of changing fashions. There are questions of relative turnover—in fact, the whole line of subjects with which the retailer is concerned is too distant from the manufacturer to enable him to form a competent judgment.”

I think it is pure nonsense to say that the manufacturer cannot know as much about the consumer as the retailer, and isn't capable of a competent judgment of consumer demand. This is absolutely belied by the great trade-mark advertisers’ success in serving consumers. Knowledge of the consumer is gained by analytical study, research, test, consultation and experimental contact. No one has a monopoly on them. They require brains and resources which only a few large retailers possess even if they were inclined to use them; whereas the manufacturer, concentrating as he does upon one or a few articles has every incentive, every facility, and can hire all ability needed to make a far better consumer study than any retailer. Of course if the manufacturer stupidly refuses to research the consumer, that is another matter, and he deserves to be outwitted and out-pointed in consumer knowledge by the large retail emporiums or chains.

Are we eating more or less of the same foods as did our fathers or grandfathers? Are we eating new foods? If so, which and how much? How explain the causes responsible for diet changes? What are the present and probably future trends in food preferences of the American family? On no other single point in the whole food discussion is there so much interest and varying opinion.

61. The Ten Trends in American Diet.—Numerous agencies and individuals have concerned themselves with what the American family used to eat, what it does eat,—even what it will be eating in a couple of decades. From a large number of sources, the following broad generalizations can be made:

(1) Marked decline in the total average per capita food consumption.

62. Decline in Total Average Per Capita Food Consumption.—It is a significant fact that we are all eating less. The country over, we do not eat as much, nor is what we do eat as rich and elaborately prepared, as the meal of the nineties or before. This holds true both for the hotel and the home table. It is laughable to glance at a menu card of the “mauve decade”—say at the Waldorf—and compare it with one, say even from the Biltmore, of today. The former groaning menu ranged over the entire animal and vegetable kingdoms with its 20 course including terrapin, canvas back, oysters, venison, joints, roasts, and desserts of towering height. Even a formal dinner today seldom includes more than six main courses, each simple and restrained.

The home table is also following much simpler meal service, and the change in home cooking can quickly be seen by contrasting a cook book of the old regime with one of the moment. Picking at random a recipe from a well-known cook book of olden days we find these terrorizing directions: “Take six chickens from yesterday ... place in a copper basin the yolks of 10 eggs, add four gills of wine ... and whisk six gills of thick cream to a stiff froth.” To the modern housewife accustomed to think in terms of economical simplicity, such recipes are appaling, and she wonders (as do we all) just how people of those days managed to be well and to work after eating meals which seem staggering to even the most sturdy trencherman of today. Europe and the rest of the 130 117world still averages about 48.9% of its income spent on food, according to most recent estimates, whereas only on our poverty level do we go so high. This is significant, for economists agree that when food expenditure approaches 50% of income we are at a dangerously low standard of living.

63. Why the American Family Is Eating Less Each Year.—We doeat less, and here are some of the explanations for the whyof it:

(1) Fewer persons (in ratio to the population) are doing heavy manual, muscular or outdoor work.

64. Changes in Occupation and Climate Affect Diet.—As long as America was a pioneer agricultural country, with 131 118hardships and many types of manual, muscular work to be performed, the diet was naturally (and rightly) “hearty.” The village blacksmith of Longfellow's day could without doubt do justice to blueberry pie for breakfast, hot cakes and maple syrup, codfish cakes, with some leftover baked beans, and start his work with a song. But it is a wager whether his grandson catching the 7:59 for his desk in the city would have either the time or the inclination—or the stomach—for more than a fruit-coffee-toast-egg breakfast while scanning the morning headlines.

Transportation, the almost universal replacement of slow moving deliveries by speedy automobiles, causes fewer and fewer persons to need large intakes of heavy food because of climate and work demands. We are fast becoming a sedentary nation, an indoor nation, and probably unconsciously we are adjusting our eating to the greatly lessened food intake required by the sedentary worker. Where formerly a worker, in cold factories had to stamp his feet and keep his arms swinging, and thus burn up enough calories to justify onslaught upon a heavy dumpling, meat pie and substantial pudding meal, —today the modern office and factory are likely to be overheated, and thus the desire and need for more and heavier food to withstand low temperature, becomes constantly less.

This important point, the effect of temperature and climate upon food requirements and demands, is clearly shown by a contrast between present day menus in America and in England. In this country, the American, thinking of his abundant fresh vegetables, salads and delicate gelatin desserts or fruit cup or melons and ice creams, scoffs at the heavy rather stodgy fare of the present day Britton. This latter is still enjoying all the heavy foods so familiar in the pages of Dickens, —the beef-and-kidney pie, the boiled joint, the suet pudding, the heavy rhubarb tart, in short, a menu remarkable for its emphasis on starchy foods and its absence of fresh vegetables and fresh fruits. But a fairer estimate of the British menu can be made by any one, who like the author, has lived for a while in London, in an virtually unheated hotel rooms, chilled by gloomy fog and penetrating mist. With such a chill climate, and a 132 119common absence of the comfort of American “central heating,” it is no wonder they turn to puddings and meat pies for warmth, and to endless cups of tea for consolation!

65. Speeding Up Provides Less Leisure for Eating.— Since so many other habits of this modern age have been “stepped up,” it would be surprising if eating alone remained unaffected by the general speed mania. The truth is, that more American people today keep definite office hours, definite time schedules and plans than anywhere else in the world. We are busier, we have more “drive,” have more things to do, and thus we find less leisure for lingering meals. The office employee required to eat and be back at work within an hour is not going to dally with many dishes—as contrasted with the French plan of shutting down business for two hours for lunch. Even the American executive may be found at the stand-up quick lunch.

Many business women who want to have time to shop in their noon hour cut down their lunch to a request of a soda fountain clerk, “a malted milk and a cheese sandwich, please,” or “a cup of coffee and a slice of chocolate cake.” There are so many things to do, to see, to visit, that it seems a waste of time to spend it in mere eating; of lunch, at least.

At one time eating was Mrs. Consumer's “indoor sport” or amusement, or at least a pastime in those dark eras before the auto, the movie, the radio, and other inventions came to provide more interests. Undoubtedly for this reason women no longer cook so abundantly and so often. For them, too, cooking used to be a social accomplishment, one of the few creative expressions possible for women in that drab era when girls remained girls and daughters faced a life choice between marrying or entering a convent. What else was there for women to do?

This influx of women into modern business and industry has and will continue to have a marked affect on our food consumption. As long as daughters stayed home, cooking was not only a source of “escape” but parents used the free help of their daughters, maiden aunts and other females in keeping up a large and generous hospitality and an attention to cooking details that is almost unbelievable today. The author recalls 133 120that in a house with six colored servants, nevertheless it was her mother who made the beef and kidney pie, the black fruit cake requiring hours of preparation, the delectable conserves which were the boast of grandmother's hospitality. When women stayed home, their services free to their families, cookery was purposely and preferably complicated, and the menus elaborate. It was a way to apply surplus time and brains. But with daughters away at school or entering business early, with hired servants scarce and astoundingly higher priced than in the days of $20 a month cooks, food preparation just naturally becomes simple if not “sketchy” or “delicatessen” in type.

Thus it follows quite logically that cooking is still most intensive only in those sections where women have the most free time or leisure, and where there are not so many other interests or amusements to take its place. This is illustrated by the greater response of the small town woman to cooking classes, schools and recipe contests as contrasted with the slackened interest of her sister in the large town or metropolis, where only the women on a lower social level are equally keenly interested in cookery.

66. Cooking No Longer “Conspicuous Consumption.”—Cooking in general is thus no longer a means of “conspicuous consumption,” to use Veblen's excellent phrase. Cooking is not now regarded by the housewife of the upper middle classes as a means of expressing emulation of some other housewife, home or family, as was formerly the case. Emulation is a natural and a persisting human quality in all of us. The display of expensive goods or unusual possessions testifies to the economic distinction and pride of the owner or person making the display. Thus, the old time housewife making a display of her cooking skill, her elaborate menu, her rich dishes, did so as a means of expressing the “conspicuous consumption” of her particular family and herself as contrasted with the persons or family or woman to whom she was making the display. We have “conspicuous consumption” today, but its objects have changed, thus we have or make displays in the kind and elaborateness of the clothes we wear, in the furniture or jewels or furs we possess, and above all, in the car we drive and the home 134 121we occupy, or our way of life and living. Food display has become less and less important as a means of announcing family wealth and distinction, even when a caterer or hotel keeper does the job for us. The housewife expresses family distinction in foods not by quantity, or even by expense, but in choosing foods of certain types and offering them in an unusual service or style or setting.

67. Marked Tendency Toward Diversified Diet.—Geographic environment and local resources are responsible for original differences in diet. The Southerner reveled in sweet potatoes or yams, hot cornmeal breads, oysters, chicken; the Yankee throve on “the sacred cod,” clams, cramberries, turkey and baked beans in the pot. The Midwesterner went in for pork and corn on the cob; the California feasted on oranges, grapefruit, asparagus, avocado and the popular prune. Thus each section, if not also each state, originally was distinguished by special food tastes, based on native products and what might be called “sectional food habits.”

It is natural that as a result of improved transportation and refrigerating facilities, the food tastes of any one area or section would become blended and exchanged with food tastes of other sections. And this is exactly what has happened; baked beans are as often to be found in the West or South as they are in Boston; grapefruit has become national, asparagus has come East, and sweet potatoes invade the Northern markets by carloads. In short, we may say that we have today a “diffusion of foods” resulting from the interchange of products, section with section.

There are in addition some minor, but nevertheless to be reckoned with factors further increasing this unusual diversity of the American diet. They are:

(1) Foreign foods and dishes contributed by races in the national “melting pot,”—spaghetti, chili con carne, chop suey borscht, goulash, etc.

Many, many countries have contributed foods—until the present day American bill-of-fare can be truly said to be the most cosmopolitan in the world. Here is a fact-picture of this diversification in an office worker's Sunday dinner: A leg of lamb from Idaho, potatoes from Maine, pepper from Dutch Indies, olive oil from Italy, tomatoes from Florida, lettuce from Arizona, vinegar from California, butter from Wisconsin, flour North Dakota, apples from Oregon, raisins from Spain, onions from Bermuda, spinach from Texas, cheese from Switzerland, sauce from England, peas from France, preserves from England, figs from Smyrna, dates from Turkey.

68. Hotel Influence on Home Cookery.—No less marked has been the influence of hotel cooking and service upon the American family table. Based on the traditional French cooking hotel cookery has influenced the family table both in cooking trends and in service. Millions of Americans travel about their country, to a degree no other country practices. Contacts with large hotel service, almost always in the hands of French chefs and dining staffs, have opened the eyes of the housewife as to new or sophisticated ways in which familiar foods might be prepared or served. The importance of the vegetable, the possible variety of the sauce, the more extended use of the appetizer or hors d'œuvre, the greater charm of garnished individual service as contrasted with the older manner of large bulk family serving, the vastly increased use of the salad, the greater complexity and decoration of the garnish—these are only a few of the points which have been consciously or unconsciously imitated in the home after the style set by the large hotel of smart hospitality.

69. The Neglect of Native or Sectional Dishes.—All these imitations or adaptations make for added diversity in diet, and are thus to be commended. But, contrariwise, in many cases the native and excellent bill-of-fare has been rudely cast aside in favor of poor imitations of supposed French cooking. It has been the greatest mistake for a locality noted for some special food or dish to deprecate it or fail to make it a local feature, and instead, ape—on a lower scale—what it supposes is hotel cooking. Nothing can ever be superior to certain 136 123native American foods at their best—pumpkin pie, roast turkey, corn-on-the-cob, baked potatoes, melons, clam chowder, fricasee chicken, and other dishes every American has at his tongue's end for which he longs when overseas. In including those of other nations, the American should not forget or fail to make full use of his own distinctive and delicious foods. (Elsewhere in this book I present typical sectional menus.)

70. Mrs. Consumer's Great Receptivity to Food Suggestions.—The adaptability of the American housewife, and her willingness to test, taste and try new foods should be stressed in any discussion of changing food trends. The American housewife, more perhaps than any other in the world, can be said to be “open-minded” and unshackled by tradition. Neither the traditionally conservative British woman, nor the tenaciously individualistic French woman, let us say, would be as receptive to try an alligator pear, to taste chop suey, or to prepare a lima bean loaf, as her American sister housewife. Born, or bred, in an atmosphere which seems to encourage the doing of anything new, American housewives present a constantly open mind, or a “I'll try anything once” attitude. This perhaps explains her support of and interest in household experiment stations. It accounts for the stupendous circulation of woman's magazines, with their featured food and household departments. If further explains her eagerness and participation in the countless recipe contests held under various auspices, and in cooking schools where an attendance of 5,000 is not unusual. The author cannot imagine 500, to saying nothing of 5,000, British housewives attending a lecture to learn how new foods are being used. The British diet is as stodgy and as settled as the House of Lords. No one thinks it could be improved; indeed hardly anyone there realizes that there is such a thing as a diet!

71. The Story of Broccoli.—Many examples could be given of the acceptance of new foods on the part of the consumer. Take Broccoli—its story reads like a fiction romance. Familiar for years as a staple vegetable in Italy, it is only about five years ago that it was first introduced to the American public. One man, then chief steward with the famed Waldorf, 137 124New York, remembered that in his boyhood he had tasted in Italy this vegetable which looks like an overly green, loosely headed cauliflower. Looking for new dishes, he wondered if the Waldorf's patrons had tasted it. Says he: “I searched all over New York. I interested one of the leading producers in my search. Finally we found two Italian brothers who knew it and promised to grow it from seed specially sent from Italy. They picked Long Island with its cool, moist climate. The first crop was raised, cut and sent to the Waldorf. The waiters were instructed to say that broccoli was a vegetable related to cauliflower, of the cabbage family, and that it was pronounced ‘brok-kolee.’ Watching through the door, I saw the first guest eat broccoli. The waiters brought back favorable reports—the guests liked it—it would be a success.”

Within a week other hotels were asking where it could be secured. Now it is grown by the truck load on L. I. in summer, and in Texas in winter. Hotel menus boast broccoli not only hollandaise, but au gratin, in salads, and as originally eaten in Italy, fried with bread crumbs. Five carloads come in each day in winter to New York alone, and each is worth $2,000 to $10,000; a day's total for a vegetable that three years ago was entirely unknown to the consumer!

Now it is no longer restricted to the menus of hotels, but is found in markets and used generously by housewives only five years after it was an utter stranger here. Thus a new vegetable has helped to further diversify the diet of the American table.

Grapefruit, first placed like apples on a dish in the center of that same Waldorf table thirty years ago, have since been universally accepted and are seen on the table of all classes. Recently the writer was buying eggs from a very humble peasant-type “egg-woman” on Long Island. In the midst of a sale, a wagon selling groceries pulled up and the driver called out to the woman what she wanted today. “Oh, give me six big grapefruit,” she replied. She was a Polish woman who couldn't writer her name—but that humble farm home 138 125knew grapefruit on the table; had connected up somehow with the modern fruit dietary principle.

72. The Psychological Method of Establishing New Food Habits.—The psychologists call eating “an habitual interest.” Our food preferences have entered our lives by way of nerve currents passing from the outer world to our brains. Frequently this habitual interest refuses to change

Diagrams Showing How Basic Food Traits Logically Develop. In the Diagram to the Left Is Shown How From the Liking for Salad, as a Basic Trait, Easily Sprout Likings for Other Salads. In the Diagram to the Right Is Shown a Progressive Series Leading from Cabbage to Broccoli.

Any people—even the open-minded American people— 139 126tend to cling to old diets and hesitate to try new foods. On the other hand, new foods will be more easily liked and assimilated into the dietary if they even slightly resemble familiar foods. This is based on the explanation that one “trait” or habit will lead to another which has something in common with it. If a possible similarity to the old trait can be found, then the new trait can travel part of the way by a habit-road already made. It is easy to understand how broccoli was accepted, because it resembled cauliflower (already known and accepted). If it had looked like the brush of a pineapple, which we have never eaten, we would have been much more hesitant. The psychological system which this follows is made graphic in the accompanying diagram.

On the other hand, we may come to like new foods for an entirely different, or second explanation. Once a new “trait” has become established, it is likely to enlarge, expand, and send out subsidiary branches from the original basic trait. A good example of this is the present widespread liking for many different kinds of salads. Once the individual overcame any resistance to, and decided to accept salads as an important dish in his meal, then this basic salad trait rapidly became a “salad culture” with branches ending in meat-salads, fish-salads, fruit-salads, salad-desserts and so on. What was at first only a “basic salad acceptance” has become a flourishing “salad culture” because of association in the individual's mind. Similarly, if we could induce a person to enjoy one Chinese dish, he would more easily come to relish other Chinese dishes; once show the housewife how to make (and enjoy) one refrigerator dessert, and the time will soon arrive when she will make (and enjoy even more greatly) all desserts of this type.

Another psychological slant on foods is that there must be nothing connected with foods which to the particular person seems unpleasant, unsavory, or associated with an unfavorable experience. Some people do not like mushrooms because they think of them growing near decaying material; others are deterred from eating all Oriental food because of a hesitancy about “bird's nests soup.” An eel may taste delicious 140 127to the person who has never seen one pitchforked under his feet into the bottom of a rowboat. No matter if a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” a “food by any other name” is vastly more relished. The government recognized this by recently changing the name of “dogfish” to “grayfish”—when more people instantly began to use it. Similarly common “haddock” of no great repute, is now more frequently and cuphoniously sold as “fish fillets.” It is axiomatic that foods either uncooked or prepared, must never be associated with names which are unsavory. The positive form of this statement explains the multitude of “delights,” “ambrosia,” “fluffs,” “French,” “a la king,” “supreme,” and titles of honor which mask plain apples, potatoes or veal stew!

73. What's Next in Food?—Granted that we cling to old food forms, and that we also are willing to try new foods if they resemble those to which we have been familiar, what are the possible food trends which may culminate in our food habits for 1940?

The level of appreciation and diversity in eating is constantly rising. In one generation the children of foreign born are likely to turn from their native polenta, borscht or ravioli to expensive beef cuts, lamb chops, grapefruit and a generally more luxurious diet. The family formerly satisfied with lettuce served with a sprinkling of salt and vinegar from the cruet now prefer a stuffed “tomato surprise.” Families who begin on cabbage, end on broccoli; homes where cornstarch ivory cream was considered the most dressy of desserts now scorn starchy puddings in favor of refrigerator dainties, ice-box cakes, and complex fruit salads topped with whipped cream mayonnaise. Both in ingredients and in style, there is a leaving behind of former simple, hearty and crude foods.

More and more hostesses are demanding and using what were formerly classed as “luxury foods,” tropical and imported luxuries. Today there is a marked preference for smart and unusual foods, often popularized because of a snob appeal due to their imported origin. It is not only the foreign label in gowns that traps the consumer—she falls just as readily for the imported food label on chocolate, cracker or cheese! The avocado was thus popularized because of its original smart appeal. The English biscuit, Dalmatian honey, guava jelly, and hosts of cheeses whose very names were known only to a few chance epicures—grenadine syrups, marrons, pastes and paté, hearts of palm, anchovies, fastidious fish and fruit in glasine or styled containers. Little by little they are creeping into the general diet of the comfortable and well-to-do families. Even though the middle class housewife may use such foods but seldom, she is becoming as aware of æsthetics in food as the gustatory French have ever known it. She uses these delicacies as garnish, as trimming on some “company salad” or in imitation of a tearoom “special” which she may have eaten or read about in her favorite magazine. For the specialty of the fine hotel cuisine of today becomes the guest recipe of the better class home of tomorrow, and the family dish of the average home of the year after next.

I should say that no single line of goods in American buying has had the great boost in the last 15 or 20 years that toilet goods, perfumes and cosmetics received.

124. A Changed Point of View Toward Cosmetics.—The average woman, statistics indicate, * spends now about $50 to $52 a year on cosmetics and “beauty culture”—just about a dollar a week. This is certainly ten times as much as she spent 20 years ago. But Mrs. Consumer—from the angle of personal appearance and sophistication—is a very different woman compared to 20 years ago.

Whereas only a small group of large city women were then “sophisticated,” using that term in the personal sense, today not only the small city but even small town and well-to-do rural women are “sophisticated.” More than that, the age at which personal sophistication begins has lengthened at both ends, until we no longer find it a matter of comment that high school girls, or even women of 60 or 70 years of age, use cosmetics.

It was inevitable that Mrs. Consumer on the levels below wealth would spend a great deal more money on “beauty” goods just as soon as she had it to spend. As a “feminist” I hate to say it, but the bare truth is that woman's chief business in life still appears to be to charm and hold a man, and, quite as in the earliest Sumerian civilization, five or six thousand years ago, women rely heavily upon cosmetics for success.

The entire “beauty technique” has changed. Women who used rouge and lipstick were once definitely classed with the demi-monde. Today the twelve-year-old girl, not yet entered upon her teens, as well as her grandmother aged 60, use it. There was once a somewhat widespread puritanic doctrine of personal toilet, “just use good soap and water,” although there are women past 50 living today who boast of never having applied water to their faces since childhood. This soap-and-water school of personal toilet is almost extinct in the cities, among those above the “comfortable” levels. The sale of toilet and beauty goods and services has a very close relation to prosperity, as was shown in 1920, when there was a 29% drop in toilet goods sales, with further drops for a year or two until business conditions advanced again. This class of goods is admittedly a luxury. The sale of perfume jumped from 17 to 60 millions of dollars between 1914 and 1919, which illustrates how the war prosperity gave many women their long-awaited opportunity to “beautify.”

125. Mrs. Consumer Wants Better Quality Toilet Preparations.—The outstanding fact about Mrs. Consumer and cosmetics is that she has discarded to a considerable extent the “cheap” type of toilet preparations. The truth is that we women were once ashamed to spend much money on cosmetics. We stepped into its use rather gingerly, if we were not used to it. We patronized the mass production makers of cheap perfumes and toilet preparations. Then we became bolder. We realized the cheap and often tawdry character of so much American toilet preparations, and we “went French,” as a friend of mine puts it. Deserved or not, we had the 203 190idea that French perfume was infinitely superior in quality and smartness. I and other women who use discrimination have since discovered that everything called “French,” or even coming from France, is not up to the highest French reputation, but still we liked to believe so and did. A hundred or more so-called French toilet preparations began business here—a great many of them quite unknown in Paris, as I have learned on my visits there.

There are today an astounding number of brands of cosmetics offered—2,500 brands of perfume, for example, and 1,500 face creams. There is a grand total of about 7,000 toilet preparation brands. Most of them are of course very inferior, but the lower level women still do not know any better. They will, soon. Toilet preparations constituted 10%, or 125 millions of the billion and a quarter of sales made by drug stores last year. * Naturally the greater part of this is sold to women. A research made by Crowell showed that 85% of druggists estimate that at least half of not only toilet preparations but drugs are sold to women; while one quarter of the druggists estimated the sales to women as between 75 and 90%.

126. How Cosmetic Sales are Divided,—Mrs. Consumer knows pretty well what she wants in cosmetics. She is not making a great deal of chemical experiment on her face. I have seen French women's dressing tables that looked like the laboratory table of a chemist. Mrs. Consumer and Miss Consumer in America do not dabble in such things. They buy in almost equal proportions just about six classes of cosmetics: (1) face powder and rouge, (2) face creams, (3) perfumes and toilet water and tale, (4) dentifrices, (5) hair tonics, shampoos and hair dyes, (6) facial treatments and miscellaneous. For each of these the volume of sales I find are about the same, and while some are growing more rapidly than others, the differences are not marked. Enough lipstick is sold per year now—about two sticks per woman—to reach from New York to Reno.

127. Cosmetics and the Psychology of the Older Women.— 204 191I believe I am stating the truth when I say that the great bulk of cosmetics is sold to the woman no longer quite young; the woman over 30. No mere man ever quite appreciates the special situation of woman in the world, and how much physical attraction has to do with it. Woman has always been judged for what she is or seems, personally; while men are judged by what they do, and not much on their personal appearance. Even in an age of feminism like this, when women are not altogether economically dependent on men, it has become apparent that whether or not they can support themselves, woman's interest is still centered in the place she holds in man's affections; which place she knows she holds to a very large degree by physical charm.

As a result women do not give up their youth as their grandmothers did, at 35 or so. Many millions of women of 35 and over spend far more money and attention on “beauty” than any flapper would ever deign to spend; I should say three to five times as much. One reason for this is that she has it to spend, either as a business woman or a wife of a man who has some surplus. Among the rich and well-to-do women enormous sums are spent. Margaret Culkin Banning, well known writer, was so impressed with the vast amount of time and money and heartache that older women put into “beautifying” nowadays that she wrote an article in Harpers Magazine in 1928 decrying its “waste and futility.” But at the same time a more knowing realist, Dorothy Dix, wrote graphically of that dread moment is a woman's life when she is recognized as growing old. Pathetic it may be, but the truth is there: modern women up to 60 or 70 years of age want to preserve, in face and figure, some degree of the illusion that they are “young.” They refuse altogether to admit old age, or even middle age. Cosmetics, plus clothes and diet perform marvels in this direction, as Fannie Ward the “aged flapper” of 64, and Edna Wallace Hopper demonstrate. What women like to believe they will believe.

The great vitality of the toilet goods market arises from its rapid spread in all directions; not only among the older women and younger girls, but among mechanics’ wives and 205 192farm women who have scarcely ever before used cosmetics. I have been in a small rural town in the west and introduced to a woman who could have walked up Fifth Avenue and fitted the picture, and then been motored to her home, a farm miles out in the country. Her dressing table had all the main items of toilet goods, including a Parisian perfume. Yet the farm was just an ordinary one. Cows lowed and chickens clucked right under the window of her boudoir where she was applying French face cream. Her mother, at the same age, would have worn alpaca or gingham and the lace cap, the badge of age.

On May 12th, 1929, (“Mother's Day”) a large New York Fifth Avenue department store had in its window an enlargement of Whistler's famous picture of a mother. Standing at the window, I overheard a woman who doubtless was not far from the age of “Whistler's mother.” “It's all very sweet,” she said, a bit defiantly, “but mothers don't look like that any more.” Half a dozen older women about her laughed so instantaneously, that one knew the same thought was in their minds; namely a determination that only when their legs would no longer hold them up would they consent to be so obviously old! This is the feeling and the fact which sellers of toilet preparations are capitalizing today. Patent medicines, “women's remedies” and the like, are going out, and diet and exercise are entering in, while toilet preparations are gathering in the shekels that nostrums once garnered.

128. Women Turning to Beauty Parlors.—At the same time the changes are not all completed in women's habits. They are already markedly turning from treating themselves, and now go to beauty parlors; just as men turned from caring for their own cars, to garage service. It is all in the cause of more leisure and less personal work and responsibility; also the sheer luxury of personal toilet service. A stenographer I once employed had just two wishes for Alladin's Lamp; a personal maid and a pipe organ. Lacking a personal maid, women today are constantly being offered more luxurious and more cleverly organized beauty parlor service. This is doubtless 206 193why Helena Rubenstein's stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange along with United States Steel!

I believe Mrs. and Miss Consumer are now at the point of greater discrimination and simplification in toilet goods purchasing. They are not likely to be so greatly impressed as before with magnificent bottles and packages. French names and hocus-pocus of one kind and another. They also are beginning to inquire into purity and cleanliness of manufacture, and to be hostile and critical toward exaggerated, inaccurate, unscientific claims.

129. Special Shades, Scents, etc. for Special Personality.—Finally, they are, like Frenchwomen, coming to appreciate more the special affinity, for their particular personality, of one shade of powder, one perfume, etc. This is in full keeping with Mrs. Consumer's greater artistic sense of discrimination in other things she buys. Thus we find one face powder maker advertising 28 separate shades, to fit 28 types of skin. More women buying their favorite perfume in bulk, to refill. Ten years ago many women I knew often changed their perfume—something which would fill a Frenchwomen with disgust! Both the personality and the character of American women is “settling” now, is no longer chamleon-like, swaying to every breeze, or changing with every new type of person encountered. This makers for a more settled market for toilet goods; more fixed, individual perferences for shades, scents, kinds of toilet preparations.

130. Novelty, Style and Package in Toilet Preparations.—Despite the tendency toward common sense in toiletries, the passion for style has naturally invaded this field, and we are quite unable to resist the impulse to buy crystal bottles with black stoppers, solid black bottles, Bavarian glass bottles in smoky tones, etc., or the compact shaped like a golf ball, or the compact that looks like a cigarette lighter, a wrist watch, etc., or the lipstick in mother-of-pearl in a suede box.

The love of the new, scintillating color and line makers us consider our purchases of a year or so ago no longer smart enough. The strong trend toward ensemble effects makes us 207 194wish to own more than one or two vanity cases or compacts, to match our frocks. Our delight in modernistic art makes us want one of the new flat mirror perfume trays, or some other attractive piece. We see at work the magnetic pull of design and color and style, and in so personal a matter as toilet accessories we are naturally more lavish and susceptible. When one compares the $50 spent by the average woman on cosmetics, with the $86.98 minimum spent by the average wife of a New York office worker for clothing, we have a very striking object lesson in the present day pull of “beauty” material as against clothes. The comparison is not quite statistically just, but it is arresting, anyhow.

There is no denying that novelty is a powerful appeal in toilet goods selling. This fact researches among consumers has already proved. A thousand debutantes were asked, “which is more important to you: name, package, product itself, or odor?” Ten percent rated package first, while the remainder ranked it either second or third. For young girls this would doubtless be so, for they are still half child, loving pretty boxes to put things in. All women, however, in buying toilet preparations, instinctively turn to the attractive box, bottle or package; the one which produces the strongest “feeling-tone” of smartness, quality and beauty vibrating with the conceptions women have of themselves, or what they desire to be.

131. Selling Health and Naturalness.—The seller of toilet preparations, I believe, must find that the best approach to the American woman is the health and beauty idea. It is not only in line with the American woman's best conception of her character, but it is truly in line with public health. The startling truth is that American girls of this generation have not been quite as healthy as the past generation (which the actual health statistics prove *), and already a reversion from the hectic flapper idea is noticeable.

We are going to hear more about the health and beauty idea, and the future of toilet preparations must center very closely around this principle. We see a strong tendency away 208 195from old artificial standards of adornment. By taking a more naturalistic and sensible attitude toward cosmetics and appealing to the health and beauty idea, the seller of toilet preparations is able to persuade not only the flapper and the city butterfly, but also the small town and farm woman to buy and use good cosmetics. The Parisienne woman distinctly overdoes cosmetics, with the result that no aristocratic Frenchwoman, only a certain type of Parisienne, will use any cosmetics. This is news to many people who have borrowed ideas of French women. In America, women do not overdo cosmetics, with the contrary result that millions instead of thousands use them.

Underlying all American conceptions of good cosmetics and personal beauty lies her emphasis upon cleanliness. Where a bath is a rarity on the Continent, a bath is the possession and almost daily habit of the humblest woman in America. The American woman, like the Dutch housewife, believes in Cleanliness First. She does not use cosmetics to hide dirt or disguise odor. She is the world's greatest user of antiseptics, soaps, and other purely cleansing preparations, and, therefore, when it comes to the matter of beauty preparations, she values them all from the standpoint of still greater cleanliness. Will they enhance health and naturalness?—that is her searching question. There was a straying for a few years from this standard, but girls are back again—as witness the vogue of overalls among smart girls living in the country or at the seashore.

We may hear old-fashioned people decry the use of lipsticks by high school girls, but they are simply witnessing the extension of use of harmless cosmetics into every corner of our country and down to the earliest years of girlish adolescense. American women desire to be beautiful from the first years of their social consciousness.

Not even the most thoughtless flapper is altogether insensible to the health appeal, for American schools teach health as part of the curriculum, and school athletics set up constant examples of it. The athletic ideal for American women is very much to the fore. Being full of the glow of 209 196health is no longer—as it was long ago—an unfeminine virtue. This situation has very important bearing on the sale of beauty preparations.

It used to be regarded as a supreme appeal to women to stress the purity of a toilet article. But investigation has demonstrated that purity is now taken as a matter of course, just as they take the pure food appeal as a matter of course.

Thousands of “beauty advice columns” run by newspapers, while containing, it is true, much drivel, have nevertheless given important hints on beauty to the masses of women, because they have usually been written by women of common sense and insight who were guided by a predominant desire for health and beauty combined. When selling any toilet preparation to a particular woman, it is well to keep all this in mind. Probably the most successful appeal in recent years has been that of Listerine, which showed women how to enhance their natural charm by getting rid of body odors and bad breath; things which have the savor of lack of health.

It is most significant that service institutes for toilet goods are being established by women's magazines, for the guidance of consumers, precisely as household goods institutes were started. The Delineator, for instance, has organized a “Beauty Service Institute” which answers consumer inquiries and makes tests and studies. It is housed in special quarters like the housekeeping institute. Such a move is a recognition of the very large part of woman's interests that toilet goods now comprises; and of the need for greater consumer assistance and discrimination.

132. General Health Appeal and Drug Selling.—The patent medicine era passing, the simple home remedy and ethical preparation has come into its hey-day; the antiseptic, the dentifrice, the disinfectant, the common medical articles such as aspirin, milk of magnesia, bicarbonate of soda, mineral oils, etc.

The Insurance Department of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that the average worker loses seven days a year in illness—which is 2% of his earning capacity, or two billion dollars, or about $71 per family. This is a serious 210 197loss, and Mrs. Consumer is thoroughly aware that if she displays alertness and knowledge of simple medication and prevention and has a well-stocked medicine cabinet, she can save the family considerable money, which she frequently does.

One of the developments most gratifying to Mrs. Consumer is the greater freedom nowadays permitted the maker of ethical preparations in contacting with her, through educational advertising. Mrs. Consumer has learned to be a very competent home health guardian in this way. I was walking in a New York square one day last fall and saw a woman with some children. She was doubtless a mechanic's wife. Her little son was playing on a bench. “Open your coat at the bottom, Johnny,” I heard her command, “so the sun shines on your knees.” Johnny protested, but his mother was firm. I was startled that an ordinary workingman's wife should have in her mind this knowledge that prevents rickets. Workingmen's wives nowhere else in the world would have this knowledge. She probably also gave him a daily ration of orange juice and milk, consciously aware, without a doctor's advice, of the simple scientific facts. It was only a decade or so ago that there were storms of criticism from the older generation of women because mothers put socks on their children in winter. I even know a young wife who plans to have all her children born in spring-time or early summer, to enable them to secure summer sunshine. If only all children had this advantage, which can come only from mothers’ alertness to health-knowledge. Mrs. Consumer today is thus exceedingly interested in her contacts with the sellers of responsible, proved health goods of all kinds.

I think it was Henry Dennison, of the Dennison Mfg. Co., who first laid special emphasis on the need for a merchandising department in a manufacturing business in order that goods should more closely fit the market. Such a department has, I believe, been a brilliant success in his own business, and the use of this neglected function is spreading to many other lines of family goods. Such a merchandising department performs a very greatly needed function, as I can abundantly testify. It acts as a liaison officer between consumer and manufacturer, keeping production from wastefulness, and maintaining the freshness and fitness of the goods in relation to consumer demand. It is now accepted, standard business doctrine that business has its pivotal center not in the factory, but out in the field of use. What can be used and sold is the key to what should be produced.

157. Making Products Without Taking the Consumer into Account.—Mrs. Consumer should find that the articles offered her are calculated to meet her needs. Does she? Decidedly no! I have referred before to my storeroom at my Experiment 237 224Station which is constantly filled with goods sent to me by manufacturers, products which I have found badly adjusted in one way or another to Mrs. Consumer's needs. A look at this storeroom is rather saddening, a graphic object lesson in the hit-and-miss method of manufacturing and selling. There is a kitchen device which, however ingenious, takes more time to clean than the minutes it saves. There is the vacuum cleaner which is too ponderous and clumsy; the kitchen cabinet which is the same; and the expensive, space-taking tool which a woman could use only very occasionally. Notice that these are not always faults in mechanics, they are faults in “merchandising” the article (in the sense that Mr. Dennison uses the word) to fit the average consumer need. It is perfectly astounding how many people blithely go into business to promote a new article—so often a family article or kitchen device. They seem so think that a model kitchen is a vast collection of complicated tools, one for each of the multiple tasks of the household. Expensive dies are made to manufacture them, hard-earned money is pooled to form companies with no chance of success, and very precious time and hopes are consumed—all without any inquiry into whether the consumer will want or use or afford the article. Such men are usually enthusiasts. The farthest thing from their mind is analysis, particularly expert consumer analysis, Haven't their wives and their aunts and their stenographers taken the article home and reported it wonderful? Aren't the 28,000,000 families in the U.S. crying for just such a device or product? It is all infinitely pathetic, and so very childlike, stupid and wasteful. There must be many millions a year wasted in such efforts to put products “over”—that have no real reason, or a very limited one, for their existence. Manufacturers constantly come to me with household goods of some kind. “What do I think of it?” they ask proudly as they hold it at arms length. Their intense desire is to have me say it is marvelous and what every woman has been waiting for. Their faces fall when I say that it should be given a thorough practical test (which of course they usually think you should provide free; or if they pay for it, they may be 238 225annoyed if your report is even partly adverse). They are so tremendously cocksure about it all! A healthy, scientific skepticism is entirely absent—yet so desperately needed!

Contrast this with the manner in which a Lever Bros. Company or a Proctor & Gamble Co., despite their long experience and extensive knowledge, put out a new product. They will take perhaps a year or two to simply try the goods out in many kinds of homes, from a negro woman's shack in Louisiana to the home of a society woman on Park Avenue, and they will not have one, but many technical tests made at experiment stations, etc., under all possible circumstances of use. After many such labors, it may after all be decided not to market the article! Infinite pains is taken to fit the article to Mrs. Consumer.

This is “merchandising” the goods, and little wonder that it makes a success when it is put into trade channels. It fits precisely like the bridge structure fits when erected in place after having been fabricated miles away, perhaps at various factories. It was engineered; and of course that is precisely what a consumer article should be.

158. “Simplification” and Mrs. Consumer.—Not only is this something that can be done by manufacturers individually, but also by manufacturers collectively, as for instance in the Hoover program of simplification, which has reduced sizes of beds, springs and mattresses from 78 to 4 and bed blankets from 78 to 12. Such work is all in the direction of increase in the purchasing power of the consumer's dollar. Women's clubs have in recent years heard with interest speakers from the Division of Simplified Practice at Washington on this subject. As Roy Hudson of that Bureau tells women:

“Simplified practice, or the elimination of unnecessary variety, does not interfere with style or freedom of artistic expression. Beds of standard dimensions can be purchased ✓ in almost any period of furniture desired. The consumer need have no fear of irksome restriction in her choice because of simplification.

“In fact the savings it produces tend to reduce her cost of living, through reducing prices for the goods that enter 239 226into the cost. The consequent increase in the margin between her income and her outgo means greater opportunity to purchase or procure those things which satisfy her requirements and desires outside the list of necessities.”

The government is aiding the consumer in other ways. For example, women have hoped for a dry cleaning solvent that would leave no odors, rings, or spots in the garments after cleaning. Also commercial dry cleaners have long sought less hazardous fluids to work with. Through the combined research efforts of the National Association of Dyers and Cleaners, and the Bureau of Standards at Washington, a cleaner, called Solvent has been perfected that meets these requirements.

Other products of interest to homemakers for which commercial standards are being developed are: porcelain plumbing fixtures, men's shirt sizes, coke, white glazed tile, worsted yarns, soap products in packages, surgical gauze, and women's dress sizes. These represent genuine appreciation by manufacturers of the need of better serving consumers through improvement of their product.

159. The Threat of “Buying by Specification.”—Such voluntary action of manufacturers, and increased use of research analysis of the consumer's need will make less urgent the formation of protective clubs of consumers themselves, looking toward purchase by standard specification rather than by brand. If the branded, nationally advertised goods does not do its merchandising job well, then Mrs. Consumer, now far more intelligent and organized, will do it in collaboration with her public servants. This is clearly forecast by the address before the General Federation of Women's Clubs of Director George K. Burgess of the Bureau of Standards:

“Many of the specifications to which the certification plan of the Bureau of Standards has been or will be applied, cover commodities of much interest to housekeepers. Althought it is not expected that the housewife will actually buy commodities on the individual specifications, some day she may be induced to confine her purchases of certain kinds of commodities to those known to be manufactured to comply with certain 240 227nationally recognized specifications. Perhaps she may even now be induced to examine critically such of these commodities as she does purchase, to determine whether or not they are as represented and how they comply with her own requirements—to purchase on the basis of real quality and ability to meet service requirements, rather than on the basis of superficial appearance or of the numerous kinds of sales arguments.

“No serious difficulty would be encountered in compiling material for a publication or series of publications devoted to ‘specifications for household commodities.’ In fact, considerable material of this nature is now available.

“It has been suggested that the housewife would welcome the preparation for her use of a series of “hand-bag size’ pamphlets or folders outlining methods of identifying quality in certain kinds of commodities, and giving very simple rough and ready tests which could be applied by her in the home or store.

“Such a plan as this can be carried out only on a thoroughly coöperative basis. If undertaken the work would be carried out through the coöperative efforts of the several organizations most vitally interested in specifications for household commodities, prominent among them being the American Home Economics Association, the Bureau of Home Economics, and we trust, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, for we cannot help but feel that the women of America, who spent for food, clothing, shelter, and other supplies or services more than $52,000,000,000 of the $92,000,000,000 that went in the nation's pay envelopes last year, will welcome the extension of this certification and labeling plan as a means by which they can be more completely assured of getting full value for their dollars.”

As I indicate elsewhere, I am not in favor of buying “by specification instead of by brand,” but if sound merchandising and consumer study methods do not spread still more rapidly among manufacturers, the threat which is implied by the specification idea will find still more favor with consumers.

“Father, do buy yourself a new pair of shoes,” says daughter, sitting in the runabout in which she has brought her commuter parent to the suburban station.

“New shoes?” replies her father, a little blankly, looking down at his excessively honest leather brogans, not at all shabby. He is a man who could buy a whole shoe factory full of shoes, but he has been wearing these shoes, intermittently, for almost a year. Patronizing a good shoe retailer, he buys shoes of the best leather, and they take a long time to wear out.

“Why, certainly new shoes, father,” says the flapper sweetly, “you just keep on wearing these old ones because they're comfortable,—now, don't you?—whether or not they're fresh-looking, with good lines and style? Imagine mother or me doing such a thing—with shoes or anything else!”

170. Woman's Love of Change.—This little incident illustrates two very important things with great clarity. First, the very real difference between men and women in purchasing habits and consumption of goods. Woman are far heavier 257 246consumers of personal goods than men, utilizing the principle of obsolescence far more frequently and naturally. Second, the greater love of change in women.

We are only beginning to see that there is tremendous significance in all this; and that America's triumphs and rapidity of progress are based on progressive obsolescence. We have not been aware of it, either as consumers or producers, but we have an attitude that is quite different from the rest of the world, and of late years we have been speeding it up. It appears to be a part of our new economic principle, the expansible wage fund, and its result, our increased income. It is the ambition of almost every American to practice progressive obsolescence as a ladder by which to climb to greater human satisfactions through the purchase of more of the fascinating and thrilling range of goods and services being offered today. We obtain a sense of speed and progress and increased fulness of life as a result.

171. A Definition of “Progressive Obsolescence.”—;What is “progressive obsolescence?” It is a somewhat pompous phrase, let us take it apart. These are its characteristics:

(1) A state of mind which is highly suggestible and open; eager and willing to take hold of anything new either in the shape of a new invention or new designs or styles or ways of living.

For years we have had a bit of an inferiority complex about these attitudes; hearing from foreign critics and others accusations of “materialism,” “unstable character,” “keeping up with the Jones’,” etc., until we felt a sense of “sin,” or waste or folly in our natural reaction in favor of the characteristics I have detailed. In other words, we have for years believed that what is now called the practice of “progressive obsolescence” was just one of our low-down, restless, common-clay 258 247American traits that we really should suppress. “Superior” persons such as Katharine Fullerton Gerould and others, have written articles in superior magazines telling us common Mrs. Consumers that the truly cultured, aristocratic way was to live in a home filled with antique furniture and art objects, treasuring the old, living on tradition and cultivating a beautiful snobbery of family origin and old-world culture, disdaining the new as a plebeian horror and maintaining ourselves distinctly aloof from the hurly-burly of the modern, “mechanistic” world.

172. The Old Antique-Worshiping Standards.—It is astonishing how many, especially we women, have kneeled down before and nourished this tradition, until recent decades. The universities have fostered the old-world culture in the aristocratic tradition; and American “society” for a century has been modeling itself on European lines, on the “exclusive” ancestor-worship principle which has kept us, psychologically, a colony of Europe 150 years after the Revolution. The old square-toed bankers living in old homes filled with European antiques and art treasures, and driving foreign automobiles, have formed our ideas of the manner in which people with money should live. We have made “new-rich” a by-word of ridicule, as though the only people worth while were those who inherit their money and have a family tree and a home furnished with antiques; whose purchases have, as a matter of fact, turned very few American factory wheels or added very few pennies to the prosperity of the American masses.

This aristocratic tradition, on which the old world is built, dies hard. It lingered in our political system until Andrew Jackson, and it has lingered in our social system until the new age of high wages and mass production and the revelations of the war. In Europe the aristocrat has always been distinguished by his titles. In American Colonial days titles were not to be had, and the aristocrat was marked off from the common folk by the amount of the land, slaves and property he possessed. These, too, had to pass away. In the recent century he sought his distinction from the culture and antiques he possessed, and the exclusiveness of his society. 259 248Then the culture advantage also was taken from him by greatly increased popular education; and in the last 20 years even his social exclusiveness has been removed. There was left then only his “antiques”; and it is therefore small wonder that in the past 15 years this last remaining means of providing the feverishly sought “atmosphere” and “background” and special distinction has been ridiculously over-emphasized. We have the humiliating spectacle of rich Americans constantly being hoodwinked with fake “masters” of art. We have a combing of old garrets to find antique furniture, and consequently a great deal of faking and cunning imitation. We have carloads of machine-made replicas of all period furnitures ad nausea, until a Bronx or a Podunk, Michigan, apartment house, so new that there are still mortar spots in the hallways, boasts of being a dim-lit replica of an ancient Tudor palace. No shoeshine parlor king, yesterday but a peasant in Europe's fields, who cannot boast a period home furnished in wood rubbed carefully with a chemical finish that “fakes” the ancient look of a baronial estate. “Period” atmosphere, I assert, has been turned into a common farce.

I call this the hypocrisy of inferiority and imitation, and a misfit individuality. The remedy is the “modernistic trend,” and resistance (which American people are now showing) against the effort to hold them to the conventionalized period styles. If the interior decorators and the standardized furniture makers had been allowed their way, America, in another twenty years would have been a vast pasteboard imitation of all the antiques of Europe, a bedlam of styles and periods, hopelessly mixed, entirely impractical and not expressing the personality or manners of this modern present period.

But Mrs. Consumer has called a halt. Our America is to be something better than a shoddy Europe. It has not been mere curiosity that has led millions of women to thrill over the new modernistic art. Something inside of them, even though they were perplexed, told them that the modernistic art fits America far more than it fits Europe, where it had its 260 249slender beginnings. It expresses the American idea and spirit as no Louis XIV style can ever hope to do. And it appeals to Mrs. Consumer's practical spirit, for it is as much utilitarian as it is decorative. It represents also the real change which, somehow, we have felt was impending, like the change from child to adult. Who can really feel adult living in imitation of something quite alien? The immense popularity of the “modernistic” conception of decoration and line in America is very meaningful; it is evidence of the fact that the principle of progressive obsolescence is in full stride. We have already taken the modernistic trend out of the hands of Europeans and adapted and improved it and are making it our own in a quite radical manner. We are co-creators of it, not imitators.

173. Contrasting the European and American Modes of Buying—Frankly the outlook on life in America must now really represent a parting of the ways with Europe (unless Europe wishes to accept our own leadership, of which there are not a few signs). The progressive obsolescence principle is the very knife-blade which is carving this cleavage, and it is the most thoroughly outstanding difference between us. In Europe people buy shoes, clothes, motor cars, etc., to last just as long as possible. That is their idea of buying wisely. You buy once and of very substantial, everlasting materials and you never buy again if you can help it. It is not uncommon for English women of certain circles to wear on all formal occasions, the same evening gown for five or ten years. To us this is unheard of and preposterous.

An Englishman buys tweed that wears like iron, or a hat or shoes, and wears them until they begin to break. This too, is very novel and unusual with us. The Englishman lives in the same house not only for his own lifetime but for many generations. The English manufacturer doesn't even like to buy new labor-saving machinery when invented, until the old machinery wears out. Thus John Bull has neatly cheated himself out of many of his old positions of leadership, but he still stubbornly clings to the notion. There is in him and Mrs. John Bull a dislike of the new, as contrasted to our 261 250positive love of the new. Even her poverty-stricken miners resist all urging to change to an occupation that will provide better for their families.

You can't have the consumers of a country apply such attitudes to their daily lives without very severely restricting their rate of progress, and, of course, this is precisely what Europe has done. Nor can you apply the opposite, as America has done, without greatly speeding up progress—and this is precisely what we have done. We have subscribed whole-heartedly to the revolutionizing consumer idea that goods should not be consumed up to the last ounce of their usability; but that in an industrial era Mrs. Consumer is happiest and best served if she consumes goods at the same approximate rate of change and improvement that science and art and machinery can make possible. It resolves itself into the simplest and most common-sense kind of an equation: if designers and weavers and inventors of rapid machinery make it possible to choose a new pattern of necktie or dress every few weeks, and there is human pleasure in wearing them, why be an old frump and cling to an old necktie or old dress until it wears through? To cling to the old one will discourage designers from designing new ones, discourage inventors from making fast machinery, and discourage business men from offering new things. There is nothing civilized or cultured in this. An even more powerful reason exists for buying plenty of new goods before the old wears out. It increases the general income, whereas clinging to the old goods decreases it. We have more because we spend more—this is our American paradox.

174. The New Obsolescence Psychology of Consumption.—Mrs. Consumer has sensed all this, like the young girl mentioned who talked to her father about his shoes. She is long-experienced in this method, so far as clothes are concerned; now she is only learning to apply it to the whole gamut of family merchandise. The same thrill that women have always had over new clothes, women are now also obtaining over replacements, changes, reconstructions, new colors and forms in all types of merchandise. She dares build 262 251an entirely new kind of house, putting her say-so into the smallest architectural detail. She dares become bold with color, where before she suppressed herself. She dares sell her old household goods and decorates her rooms with complete freshness. She dares apply modern principles of science and labor-saving to her age-old tasks, which have known little improvement in twenty centuries and evolves an efficient kitchen to amaze the housewives of foreign lands. In fact she is often far too daring for the pace of her husband, who is usually more conservative! Mrs. Consumer has billions to spend—the greatest surplus money value ever given to woman to spend in all history. She is having a gorgeous time spending it—and American industry, science, art, literature, invention is having the peak of its development catering to her quick appreciation, which does not hesitate to throw out of her house much that is still useful, even half-new, in order to make room for the newest “best.” This is progressive obsolescence in action.

175. Critics of Obsolescence.—It is surprising, however, how many people who should know better theoretically denounce this. They are still suffering from the inferiority sense and from European cultural domination. They still argue for the expensive automobile that will not wear out; the suit of clothes that will wear five years, the “antique” instead of the modern art, the refusal to buy modern appliances, the contentment with very, very few things. They don't say so outright, but they infer that thereby they achieve the class superiority they crave.

But in a downright argument, I have never been able to find anyone to tell me how I am violating any standard of culture if I should want a completely new set of furniture every five or ten years, or a new model of automobile every year or so. Why not, in fact, build a new house every few years, if we have ideas and impulses toward it? Why not, indeed? Our surroundings react on us, and it is beneficial to health, temper and productivity to make changes, to adopt new inventions and delights. What good principle is there to hold us down to using a lot of old stuff, or old designs or old ideas, or the efficiency standards of yesterday? Isn't the world too full of 263 252a lot of old rabbit warrens for dwellings? Isn't American architecture—the skyscraper, erected after tearing down comparatively new buildings—our one authentic American bid for artistic achievement? If the ordinary American has been able not only to buy a car, but to trade it in and get a new car every year or two, and yet, in doing so, contribute greatly to American prosperity, why isn't the principle as wide as all industry, and why isn't a broad application of the “progressive obsolescene” principle just precisely the best thing for all of us, either as consumers or producers?

It is sheer hypocrisy, to deny that the makers of merchandise today are thrillingly enlarging the enjoyment of life, the efficiency of life and even the meaning of life. For years the very large portion of the consumer's dollar taken by clothing, millinery and style goods industries was due to the naive acquiescence and inactivity of other industries. Mrs. Consumer wore a new hat or dress very frequently, but had on her floors the same rugs bought when she was married. Women in past decades really spent an ungodly proportion of their budget on clothes. Remember Mrs. Lincoln's fourteen petticoats, worn under one dress! Where, Oh, where are petticoats today? Men, too, spent a far greater proportion of their earnings on clothing, jewelry, watches, etc., twenty-five years ago than today, when the competing industries are alive and active, and when Mrs. Consumer is awake to other interests and attractive purchases which have widened her horizon. The automobile, the radio and electrical appliances have been the spearhead of the new drive, and more and more the clothing interests have become aware that their old-time strangle-hold on the consumer's dollar cannot be continued—that is why we are now having a textile depression. We are no longer clothes-obsessed, even though we are better dressed than ever. Our interest is spread over a far greater range of interests now—which means a far greater range of purchases.

176. How Progressive Obsolescence Works.—Mrs. Consumer no longer takes pride in the great square ebony piano of excellent tone her mother handed down to her, but on the contrary unsentimentally considers it a horror, and has perhaps 264 253bought several pianos of different shapes and woods in recent years—also several phonographs, radios, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, sewing machines, sets of furniture, china and rugs; trading in her “obsolescent” models (each good for years more of use) in part payment for the new. Indeed, the Consumer-Jones have, in a dozen years, built three homes, but moved out of and sold two of them because they seemed obsolescent to this family so rapidly moving up on the social scale. A new car every year, sometimes two, is a foregone conclusion.

The Consumer-Jones’ radio-buying history is a particularly classic instance of the working of the new principle. Jones started by buying a crystal set seven or eight years ago, and then, as often as twice a year for five years buying a new set, as new improvements developed, working up from a three tube to a nine tube set. The significant thing to note is that thus far the family kept pace exclusively with technical, scientific advance, by means of working the progressive obsolescence principle of purchase. Then a second phase of it began—a practical or coordinate phase. Purchases for the next year or two of new radio sets were combinations with phonographs or desks. Finally a third phase arrived— purchase for purely æsthetic reasons. Radio sets fitting the particular scheme of furnishings were then bought; and this is the principle operative now, the logical last phase of the obsolescence cycle.

Here we see “progressive obsolescence” in some of its typical extreme manifestations on certain well-to-do levels of American life. In lesser degree but on precisely the same principle this occurs on successively lower levels of American life until we reach “hard-pan,” or those approximately 93 millions who are too close to necessity to dispose of their purchases much before the last usage is out of them. But even these folk, down to the farm laborer or the “hobo,” are linked up with the developing progressive obsolescence system, for they now by second-hand automobiles, radio sets, etc., which are in their fourth or fifth and probably final stages of obsolescence. Remember, the average length of life of a car is 6¼ years— rarely for the first owner! The unique and arresting 265 254point is that under any but a progressive obsolescence régime, these lower level folk would never be able to have an automobile at all. It has recently been calculated that if all automobile users used their cars to the end of their usefulness, there could be only 12 million cars registered instead of over twice as many. This would mean higher prices for cars and cut the total registrations still further. And now the same thing is occurring in regard to vacuum cleaners, washing machines, motor boats, furniture, rugs, typewriters and other articles, using the polite word “rebuilt” instead of the more expressive vernacular “hand-me-down.” Progressive obsolescence, of one type, appears actually to be an American version of the famous Paris “flea market” for second-hand goods, and as a result “trade-ins” are today a major problem in industry. Acceleration of the rate of obsolescence practiced by the American well-to-do appears to spell accelerated opportunity for increased standards of living for the poorer classes; this is the central economic factor to be noted. There appears in the purchases of the greatly enlarged class of American people with some surplus, a new element, known before on any broad scale only to the very wealthy,—the element of indulgence, luxury, fancy, excess and pleasure, in addition to plain necessity.

177. Checking Too Rapid Obsolescence.—Women have already ably appraised the principle of progressive obsolescence. They have checked its abuse and too hectic application, which is as bad as failure to apply it at all. Style changes at one time were made but twice annually, but rapidity of communication has enabled too eager stylists to initiate changes with kaleidoscopic speed half a dozen times a year, until American women themselves have balked and indicated the precise obsolescence pace they prefer. They will not be rushed off their feet. In fact, on some goods,—paradoxically on millinery, the article the joke books have always held to be the quintessence of perfervid obsolescence—they have elected to slow it up, finding felt hats more satisfactory than the succession of giddy confections in past decades so rapidly urged upon them. It has long been axiomatic among women that in 266 255feminine photographs hats “date” them as does nothing else,—but not since the vogue of felt.

The point to mark is that women exercise an increasing degree of control over obsolescence, and with an increasing sense of intelligence and direction, too, as the evolution of women's clothes in recent decades clearly shows. This control they will undoubtedly exercise over the coming general application of progressive obsolescence, demanding that it really be “progressive” in more than one sense. Not just “different” merchandise for the purely neurotic sake of senseless change, but different merchandise for the sake of increased knowledge of taste, color, line, efficiency, better workmanship, health, hygiene and fitness. Thus is answered the criticism of those who deprecate rapid change and obsolescence, and who believe it can mean only shoddy standards of quality and usefulness.

As I have said elsewhere, the American consumer is unconscious rather than conscious in her reactions to those who sell to her. She is the Sphinx, the Mona Lisa in the merchandising world, and fortunes are spent trying to guess her moods and desires. She has few to speak for her, and even they dare not be too cocksure, especially in a matter of deeplying economic importance.

178. Low Price as a Reward for Brand Loyalty.—Mrs. Consumer wants to see lower prices for what she buys, as a reward for concentrating her purchases in standardized mass fashion. I say so as an interpreter of her feeling and general attitude, discerned through many and varied contacts. Women are on the scent of ever-increasing personal, cultural and luxury values—to such an extent that Virgil Jordan, chief economist of the National Industrial Conference Board, has made the flat assertion that the industries devoted to necessities are languishing while the luxury industries are booming. It is true: women have never been so determined to have luxuries and comforts in plenty as today; and they 268 257secure them if necessary through readjustments of their budgets and economy with the so-called necessaries. They want lower prices both on luxuries and necessities, and they want in this way to perform the old miracle for which women are famous; making a dollar go a very, very long way. At one time they did so by using left-overs, making chairs out of sugar barrels, baking their own bread, making their own soap from kitchen fats, sewing their own clothing, etc. Thus were accomplished the wonders of our grandmothers who raised a family of six on a few hundred dollars a year. Mrs. Consumer today wants to perform the same kind of miracle, but with the aid of her co-partners, the manufacturer, the inventor, the machine and electricity through scientific management and specialization. She wants industry to take over the household tasks, standardize them and produce them on a large scale and offer a unit to her both better and cheaper than she can produce it. To the manufacturers doing this well she gives brand loyalty.

If anyone thinks women don't or can't reason along these lines, he has something to learn about women. They have already thought the thing out, for instance, regarding soup and bread and soap and clothes—certainly four extremely basic household commodities. In each case it was common one or two generations ago for women to make these things themselves—especially soup. But soup is an article of food which is most time and fuel consuming to make and yet very important in the diet. Many millions of women still make it themselves. But Campbell's has been granted virtually a monopoly on mass soup-making, and eight or ten millions of cans a day are bought by women who see the folly of making soup as often as they'd like to eat it. The Franco-American Soup Co. made even better soup than Campbell's, but it asked too high a price, thus losing the consumer's favor, and was finally merged. Women, by heavy patronage, have silently but effectively encouraged Campbell's to be their soup man. They discouraged Franco-American and encouraged Campbell. He has done a very good job—but don't for a moment credit Mrs. Consumer with not understanding what she is doing. 269 258If Campbell is wise, and manufacturing economy through still greater volume will permit it, he will in due time make a still lower price.

179. Examples of Price Lowering.—The Campbell and Ford examples have of course ever been before Mr. Consumer, and she definitely looks for other manufacturers to follow suit, as many have—Jello, for instance. A further case in point is silk hosiery, which women have now almost universally adopted. They wanted it so badly that for years they paid out for it a most inordinate proportion of their budget—something like $100 a year. Many working girls earning $20 a week were paying $2 a week for stockings—a third or more of their clothes budget. Though they appointed no committees and held no protest meetings on the subject, they were exerting pressure in their own way toward lower price, by giving the concern that sold good stockings at even a very slight differential in price a very decided token of appreciation. Women were also buying many “seconds,” irregulars, sub-standards, etc., out of sheer necessity. Then in January, 1929, the break came, and considerably lower prices were set up by Kayser and other leaders; retail prices going down from $1.95 to $1.65. The mass-production-low-price principle was at work and will continue at work in this field as in many others.

The electric washing machine and the electric refrigerator are additional significant instances. The washing machine, the most outstanding of labor-savers, has made for slower progress than one would suppose in a prosperous country. Only 13% to 15% of families have an electric washing machine. The reason is obvious—an electric washing machine has been relatively too costly to be anything like universal. Only in the last few years has the modern mass-production-reduced-price principle been applied, and a low price provided—with immediate response. Again, the electric refrigerator people in 1925 or 1926 were roseate with dreams of sweeping the country—with a machine selling at $300 and upward! I plainly told manufacturers then that they were deluding themselves. A very hard struggle to stay alive ensued. The 270 259Frigidaire, applying vigorously the lower price principle, has left them all behind in volume, by reason of progressive price reduction, a la Ford.

180. Enrichment of Consumer Dollar.—One of the greatest anomalies in American life today is the possession of cars enough to make it one for every family—yet the economists tell us that there are 93 million people who have only an average of $117 left after paying for the common decencies of the American standard of living! This paradox, it seems to me, has never been digested by American business men. They have scarcely appreciated that the lower-price mass-production principle has made the values as automobile can give, a relatively greater return in value per dollar expended than anything ever offered the American consumer before. This is not only true because my 1914 automobile dollar buys $1.13 worth today, whereas my 1914 cost of living dollar buys only 62 cents worth today: it is true because of improvements, road-building and general satisfaction developed by the automobile even before 1914, which makes an automobile dollar so rich with value today. It is this enrichment of the value of the consumer dollar which I believe is of great importance for all manufacturers to study.

Mrs. Consumer wants more things than she has the money to pay for, even with the limited and temporary aid of the instalment plan. It is a perfectly feasible operation to supply her with such goods at a gradually declining price—or similarly, a gradually increasing value for the same prices—if the proper concentration of manufacture is made and the right pricing and sales policy adopted.

Mrs. Consumer knows it can be done, and she expects business to proceed with the principle or lose her good will. She is in a permanent state of price-lowering expectation. She once had this attitude solely for necessities, desiring to pay as little as possible for them in order that she could buy more luxuries; but now there is such a wide range of comforts and luxuries, (many of which have so rapidly been transformed into necessities) that she is in a state of mind to debunk all inflated values. This is the reason why there was 271 260 ✓✓unusual response to Stuart Chase's book “Your Money's Worth.” Part of it I frankly consider silly, as I explain elsewhere, but we do want an increased value for our money. A significant instance is perfume. To woman's practical mind it became evident (as it has been to Parisian women this many a day) how foolish it is to repeatedly pay very fancy prices for their bottles in perfume buying. Why not have one bottle and refill it from bulk purchase of your favorite brand of perfume? So women are now (in New York at least) buying more and more bulk perfume. This development may seem opposed to what I have said in another chapter about hand-to-mouth buying. But the case of perfume is obviously different; for she is simply deciding not to pay $1.00 for the bottle whenever she buys $2.00 worth of perfume. She doesn't need a collection of bottles; she needs only perfume. This is an example of her whittling process—a cutting away of foolish buying, a reduction of her expenditures— but a widening of the range of her expenditures. Women today buy 5,000 items where a century ago they bought only 100. They paid a far larger percentage of their budget in those days for one product, and so could only buy a few things.

181. Maintaining the Prosperity Pace.—Thus is our consumer pressure for lower prices evidencing itself, and our whole industrial life and prosperity has been on a far better basis since business leaders have recognized that we were right in exerting this pressure. To be able to buy more goods we have only two methods—(1) to buy at lower prices, or (2) to secure a larger income. The two work hand-in-hand, and if industry will only continue increasingly to play the modern game of mass production, specialization, high wage and low price, we all will be increasingly “sitting pretty.”

The Postum Company is popular with women because it recognizes this principle very definitely. When it purchased Jello (a wide household favorite) it cut the price from 12 cents to 10 cents. What was Mrs. Consumer's reply? A 30% immediate increase in the volume of sales. The International Shoe Company, within the space of three months in 272 2611928-1929, made two price cuts in shoes; one cut of 5 to 25 cents a pair, and another of 5 to 15 cents.

In the sale of electricity to the housewife we also have a situation which illustrates what still needs to be done. The public utilities have been slower to grasp the new principle. There should be more electric range cookery, and would be if the rate were lower. It is lack of foresight not to reduce the cooking rate. Women have not been very friendly with the public utilities because they know that the lower price principle has not whole-heartedly been applied. See what happens when it is applied. The Nebraska Power Co., very unpopular for years, secured a new president who set out to win householders as friends. Early in 1929 he made a new cut establishing power rates for cooking at only 3 3/4 cents. Consumption of electricity in that locality has doubled in less than nine years. Housewives are constantly visiting the plant and its model kitchen, and a good will spirit prevails. Like a dog, a householder has an instinct for knowing who are her friends, and one sure test is that of mass production price decrease. Many an intelligent woman is asking, “Why are not more washing machine manufacturers, kitchen cabinet manufacturers, food manufacturers, etc., doing for me what Campbell's Soup is doing for me, and what Ford and General Motors have been doing for my husband?” They insist on a reply.

182. The Lesson of the Textile Industries.—In the textile field we have seen some rather startling developments along these lines. Women have always, in season, paid outrageous prices for clothes, but in the last twenty years have become aware of it and in their own way groped for relief. They tossed off petticoats and corsets, simplified their garments and shortened their skirts, all in an unconscious groping both for better line and less expense. They put sharp brakes on the hectic spinning of the wheel of fashion and veered more definitely toward the standardization principle toward which men's clothing long ago turned. For instance,—hats. Men's hats have long been produced on a standardized basis, while 273 262women's hats were made from every kind of fabric, felt or feathers. But for the last four years women have turned largely to felt hats and stuck to them, despite the desperate moanings of the millinery trade. You can't charge very fancy prices for a simple felt hat, so women's millinery expenditures, once the butt of the joke sheets, have markedly declined. Mass production has helped.

As for dresses, here again American mass production has now found a new and immense field of activity, with the same result, that of cutting down by one half or more the amount a woman now spends for a dress. It was only a comparatively few years ago that women of a certain class paid an average of $50.00 per dress. Today that same class pays only $25.00. Another lower class that paid $25.00 now pays only $12.75. The great fashion mill, ostensibly at Paris, produces “models” which are promptly bought by American firms and put into mass production, just like men's ready-made suits, with the result that American women wear fashionable clothes at an astonishingly low price per unit. They may spend as much or more than formerly for clothes, but they own and wear more dresses. This situation has virtually compelled even the very fashionable New York department store to introduce “moderate-priced” “inexpensive” dress sections and sell dresses at prices which once it would have utterly and completely disdained as belonging to “Fourteenth Street.” The reason obviously is that with our modern mass methods there is no reason why women shouldn't buy lovely dresses at low standard prices. And this despite the seeming antagonism between style change and mass production, which two factors call for expert compromise.

The shoe chains have brought about something of the same revolution in shoe buying, and the garment chain stores have in fact brought about a counterpart of the men's hat, clothing and shoe chains, selling low price standardized goods.

The vitality of the low price consideration—right at the time when, admittedly, Mrs. Consumer is encouraging “trading up” and buying more luxuries, more style and quality—is shown by the big stores which are featuring the low price level. 274 263Macy's, with its slogan “it is smart to be thrifty” and its boast of lowest prices, has prospered mightily; and now two other New York stores are challenging the reputation for lowest price. Hearns, New York, now guarantees its prices on coats and suits of a certain price range to be lowest in New York, and Bedell's new basement store promises “the lowest price at all times on coats, dresses, hats and shoes”—the very items on which, as I have mentioned, the mass production principle has now become decidedly operative in the women's clothing field.

183. “Trading Up” and Low Price.—The retailers have been puzzled at the apparent conflicting tendencies Mrs. Consumer has shown, the tendency toward higher quality and more style, on the one hand, and lower price on the other. But as Mrs. Consumer well knows the two things are not in conflict; nor more inconsistent than her visit on Fifth Avenue to a Woolworth 5c and 10c Store at 2 o'clock, and at 2:30 a visit to the exclusive specialty shope close by. Mrs. Consumer wants dollar miracles— more quality and style at lower price. Say we are asking too much, and you contradict the industrial genius of the times. We have faith in our business leaders—they have shown that they can give us what we want. Every American man knows that American women have never been modest in their demand from them—it is written in human psychology that the more things that women want, the more stimulus there is to industry. If we should stop asking and demanding, the wheels of business would stop turning. There will never be a limit to our asking, and it is a very ill-educated economist or business man who would expect us to be satisfied with what we have. As Charles Kettering, famous research man for the General Motors Corporation says, “it is our business to make people dissatisfied with what they have.” There is the man who knows Mrs. Consumer and her psychology and its relation to industry. Therefore do not tell me that we make business conditions too hard by our demand for higher quality and lower price, and cry out “impossible!” Mrs. Consumer is collectively frankly ruthless! She knows that if it is impossible for you, it won't be impossible 275 264for somebody else cleverer than you. She is the real top-executive of business, and she will fire you and hire somebody who can give her what she wants. She dares you to refuse her. Go out and organize business in a manner that will enable you to offer her what she wants, and that will be your real brevet as an industrial Napoleon.

184. The Lesson of the Buyer's Strike.—I want particularly to drive home the terrific power of the consumer when she moves in unison. Business men are rather likely to forget it and picture Mrs. Consumer as rather docile and stupid. But just as a mob has an ominous power, so Mrs. Consumer in the mass has an ominous, ruthless power. This was illustrated with far-reaching force during the war inflation period, and to some extent before, by the great so-called buyer's strike. More accurately it was Mrs. Consumer's grim determination that she was going to combat the dizzy course of prices and the cost of living. We have now entered a great plateau of normal economic procedure, but only after the consumer fully accomplished what she sought—the decided lowering of price levels. It was a great battle of the buyers vs. the sellers, and the winning of that intense struggle radically changed the map of economic affairs. It changed what had been a comfortable sellers’ market into an undoubted buyers’ market; and I believe it ought to permanently remain a buyers’ market in the interests of all. Woman, whether as sweetheart or consumer, should always be pursued, and never forced to be a pursuer!

The sellers, in those post-war days, with an arrogance arising from too easy a market, had approached so near the last stronghold of the buyer that many of us who had families thought we should have to raise our children on corn meal mush if we wished to keep out of debt, and it looked as if we were headed toward the Russian madhouse where it takes a million rubles to buy one square meal, American style.

But you recall there came a day when every housewife seemed to have ouija board communication one with the other, and when they received and obeyed the magic command “Down Tools!”, and started to defy the seemingly endless egotism of price. Mrs. Porter of Peanutville, Carolina, refused 276 265to buy shoes costing $18 a pair; Mrs. Browning of Bean Center, Mass., refused to pay $3 for a suit of cotton underwear for her baby; Mrs. Collins of Corncob, Iowa, refused to give $9 for a kitchen chair; and Mrs. Thompson of Tincup, Texas, refused to eat bacon costing 54c a pound. A universal sisterhood of revolt rose in the housewifely breast, and almost overnight the cobwebs began to gather over the retail store entrances. Just prior to this, as I see it, we had been participants in a wild, bacchanalian orgy, casting aside our usual sense and caution and decking ourselves out in every luxury, flung money insanely to the winds, gorged ourselves on every delicacy, and indulged our desire for licentious spending, until we achieved an economic debauch. And it was from this debauch that the housewife was the first to awaken, the first to come to her senses and to refuse to be a party to further gross inflation and unwise spending. By refusing to buy, she stopped this economic riot. Many consumers and the business world had been our on a “spree”; had had a night out and had come back with a splitting economic headache and couldn't find the keyhole! It was Mrs. Consumer who got up and opened the door for him and administered a good, old-fashioned lecture.

This victory of the buyers over the sellers was an authentic victory of a significant kind, and should carry very important lessons to all sellers today. Mrs. Consumer is now proved to be a force with whom to reckon. Our American common sense should point the way toward introducing the conscious consumer viewpoint in all our deliberations, political, financial and economic. The almost uncanny and mysterious might of the consumer and her silent but effective organization to achieve what she wants has been amply displayed. Never in our economic history has the power of the consumer been so sweepingly and so justly exercised.

185. The Power of a Dime to Create a Depression.—We have always thought of the consumer as helpless, but she has shown that when she balks prices simply must drop. Nor does buying have to drop very far before it registers with stunning effect. How stunning, I find few business men realize. A 277 266very simple calculation will tell the amazing story. Suppose that every consumer in the United States should suddenly decide to spend just 10 cents a day less than before. Certainly a dime a day would seem to mean little in this rich country; one gives it to a beggar without thought. But note: It would mean that every business day there would be $24,000,000 dollars less business done, and at the end of the year there would be three billions and six hundred million dollars ($3,600,000,000) less business! Any business man knows that this would mean a serious upset, because it would cut a deep hole in our spending, stop factory wheels and probably start a panic. And all on a dime a day less spent by each consumer!

Is it not plain that business should take very seriously the principle which Mrs. Consumer is now consciously aware of,—that lower prices and higher quality are the tributes she asks for her concentrated loyalty to trademarked merchandise?

186. Consumer Interest in Working Conditions.—There is another angle to the consumer's relation to the manufacturer which certainly should never be neglected. The Consumer's League has done splendid work in this direction for many years. I refer to the responsibility of women consumers, in making purchases, for the working conditions and welfare of women workers in industry. It was once a fact that women “bargain hunters,” although supposing that they were merely saving some family dollars, were actually oppressing their sisters in sweatshops, by their insistence on “bargains,” which resulted only in bearing down woefully on the wages paid to workers and in keeping working conditions unsanitary, unhealthy and disgraceful. Such “bargains” came very dear indeed.

Women today are more enlightened, and are more willing to pay a fair price for goods when they know that women workers in the industry fare more humanely as a result. That old-time 79 cent shirt or $1.29 petticoat often had a very sorry tale to tell of female misery and poverty. The new-day conditions and attitude in these matters is reflected in the 278 267opinions of women like Mary Anderson, director of the Women's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor: *

“The obligation of the woman consumer may be extended to the upholding of community welfare and the bringing of a product made only under sanitary surroundings into her home.

“Hose are largely a woman product, made by and for women. The majority of the workers in the mills are women; women use more hose than men, and women do most of the purchasing. They could control the conditions in the industry if they put their minds to it. It is one of the industries in which there has been very rapid change in the past few years, and with the predominance of the style element in silk hose, the full-fashioned trade has taken on real distinction.

“I have been very glad to see that so many of the leading manufacturers are coöperating with the unions in the establishment of good working standards, and probably in no other line is it possible to get so many brands of excellent make manufactured under good conditions as in full-fashioned hose. The unions in return carry on attractive advertising campaigns to support those firms and to help them stabilize their market, and to promote the industry as a whole.

“Therefore the woman worker not only has a definite responsibility to uphold the organization in this program but also stands to gain largely herself as a result. And the woman consumer gains equally in the buying of a product made under fair conditions, assuring her of a sanitary product which means safety to the home.”

The fight for clean factories and decent working conditions for women workers who make the goods women buy is by no means won yet. The Consumer's League, within the past year or two, has made a drive against dirty unsanitary candy factories in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey and ✓ Ohio, and established a “White List.” This campaign has been markedly effective, first class candy manufacturers joining in the movement. New factories, like the Eskimo Pie 279 268factory in New York, are made public assets and advertisements for the high standards set.

It is particularly gratifying to find that the intelligent manufacturers are invariably, nowadays, found lined up with the intelligent women who are seeking to have clean, fair standards. Such manufacturers appreciate that in permitting the cooking tasks of the home to be done in factories today, Mrs. Consumer still has a vital interest in cooking and housekeeping cleanliness in these factories, which are after all only her own hired kitchens and workshops. The women workers in such workshops are in reality also only her hired servants, to whom she has something the same kind of responsibility as if they were working more directly for her.

In New York at the present time there is a very serious situation of this kind. The price cutting, unsocial chain stores selling women's apparel are bringing back the very bad sweatshop conditions of former years, through their patronage of the very small clothing “manufacturer” of New York, who may operate in his own East Side home, or have a very cheap, unsanitary and crowded space somewhere, hiring women, often including his own wife and children in defiance of law, to work for him at extremely small pay and under unclean, oppressive conditions. Such competition on a sheer price basis, by sweatshop labor, not only lowers the quality of goods sold but sets false standards of value, with which the manufacturers operating factories with modern standards cannot be expected to compete. Mrs. Consumer, when she knows such facts, has the power to throw the weight of her patronage against the unsound inhuman standards of such distributors or makers. The exercise of more of such consumer power, for humanitarian reasons, must increase as Mrs. Consumer becomes more intelligent and sophisticated, and manufacturers will do very well indeed to keep ahead, rather than behind Mrs. Consumer's standards.

I sincerely do not think that a book on selling to Mrs. Consumer would be an adequate treatise if it overlooked the very prominent factor of prohibition. Personal feeling or theory must make way for fact in this matter and accept the situation at its face value. It is folly to ignore the proved fact that prohibition has released a vast sum of money for Mrs. Consumer to spend, and has very appreciably indeed changed the direction of consumption.

The late Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard, estimated once in “Colliers” that the total sum spent on alcoholic liquor in pre-prohibition days was $2,200,000,000. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of this estimate. The important thing to note for our purposes here, is that this very huge sum was spent by men, and was spent in no way that enhanced the production or sale of family goods. In fact there is little doubt but that its spending seriously affected general family expenditure downward. There is certainly plenty of testimony as to the time lost by factory employes, after drinking bouts, and the consequent deductions 281 270in the pay envelope, to say nothing of lowered production and its depressing effect on wages.

187. Mrs. Consumer's Envy of the Drink Bill.—The bald fact is that Mrs. Consumer is responsible for prohibition and had in mind subconsciously if not practically the gain to the family in increased consumption of goods when she so earnestly fought for prohibition, and obtained it after 75 or 100 years of continuous agitation and experiments with half-way measures. The saloonkeeper who cashed the pay check that should have been placed in Mrs. Consumer's lap, (and in cashing it managed to keep a very handsome proportion), was as natural an enemy of Mrs. Consumer as the jungle animal who preys upon the family food supply of another animal. It is a very blind person indeed who is unable to see the fundamental economics of prohibition and its vital relation to Mrs. Consumer and consumption. Mrs. Consumer, in the superior strategic position of the conserver of the family welfare, was certain some day to have a decisive battle, and a winning one, with liquor or any other large raider of the family cupboard. The American Mrs. Consumer is a mother with spirit and “pep,” and the instinct which makes her fight off marauders of her young is as old as the jungle. Fuss and fume all you like about “personal liberty,” no Mrs. Consumer with spirit is going to remain passive while enemies of the family pocketbook are abroad. It is her instinct to fight for just such reasons, and Carrie Nation was only the protagonist of all mothers. Two and a quarter billions spent by men for liquor, plus the 10% which drinking further knocked from their earning capacity, was, to Mrs. Consumer, a leak so great in family economy that a revolutionary and dangerous step in limitation of individual rights was urged and taken. We are in the middle of a period of struggle over it, and it will take a wiser person than myself to predict the outcome. I can only give Mrs. Consumer's point of view, striking an average of all Mrs. Consumers if possible, including those who are not so sophisticated, so cosmopolitan, or so vocal, in their personal feelings and opinions.

The average Mrs. Consumer is an instinctive enemy of 282 271liquor because she needs its price in her family budget for purposes which she considers far more useful. She knew that she could use two and a quarter billion dollars very nicely indeed for the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, piano, furnishings, automobile and new home which she yearned for but couldn't in the old days afford. Also she knew “her man” well enough to know that if his drink bill was considerable enough to affect family buying it also prevented his rise in position and future earning capacity. Those Mrs. Consumers of today who themselves freely consume liquor and who care little whether or not the bootlegger gets a share of the family budget are invariably the Mrs. Consumers whose surplus wealth is adequate for almost any family purchasing they may desire. Let liquor ever become a competitor to their vital family budget and you will see an end to their complacency over it. They will then understand the millions of Mrs. Consumers who have been—and are still—in just that position. It is true that the increased prosperity arising from prohibition has so increased the surplus wealth of families, that the younger Mrs. Consumers seem to ape some of the wealthier Mrs. Consumers and lose some of their antipathy to liquor. They have not known the days of liquor's deprivations, and are influenced by the clatter of the smart journals and metropolitan newspapers as to the “outrage” of prohibition and its admitted train of evils. They may even sometime become so numerous that they will vote liquor back, but they will only, in my opinion, start the cycle all over again as soon as they discover the inherent relationship between drink and lack of economic production, and retarded family buying. This is, of course, the nub of the whole matter and there is very little room indeed for two opinions about it. One can irresponsibly hold the belief that economic productivity doesn't matter and that having a merry time over the cups is all that counts; that we are working too hard anyhow and must learn to play, that everybody must be allowed to put into his mouth what he likes as a matter of personal liberty, etc.

But Mrs. Consumer is intrinsically aligned on the other 283 272side, on the side of conservation and economic productivity and increased rather than decreased standards of living.

188. Woman's Basic Antipathy to Drink.—Woman is the knitter of the civilized social fabric, the first principle of which is the yielding of personal right to gain greater social advantages for all. Woman's an accumulator and user of economic goods, not a dissipator. Moreover, she does not get the “kick” out of liquor that men get out of it. She is æsthetically antagonistic to the typical effects which liquor has on men, and she knows it to be a destroyer of the finer relations between the sexes. She also fears, in an age of mechanisms, an unsteady male hand upon the throttle, the wheel and the aeroplane controls, and all the other complicated machinery of life. American women know their American men—they know they are not temperamentally content like the French, to æsthetically sip a little wine with their meals; they know Americans carry everything to an extreme.

For such reasons as these the odds are strongly against a return to liquor with Mrs. Consumer's sanction, even though there would be less danger than formerly of the drinker's children going hungry and poorly shod. Mrs. Consumer, it must ever be remembered, is still far from having what she wants. The 93 million people who still have just $117 a year above the decent, common requirements of life are certainly not yet able to be careless with the family budget. The twenty-two million Mrs. Consumers (out of a total of 28 million families) in this class possess a wide political majority and feel the economic basis of enmity toward anything which threatens the narrow family income. Why, then, should there be any surprise that prohibition is today stronger than ever with the masses?

189. How Repeal Would Affect the Family Market Basket.—When Henry Ford says that repealing prohibition would be the quickest way to reduce wages, and that he would have to close up his factories, he is not romancing. Nor when he says American women would never consent to it. The per capita productivity of workers has increased 284 273100% between 1919 and 1925. If prohibition were repealed the men of the country would doubtless spend twice the amount for liquor they did before prohibition; as much as five billion dollars. This is about one-eighth of the total amount spent in retail stores today. An eighth cut in Mrs. Consumer's market basket is an item of tremendous importance. Elsewhere in this book I mention how a sudden reduction by each person of only ten cents a day in his expenditures would likely bring about a panic. I am certain that the repeal of prohibition would bring on an industrial crisis.

190. How Liquor Lessens Other Desires.—There is another very vital purchasing aspect to the question of liquor. As Prof. Herman Feldman says: * “Satisfactions found in liquor began and ended in the saloon; often they stultified the desire for other things. They took people out of the ranks of consumers of goods in general and confined their demand to a specialized and deceptive satisfaction which only led them further and further away from other wants.” The italics are mine, since I consider this factor of very great importance. It wasn't only the two and a quarter billion dollars which went for liquor, nor even the tendency toward decreased income, that Mrs. Consumer instinctively knew to be involved. It was her intuitive knowledge that drink smothered enjoyment and appreciation for other things. The drinker cared less for clothes, less for reading, less for radio, less for theatre and less for all the many more natural stimulations, such as men and women could share together. Consequently he had less incentive to earn the money with which to buy them, and less enjoyment in the company of women. Every woman knows that men who drink like best the company of other drinkers, usually men. The hard-drinking countries are usually countries where men and women are not very companionable.

The spending of the two and a quarter billions was therefore an in-growing expenditure instead of an expansive expenditure. As Prof. Feldman also points out “a man who buys a car, on the other hand, is led to want many more things by 285 274the possession of that car. It stimulates him to become a different kind of consumer.” This is the secret which Mrs. Consumer has known. Others are seeing it. Samuel Strauss says, * “Drink cuts down general consumptive power, drink takes from the nation's ability to use up goods; drink takes from a man's efficiency to consume; drink lessens desire for things. ... Consumption cannot suffer drink because in drink men find a substitute for that satisfaction which is in the acquiring of luxuries; the pleasure in drink takes the place of the pleasure in things. ... Because of prohibition there are both more consumers and better consumers.”

Another statement to the same effect is ** “Men who could not have ‘hung up’ the bartender for a drink in the old days, are now considered good risks for a motor car.” ... Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale has said that prohibition has added six billions to the wealth of the country. It is a fact that our national income was 66 billions in 1919 the year before prohibition, and is now about 92 billions; a far more rapid rate of increase than we have ever known before; more in 10 years than in an entire century preceding!

Mrs. Consumer, closer to the stem of life than men, less inclined to waste, deeper immersed in the prosperity of the family, more tenderly solicitous that her young have all possible comforts and advantages, is conscious even when she does not reason it out, that she expands in happiness, importance and prosperity and in closeness to her ideals, when drink is defeated—or shall we say confined?

How few of us realize the vital educational changes which are taking place among the women of this generation! I think we all tend to visualize women and homemakers as they were a generation ago when, as a matter of fact, the 17,000,000 little girls who were 14 years of age in 1920 are now almost 24 years old, with approximately 625,000 of them getting married every year! Between 1920-1928 inclusive, just about 10 million new homes have been started by young women educated since the Great War. This comprises the astounding total of almost one-third of all the homes in the country at present. And these young women are educated as consumers to a degree never before reached in America, and never attained in any case in foreign countries.

To show how widespread is this education I can do no better than point out that the percentage of illiteracy dropped 32% from 1910-1920, and that it is quite certain to drop 37% from 1920-1930. The reading habit is greatly extended among women, who read more books, magazines, newspapers, and advertising than ever. Today girls go to 287 276high school in rapidly increasing proportion—there are about 2,000,000 girls attending some 25,000 public and private general high schools where they receive some, often very fine instruction, in home economics. Next there are about 400,000 women now in universities and colleges, many of them offering superb courses in every phase of homemaking interests.

Last, there are the countless courses and schools with some one division or all branches of home economics as their chief specialty, such as The Garland School of Homemaking, and Miss Farmer's Cooking School, both located in Boston; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y., Lewis Institute, Chicago; and numbers of others culminating in the outstanding work of Ames, Iowa, and of Cornell (Ithaca, N. Y.) which grants a full university diploma at the end of its 4-year course in its College of Home Economics so splendidly realized by its founder, Martha Van Rensselaer; and Teacher's College, New York, as its name implies, primarily organized for post-graduate training.

191. A Roster of Agencies for Consumer Education.—In addition to these special schools and courses which must be paid for and which are on the same level as other paid educational instruction, America stands unique in supplying free or almost free, many facilities and agencies for aiding and average woman to become a skilled housewife, and a better informed, more intelligent consumer. Let me state all these training agencies as follows:

(1) Schools and Colleges

(2) Home Demonstration and Rural Extension Work (supported jointly by Federal and State Funds)

(3) Home Service Departments of Public Utilities

(4) Home Service Aid by Appliance and Foods Manufacturers

(5) Special Occasional Events

(6) Homemaking Centers

(7) Cooking and Homemaking Schools Sponsored by Newspapers

(8) Service Departments Sponsored by Magazines and Periodicals

(9) Women's Clubs and Other Women's Organizations

(10) Educational Advertising.

192. Home Demonstration Work.—“Home demonstration” work is familiar, although many may not have realized its far reaching extent among rural women. It cannot be too highly praised since no other single agency has done as much to raise the level of consumer advancement. Sponsored by Federal and State funds and officials, here are some outstanding facts in regard to all Home Bureau Demonstration work for 1926:

27 states increased the home demonstration budget to the extent of $127,673.

21 states increased country appropriations to the extent of $89,653.

Total was $3,142,681 or an increase of $143,918 over 1925.

Work was conducted in 1,842 counties in 48 states.

Employed 1,113 agents, 46 supervisors, 160 home economics specialists and others.

126,709 farm women served as volunteer local leaders.

Iowa reported “8,400 communities have taken part.”

188,595 girls and 12,465 boys reported as 4-H club members.

21 states used the radio as a means of improvement.

A country-wide survey of kitchen equipment was made in New Hampshire.

In many states principles of correct child-feeding were taught.

Recreation, music, home decorating were important subjects.

The New York Report reads: “Coöperation with the educational departments of commercial firms has been established ... to help meet the requirements of homemakers ... some of the subjects covered are care of hair, skin and teeth, food preparation, home equipment, and music for the home.”

The 1926 Report of the Extension Service * in New York State alone would prove an eye-opener to many a city dweller or manufacturer of family goods unfamiliar with the scope and intensity of the Extension work. Some of the valuable subjects brought before homemakers in New York were:

A Housing Program, including discussion of house working area, the furnishings and interior decoration of the home.

A Survey of Dishwashing, including a “job analysis” of it by a housewife group, and a study of the equipment making for less time, effort and fatigue in the task.

A Kitchen Improvement Contest; and countless demonstration on how to select and remodel clothing, plan menus for the nursery child, etc.

Food manufacturers should investigate the report as it pertains to nutrition projects, among which can be noted:

493 community project meetings on nutrition—attendance 6,216

Who says the woman in the home is not changing? I wish that space did not absolutely limit a further enumeration of the many other splendid projects, surveys, classes and work going on in all states under the banner of “Extension Service.” I recommend that these Reports be carefully read: “Sub-project 5-F: Dishwashing”—No. 5999, Cornell Home Economics; “Housing Program 1927-28”—Grace Morin, Cornell Home Economics; “4-H Club Member's Record Books”—Bulletin 17, Cornell Home Economics; “Facts Concerning the County Home Bureau No. 5380,” Cornell Home Economics; “N. Y. State Extension Service in Home Economics,” Digest of 1926 Report.

193. A Significant Experiment in County Home Education.—The increasing education of Mrs. Consumer is proceeding not only through the regular channels, but here and there in most important new experiments in reaching consumers 291 280ordinarily very difficult. Cattaraugus County, New York, has developed, for example, a particularly unusual and commendable plan of setting up a county office of “nutritionist,” supported jointly from funds of both health and educational departments. A nutrition advisory committee was appointed, from nationally known experts, and the nutritionist's first task on coming into the county was so start a survey to find out what people actually were eating. Instead of bringing in a group of outside investigators to ask seemingly impertinent questions, this survey was made through representatives of thirty local groups of women organized through the Cattaraugus County Home Bureau, which is supported jointly by Cornell University, the state and federal Departments of Agriculture, an the local county government. Blanks were furnished on which a group of 99 families, representing in all 476 persons, kept careful, uniform records of all food consumed by the family for periods of seven days. Families were selected to represent the homes of professional and clerical workers, town laborers, and farmers.

The findings disclosed the surprising fact that the people in the towns actually ate more green vegetables than those in the country; that few family dietaries were deficient in the actual number of calories they furnished, and none provided too little sweets, meats, or potatoes, while nearly three-quarters were deficient, on the basis of the Cornell standards, in green vegetables. The cost of the food they ate ran from 28 to 81 cents per “man” per day, with an average of 51 cents, while it was believed that a satisfactory standard could be obtained for 45 cents, if the money were spent wisely.

This survey formed the basis of an educational program, which urged the town people especially to eat less meat, starch, and sugar; the country people, to eat more vegetables. In the latter effort the nutritionist, assisted by the women of the Home Bureau, urged the planting of more home gardens, and worked through county fairs and the like to teach the farmers simple methods of storage for vegetables for winter use.

At the conclusion of the survey, nutrition work was developed 292 281along three main lines, a consultation service to physicians regarding patients suffering from dietary ailments, a program of adult education and a school health program.

A re-survey in 1927 of the families who had participated in the original study showed a most hopeful change in their dietary habits, and included many individual reports of better health. Similar testimony as to the effectiveness of the program came through reports to the Home Bureau, through the teachers, nurses and physicians. A large number of grocers reported an increased sale, in some cases doubled, of whole grain cereals, whole wheat and graham bread, graham flour, fresh fruits and vegetables. With only a few exceptions, the fifty-six stores which answered a questionnaire on this point reported supplying fresh fruits and vegetables to their customers daily or at least semi-weekly, whereas before the advent of the nutrition service a bare handful of country stores had stocked these supplies regularly.

194. Consumer Education by Public Utilities.—The very comprehensive educational work now carried on by public utility corporations such as The People's Gas, Light and Coke Co., Chicago, and The New York Edison Co., New York City, to choose two outstanding companies in their respective ✓ gas and electricity fields, is of recent growth. I was asked in January, 1922, by a far-visioned official of the People's Gas “how to bring Chicago housewives back to more home cooking” because cafeterias, even on the “Gold Coast,” were making rapid headway. Up to that time educational work by utilities had been largely perfunctory. I started and laid out the extensive plans on which this most successful home service is now run.

After selecting the personnel—being fortunate in finding Anna I. Peterson, who, I knew, had the “market basket” point of view I wanted—we made plans for the utilization of some display space for kitchen, laundry and lecture room, a program of lectures, the issuing of printed leaflets, the printing of colored recipe cards in connection with the mailing of gas bills, and a definite campaign in the Chicago newspapers to work.

Seeing early the then almost unsuspected possibilities of radio, I persuaded Chicago's biggest broadcasting station to give us the great favor of one hour a week for a housekeeping talk—which I'm sure they thought was a silly idea, certain to fail! It is today a huge success. Mrs. Peterson's “radio teas” are a boon to hundreds of thousands of women.

Next I installed Miss Vivette Gorman, tea-room manager for Marshall Field & Co., in the “traveling or motor-kitchen”—a complete gas-kitchen on wheels; a demonstration truck which I designed as part of the publicity campaign that followed under my direction. I was determined that we must go where the women were, in their own neighborhoods. It was like a “cart-tail” political campaign. Then we added free telephone consulting service, window displays, demonstrators, etc.

What then may have seemed a somewhat quixotic undertaking has turned out an assured success, as these April, 1929, figures show: Total attendance 1928—287,879; largest single attendance 650 (capacity of main auditorium). Most popular subjects; (3 ranking highest): Baking (cake and pie), deep fat frying and cake decorating. Leaflets sent out; 7,500 budget booklets—January to March, 1929; 15,000 canning booklets May to October, 1928; 75,000 recipe sheets weekly in 1928.

Letters received over any given period, 18,000 during 1928. Present staff numbers 18, including 13 demonstrators. Lectures are given five days per week at main auditorium and three days per week at branch. Noonday demonstrations daily at main floor booth. During the year 1928 gave many talks before women's clubs, schools, churches, etc., attendance, 37,000. Radio talks are given each week day at 11:25 a.m. from Station WENR. Tests made indicate large audiences, but no exact records are obtainable. Hallowe'en party announced only once by radio brought request for more than 1,200 tickets. A cake icing demonstration brought a crowd of 1,500. A housewife attending 12 consecutive lessons receives a certificate. Camp cooking for men at the noon hour has been a special feature. Recipe distribution 294 283has grown from 100 sheets a day to 10,000. Phone calls have reached as many as 400 per day. Foreign housewives have duplicate programs and work in their own communities. A children's Christmas party brought a crowd of 3,000, and many were turned away.

The New York Edison Co. has also distinguished itself in usefulness to the practical housewife. Maintaining a “model apartment,” cooking courses, demonstrations, and with excellently prepared leaflets, booklets and information in the more efficient use of electric servants, its work may be taken as representative of that done by other electric utility companies throughout the country. The use of films on special housekeeping technique, radio talks, and demonstrations of electric appliances in the consumer's own home, are further means of practically training the housewife in the control of the new mechanical servants so rapidly replacing the human home operative.

195. Cooking Schools Sponsored by Periodicals.—This type of work is practically the same as any other Home Service work, except that it is temporary—and portable, as it were—specially arranged for short periods at a given locality with a close-tie-up to a given periodical. Straight cooking leads in interest, and such cooking schools as those conducted by The Chicago Daily News, The New York American, and the New York Herald-Tribune, have numbered many thousands of practical housewives in their attendance. It is difficult to find auditoriums large enough to hold all who wish to come. Laundering methods, sewing and the use of new appliances are also brought to the housewife's attention, and considerable coöperation rightly given these schools by manufacturers of both foods and appliances. “Prudence Penny” (Mrs. Allene Houghton) of The New York American talks to audiences filling and overflowing Carnegie Hall. No one can see these great audiences without feeling impressed with the vast scope of modernizing consumer education now going on. (see front and back of book.)

196. Service Departments Sponsored by Magazines.— 295 284I cannot but look on any woman's magazine as a “trade-paper” for the home; and I believe that to the degree with which a periodical lives up to that specification, it will succeed in circulation and usefulness. I have already pointed out that women's magazines are “consumer clubs,” and I add that they are also consumer colleges, educating the woman in her special interests of foods, furnishings, frills, home finances and care of children.

It is not always realized, in these days of catering to the smart, well-to-do, that the “service leaflets,” with detailed up-to-date advice on housekeeping technique issued by women's magazines, and their education of the consumer in home appliances and efficient home installations, have provided “home college courses” for the housewife without money and without price. No praise can be too high for the work of Good Housekeeping Institute in particular, which under the trained guidance of Miss Katherine Fisher, has made its pages the equivalent of college text-books and curricula in all the special interests of house, home, and family.

It is my observation that in those countries where household efficiency and a knowledge of dietetics, appliances, etc., are lagging behind, no woman's magazine, in this “trade-paper” sense, is to be found. Not, perhaps, until a woman's magazine takes up the cause of intelligent feeding, pure milk, and the desirability of warm houses, will England learn the science and the æsthetics of eating and the comfort of uniformly heated homes. Not until a woman's magazine takes up the cause of sanitation, and lessened drudgery for the housewife, will France perhaps emerge from its mediæval indifference to hygiene and disease-prevention and to the desirability of using electric horsepower rather than condemning so many women to hard penal housework for life. The same applies to Germany, the leader of Germany's housewives clubs assures me. In France a small but brave attempt is being made by my brilliant, self-sacrificing friend, Mlle. Paulette Bernege, who has sponsored and directs that unique home-management periodical Mon-Chez-Moi which more than perhaps any other in Europe is attempting to educate the woman 296 285in modern scientific housekeeping. But what she and a few others are merely attempting overseas, our magazines here have already splendidly achieved. The American consumer owes them a debt she probably does not realize, for I am confident that without the aid of the woman's magazine press, the housewife could not have gained so bloodlessly her Household Revolution.

Hailed by us as a great blessing, the chain store, as I see it, has now passed out of the bonanza and special favor class and entered upon its real adulthood. Mrs. Consumer, in her perhaps ruthless way, first used the chain store for her purposes, and that purpose accomplished, is now not quite so enamored of the chain store plan.

210. The Chain as a Club on Independents.—Frankly, I am persuaded that her purpose in enthusiastically supporting the chain store was to use it as a club upon the stodgy and stolid independent dealer, who was making little progress and who in many instances was greatly hampering Mrs. Consumer. She wanted something with which to “wake” up the independent retailer. She first turned to the department store as a rival, but it did not altogether succeed in waking up the retailer. If she lived in rural and semi-rural districts, she turned to the mail-order-house, and to house-to-house selling. Apparently it took a combination of all these sledge-hammers in the hands of consumers to make a real dent upon the smugness of the average retailer, and acquaint him with 314 303the fact that women must have better local service and greater economy in conventional purchasing.

Fitting in with the “high-cost-of-living” conditions and the post-war inflation period, Mrs. Consumer turned to the chain store and its vigorously cut prices with great relief. It was such a pleasure to realize that one was not being gouged of a long, long profit, often for goods that were stale or of no honest value. Stretching our dollar as far as possible was extremely important in those lean years, and we didn't mind herding into a chain store, wearily waiting, serving ourselves, carrying our purchases and selecting from an exceedingly narrow stock.

But 1929 in another year. Much has happened in the interim. Mrs. Consumer has more money, is less excited about a cent or two price differential, is more sophisticated, less content with private brand goods, wants more service and better quality and style. Right ready by her side is the independent retailer, 1929 model, a very much-chastened man—or indeed not the same man at all; an efficient retailer who offers some of the best advantages of the chain, including clipped prices, and many others besides. So Mrs. Consumer, having shaken up and cut the Rip-Van-Winkle locks of the independent retailer is looking a little more critically and less favorably at the chain store.

When I go to shop I sometimes have difficulty in determining whether a store I see is a chain unit or an independent. The long monopoly held by chain stores on price specials, window streamers, bright colored fronts, etc., has been seized by independent retailers, and sometimes, I have noted, they have beaten the chain at its own game, with “voluntary” chains.

These rapidly growing groups of retailers are pooling together, like a chain system, to advertise identical articles at identical price reductions. In some sections they have co-öperative buying associations, thus further duplicating the benefits of the chain. I am told they are now quite as numerous as the regular chains.

But the whole matter goes deeper than this. I have been 315 304a student of buying not only for the professional objects of my household engineering work, but also for the practical purpose of marketing for my own family of four children. I have seen the chain store not only from the point of view of the person in the large city—I shop in New York too—but also from the points of view of the small town and the village resident, for I do my routine buying in Huntington, a town of 12,000 population, four miles from my Experiment Station. I do occasional buying in the small village and farms of Green-lawn still closer by, which has but 300 population. Thus I shop in metropolitan, urban and also rural stores.

When I first came to Long Island there were no chain stores, only the usual small town stores, and a village general store. These general stores were quite terribly dirty, unprogressive, high-priced, stuffed with bad merchandise, old merchandise and whose owner had a who-cares attitude,—because we had to buy at his village general store. Today there are chain stores even in this tiny village of 300!

211. Upper Levels of Consumers and the Chain.—But this deeper problem I refer to is the matter of service, variety of stock and speed of shopping. For low and lower middle class housewives especially, the chain store is no doubt a matter of consequence because of its saving in price. Such women can afford to wait their turn to be served, don't mind carrying purchases home, and through necessity must restrict their purchases to the comparatively narrow range of brands and goods carried by the chain. But not so with the middle and upper class women who constitute the great bulk of American people. They must and will have greater variety of goods, and also more service. What is the chain going to do about it?

You can see how it works in the chain which I patronize. I like to trade there when I can, not so much because of price, but really because the manager is a live wire. Frankly, if he left the chain store and went into business as an independent, I believe he could take two-thirds of his trade with him. I gave him a beautiful fountain pen last Christmas as a little appreciation of his exceptional alertness to my needs. 316 305He remembers details of my usual order, thus saving my time; he makes practical suggestions, he goes out of his way—and actually departs from his chain's policy—to serve me. He isn't supposed to deliver, but in an emergency he does if I

How the Consumer's Retail Dollar is Split Up

request it. He cashes checks for me, and he does a dozen others things which are positively not typical chain store services. In fact, they are actually the things which have been regarded as the independent retailer's special province. And 317 306our popular “Jim”—the store manager, confides in me that he is thinking of starting a store himself!

Sad to relate, there are still too many independent retailers, also many chain stores, which have nothing to offer in the way of personal alertness and service by the manager. These men are dull, impractical, even stupid ofttimes, and are very far indeed from the picture that I have put before you of the wonderful, sympathetic, wise and helpful independent retailer whose word you should value so highly. To be perfectly blunt, there are now equally bad chain store managers and old-time independent retailers—often a dirty, illiterate, short-sighted, half-Americanized foreigner; or a sleepy, narrow-minded, dead-from-the-neck-up American. It irritates and annoys me to trade with such people.

212. The Chain's Limited Stock.—So, when I come to analyze the matter, I have now a neutral attitude in regard to the chain. I use it if it can help me, but I'm neither a fan for it, nor a knocker. It happens that I still do some of my trading at a chain, but I am always having a good natured argument with the manager. He carries too little stock—which, being wise in retailing, I know is the chain's basic turnover idea; stocking only the faster moving items.

But where does that leave me? I don't like to go to two or three grocery stores to do my shopping. I want to go into one store and finish up quickly, pay one bill and depart. My alert chain store manager sends his clerk out to another store and gets what I want—but he won't stock the items; he has his orders and his supply from headquarters—he couldn't even if he wanted to. Being clever and valuing my trade, he sees that I get what I want by having his boy go out and shop for me. But that is not a very sound plan, and I frequently now trade with a new independent retailer.

And then there's the matter of brands. He followed his headquarter's orders faithfully at first and tried to sell me some of his private brand goods, but I laughed at him. He never tries to sell me his house's private brands of anything, now, because he knows I won't take them, I've been noticing of late years an increased awakening of the chain stores to the 318 307fact that they must sell more standard advertised brands of goods if they want to hold anything but the poorest class of customers. It is certainly a wise policy to take heed and supply more of the standard brands, because if prejudice develops against the chain store, it will be for the reason that they often try to foist on women a lot of unknown merchandise of no reliable standard. Surely the fact that 82% of the goods sold in chain stores is nationally known trademark goods should make all chains stop and look out as have the larger ones.

213. The Personal Touch and the Chain.—Women are intensely practical shoppers, and they would in many cases make better storekeepers than the dealers they buy from! Why can't we have more stores which combine the best value of both the independent and the chain plan? I get something like those values from my good friend the chain store manager, because he is an exceptional chain store manager; but still the combination isn't perfect. It seems always that one of the three elements is missing—either the personal ability of the storekeeper is lacking, or the stock isn't just right, or the price.

I will also say a word on chain store window display—which I consider most unintelligent, except that of some drug chains. It isn't one bit of an improvement over the independent retailer's old windows and is usually entirely without ideas. Why not display along suggestive selling lines all the items needed for washday, or all the items needed to bake a cake, all the items for packing the picnic lunch box—and show the goods against a background of its natural surroundings and use? Those endless pyramids of tin cans and packages bore me to tears.

Intelligent women know perfectly well that the chain store is as modern a device as radio or telephone, and would consider it silly to be prejudiced against it. Even rich women have no compunction about buying from chains. But it is perfectly true that women are demanding that chain stores serve them better, and be thoroughly prepared to meet the competition of the awakened independent store. To come closely to grips with the question of choice, let us say, between a cash-and-carry 319 308chain store and a cash-and-carry independent store, I frankly don't believe the average woman has a decided preference either way. It is the personality of the proprietor or manager which tilts the scales. I suspect chain stores would do well to pay increasing attention to the selection of managers and find men who can be to customers what the idealized independent retailer is supposed to be.

I have heard a New York chain store owner say frankly that his most “sure-fire” success with chain stores is built on finding an independent dealer who has “failed” and making him a chain unit manager. The dealer before he failed, probably had fine qualities as a storekeeper—advice to housewives, sympathy and an obliging personality—but didn't have the technical knowledge which the chain store headquarters can easily supply.

Some of the cheap help I have found operating chain stores repelled me exceedingly; and perhaps if chain store management personnel is not improved, better class women will develop a permanent prejudice against the chains from frequent experience with such managers and their help.

214. Statistics of Housewives’ Opinions on Chains.—The housewife only five years ago was definitely of the opinion that she got better prices and service from the chain store, as is shown by a survey made by the School of Business of the University of Oregon. 2,400 questionnaires were sent out to householders, city and semi-urban. The chain store drew the biggest percentage of all (71%) in answer to the question as to which did most to keep the costs down. Mail order houses came next (65%). 1,478 housewives out of the 2,400 indictated that in their minds the chain store offered the closest prices of all outlets.

This we can now contrast with up-to-date figures of five years later, indicating the results of an actual price comparison of purchases in New York City chain and independent grocery stores. Facts emerged proving the basis of the consumers’ increasing skepticism of chains. The average percentage price of the chain store goods was only 2% lower than 320 309that of the independents *. As Dr. Alexander says, this is certainly not an impressive advantage. Therefore, I contend that I am correct in my statement that Mrs. Consumer, who has not lost her bargain sense, but now visualizes “bargains” far more intelligently, and knows the service she wants, is going to patronize a good dealer where she finds one, chain or independent, with the preference for the good independent.

That as late as 1927 not all housewives had come to the realization of the improvement of the independent store in competition with chain stores, is evident in the following survey made in New England by the Department of Commerce. Seventy-seven per cent of the New England housewives stated that the main reason for patronizing chain grocery stores was the price factor. 10% of them considered quality of merchandise of primary importance; 8% convenience; 2%, service and variety; 1%, neatness and cleanliness, and 2% gave miscellaneous factors.

Ninety-five per cent of the housewives believe that prices are lower in chain stores than in local competitive stores, while 70% stated that they believe quality is the same in both chain and local stores, and 78% are convinced that the service rendered by both stores is the same.

215. Bombastic Claims by Chains.—The frank attitude of a considerable portion of the chain store merchandising world is illustrated in the statement of President E. C. Sams of the J.C. Penney Co. at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce round table discussion in Washington, May, 1929. Mr. Sams claims, as do others, that distributors must regard themselves as“community purchasing agents,” and that the distributors are more and more determining specifications and styles, and should get away from handling nationally advertised brands.

I challenge such statements. The distributor is distinctly not a “community purchasing agent.” He is running a business for profit, precisely like the manufacturer, who has too good a sense of humor to call himself “the nations purveyor,” 321 310or some equally high-sounding name as a badge of superiority. Mrs. Consumer is her own purchasing agent, and she hires a distributor quite as she hires a plumber, a carpenter. She may ask his advise, but she gives him his orders. It may still be easy to sell just merchandise, whatever its origin, in Penney stores in the small towns where alone they operate, but sophistication and metropolitan standards are arriving there too, and must inevitably turn small town consumers into connoisseurs who never fail to know what brand they want. Such brands are, inexorably, mostly nationally advertised brands, because the best manufacturer is the one who takes most pride in his goods and has enough confidence in it to give it a name and bulletin to the public his claims. It is statements like these from distributors who translate their selfish ambitions into grandiloquent terms of self-laudation, at the expense of others, whom the consumer is beginning to “debunk.” The consumer wants a harmonious system of production and distribution of the best goods, branded responsibly, widely distributed and priced reasonably, and it has no patience with quarrels which prevent that result.

The claim made at the Economic Club, Chicago, in May, 1929, by the president of the Kroger Chain that chain stores save the consumer 300 millions of dollars a year (which is nearly $12 per family, or about 24 cents a week), may be perfectly true, although the ratio of this differential is rapidly declining. But this is again an instance of claiming too much, for this saving was earned by Mrs. Consumer, in self-service, cash-and-carry, walking out of her way ofttimes, and in doing without good service generally. This service, not being rendered, did not cost the chains anything, so it is ambiguous to claim that the sum was presented to Mrs. Consumer gratis. Furthermore, this price differential—besides being small and declining—is admitted by the chains themselves to be the chain's own greatest “menace”; “cut-throat competition between chains” is the description. I, therefore, fail to thrill at this “saving” of a quarter of a dollar per week per family, —at very likely more than twice that amount in cost of service performed by Mrs. Consumer herself.

Things seem to be stirring in the retail field, and it appears as though we will have many new departures tending toward more service for consumers. I suspect that there is a kind of retailing revolution in the air.

Thus tremendous pressure has occurred toward reduction of distribution expense. The mail order house has made a unique contribution by establishing branches in city outskirts; and municipal authorities and railways have built better markets and distributing wharves and centers, and various retail methods are being tried.

One of these is the “mother store” system just beginning to be put in operation, whereby branch department stores will be located in every residential section and sample lines carried, consumer purchases being filled from the “mother” store. This is a minature of the mail order house plan on a national scale. Marshall Field, and other Chicago stores will have suburban stores as branches of the same tree. Traffic conditions in large cities point clearly to a decentralizing tendency, and as a consumer I loudly applaud. Women, like men, are coming 323 312to hate rather than to love “shopping” under modern crowded city conditions, and have already cut down the average time they spend in a store from about three hours to one hour.

216. Mrs. Consumer Calls for Greater Shopping Speed.—There are plenty of other novelties; the five and ten cent grocery store and the selling of groceries by Woolworth being an interesting one. This is in general line with the tendency toward standardized goods at low prices available quickly; a tendency which the five and ten, five-cent-to-a-dollar stores, and such chains as the Penney stores well illustrate; also the increase of automatic vending machines. We consumers want desperately to cut down our shopping time on standard goods. We fume with impatience—setting as we do a real value upon a woman's time these days—at the idea of spending an hour buying some cans of Campbell's soups, some Ivory Soap and a general miscellany of minor articles. If we had our way we would press a button marked “Campbell's Soup” and have it whisked into our kitchens pronto, like a slot machine. Virtually we accomplish this through telephone buying to which we are increasingly addicted. I am reliably informed that in many sections as much as 70% of grocery orders are by phone *; and I was counsel to a new chain of food stores which made very elaborate arrangements for the handling of telephone orders, having even visible card records at each operator's elbow containing prices, sizes in full detail, as well as suggestive menus and recipes for the use of each item of goods carried. The housewife was able to call her favorite operator, known personally to her, and learn just what was freshest and most plentiful, and have suggestions made regarding various ways to cook it appetizingly. The department stores have developed telephone ordering to a high point of efficiency, aiming to extend the convenience over a far wider range of household goods than women commonly buy. Even such items as rugs, stoves, furniture and shoes are bought with satisfaction over the telephone. It is the modern woman's * See “Selling by Telephone,” by J. George Frederick, Business Bourse, New York, $4.00. 324 313shopping labor-saver, and when the service is well developed it is Mrs. Consumer's real friend. No wonder it is growing with great rapidity. Merchants who take real pains with telephone orders, seeing to it meticulously that we obtain as good service as if we personally shopped, are very wise.

General food stores have been growing, and such stores as “Stop and Shop” in Chicago, MacCann's in Pittsburgh, etc., have made history in modernized food selling, providing a very decided “back-fire” through their very wide variety of foods, to the narrowing tendencies of the chain store.

217. Adapatations to the Automobile Era.—Another novelty is the grocery chain on wheels which is in operation from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. It is a combination of the fixed and movable types of stores. A self-serve grocery and meat market is set up and five stores on wheels operate from it. Each of these five store bases has a district consisting of about 3,000 houses to which two letters are sent weekly. Customers can either come to the store, buy their groceries, and carry them home; or they can order by telephone and have delivery made; or they can wait for the moving store which makes the rounds twice a day. Each store on wheels carries 30 vegetables, 50 drug sundries, 600 grocery items, and a meat market, and accommodates nine shoppers at one time. One man serves both as driver and clerk. For certain types of consumers in certain localities this is most welcome.

Another radical departure in consumer service is operating in Cincinnati; consisting of a newly invented, take-down building providing for drive-ways for motoring customers who may select goods without stepping out of their cars. The significance of this lies in the recognition of Mrs. Consumer's desire, already referred to, of cutting to a minimum the time and effort of shopping. This being a motor age, the “Aut-O'Circle Food Market” is likely to be a decidedly interesting experiment. The popularity of shopping without getting out of the car is already demonstrated by the roadside markets which do a business of many millions. This new automobile store offers a choice of three kinds of shopping—(1) a clerk service; (2) a self-service,—both of these requiring getting 325 314out of the car—and the automobile service. Groceries, fruits, meats and vegetables are carried. Double driveways are on each side of the building. Eighteen cars at a time can be served, all under cover.

218. Women Entering Distribution.—It is worth while noting another interesting departure, operated by a woman, Mrs. Lothe Wonders of Muncie, Indiana, who in 12 years has built up an annual sales volume from $30,000 to $175,000, with the remarkable turnover of 40 per year, in a town of 41,000 population and with 160 competing stores. She decided to use only women for clerks. Telephone methods are applied very extensively, and women come to know the telephone operators personally, and meet their customers at the door with especial courtesy when they call. The store carries quality merchandise and does not cut prices and deliveries are made every hour. Her success is another indicator of the fact that the modern Mrs. Consumer values personal service above price cuts.

219. Mrs. Consumer Likes to Touch Goods.—A most interesting innovation in display has been begun this year by the Postum Company, based on very sound consumer psychology. It consists of a “self-service set” for dealers’ counters in which Postum goods is spilled higgelty-piggelty. The theory is that I and other women like to touch merchandise—which is correct—but never have felt quite at liberty to do so, so long as the usual prim rows of goods stood neatly on dealer's shelves. This container suggests informality, so that we women will pick up the packages and look at them. Women most assuredly like to touch what they buy—it is instinctive with them. That is why packaged fresh fruits and vegetables have not yet been highly successful, and why even telephone selling of them is not popular. In this connection, it is necessary for anyone representing the consumer to admit that women buyers do considerable damage to merchandise, especially perishable goods, through handling it. Henry Frommes in Modern Merchant and Grocery World estimates that the direct loss from consumer handling is about $2,000 on gross sales of $65,000, which is a very appreciable loss, one must 326 315admit. However, everybody agrees that this consumer handling increases sales. It is perfectly true that Mrs. Consumer is rather inconsistent; desiring to handle the goods, and yet avoiding goods that look shopworn. Some dealers distinctly discourage handling the more easily damaged goods, and keep the goods in their own hands.

Nevertheless it is also agreed that the consumer's three logical steps to a sale are (a) “have you got it?” (b) “can I see it?” (c) “let me examine it.” The logical answer, it seems to me, is to make goods more visible, put more of it under glass and package more of it in cellophane or other transparent material. Consumers will never yield up the right to examine goods closely, but their demands, as well as selling psychology are met when the goods they take in their hands are packaged and sealed. It is not so long ago that we consumers expected to see naked a loaf of bread before we bought. We do not any longer expect this; nor in the case of butter, cheese, or even bacon. The package is in the interest of sanitation and we appreciate it.

220. Popularity of Fixed Price Grades.—There is another new tendency of importance—the establishment of fixed price grades. The men's hat and shoe stores have been very successful with this plan, and it is being applied with success to women's shoes, hats and dresses. The Fraser-Paterson department store in Seattle has standardized for instance, on just two womens’ shoe prices—$6.50 and $10.00. There is an inevitable movement toward fixed price levels, all of a price with the mass production and standardization principle. We consumers like it.

221. Mrs. Consumer and Distribution Cost.—Intimately bound up with Mrs. Consumer's hopes and expectations from business men for an increased purchasing power of her dollar, is, of course, a revision downward of distribution cost. This is a complex matter, as Mrs. Consumer well realizes, remembering as she must that the demands she makes for service and convenience are increasing rather than decreasing. Still, she knows that distribution costs are prodigious, and must somehow be scaled down.

For instance, she took part in the research made by The Port of New York Authority in 1925 as to costs of distributing fruits and vegetables from distant markets into New York City. Twelve separate women's organizations participated in this survey, which was also aided by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics at Washington. This survey developed the perfectly astounding fact, fully proved and unassailable, that it costs more to distribute an Oregon apple to my breakfast table after it arrives in New York, than it does to grow it and ship it all the way across the continent! The figures are plain: * the apples cost the New York wholesaler 43.8% of the retail price, and the remaining 56.2% represents cost of distribution and profit from the New York wharf to my breakfast table. The details are:

This inquiry into the high distribution costs indicated that the physical handling of the apples (and of course apples are here merely a typical example of most other fruits and vegetables) was what raised costs so high; plus the unproductive or idle time of trucks (30% of total trucking time). Thus we are thrown back to what business men in general realize is a major problem of today to reduce the very high material handling costs. Consumers have faith that engineers will solve this problem.

It is interesting also to note that this survey showed that the difference in price for the same grade of goods, between the credit-delivery store and the cash-and-carry store was 14% 328 317on apples; and varied from 8% for potatoes to 18% for oranges. Another interesting point developed was that New York distributors required 12 cents for their services per sale, and it didn't matter whether the sale was small or large; the making of the sale was the expensive item.

222. The Eight Handlers of Eggs.—If we shift our attention to eggs for a moment, some other interesting distribution facts come to notice. Eggs go through a maximum of eight separate hands before reaching the consumer: (1) producer, (2) buckster, (3) country store, (4) shipper, (5) receiver, (6) storer, (7) jobber, (8) retailer. Mrs. Consumer, in many instances, has a choice of buying from any one of the eight, if she wishes. Nevertheless no one of the eight appears to be a wasteful or unnecessary part of the curious chain. Despite clever patent carriers, parcel post and direct-to-consumer advertising, and a great deal of competitive pressure, this chain for eggs has not been broken or dispensed with. Not only has Mrs. Consumer widened the gap between herself and the egg producer by service and other demands, but egg producers have done the same by demanding steady markets, prompt payment, etc. Thus we have “the eight who gather around one egg.” Nobody seems to know what to do to lessen the number.

223. Distributing a Can of Tomatoes.—While we are examining distribution costs it might be well to mention a similar study made at the University of Maryland, as to how the consumer's dollar for cans of tomatoes is disposed of. The result was as follows: 46% to canner, 19.8% to retailer, 18.8% to grower, 6.6% to wholesaler, 4.9% to transportation, 3.9% to grocer. I call attention to the significant fact that the wholesaler gets a larger share than the grocer, in this instance. Doubtless the canned tomatoes in question are private brand goods!

224. Margins on Milk.—Milk being a basic staple it is interesting to note the University of Illinois recent figures showing that in 1908 the margin between the price paid producers for milk and the retail quart price amounted to 4.7 cents per quart in the Chicago market; which had increased 329 318to 8.6 cents by 1927. This is an excellent indication of the greatly increased distribution.

Distribution is something Mrs. Consumer cannot know much about except in general, and I don't know that she can be of much aid, since she appears to be complicating distribution by her demands rather than simplifying it. The days when I went to market at the wharves in St. Louis with my grandmother in her carriage, and we came home with great, luscious watermelons bought for a nickel, fresh from St. Louis steamboats closeby, were simple indeed from a distribution standpoint, and I fear can never return. Our only salvation is the use of modern mechanical, labor and time eliminating methods.

If I am a pessimist on consumer club movements do not set me down as a reactionary. I have seen five separate efforts of this kind come and go. At one time eight or nine years ago, I myself was rather interested in one such effort. We had an enthusiastic meeting here in New York. John Corbin, well known theatrical critic, and other public men were on the committee as well as others prominent in sales and advertising. As John Corbin said at that time, “everybody was organized but the consumer.” Even in England, he contended, the “Middle Class Unions,” as they were called, were doing a good job of fighting for the consumer's rights. Why not something similar in America? We tried, but did not succeed. Why?

225. Why “Consumer Clubs” Cannot Function Adequately.—I believe I can make quite clear why; and perhaps I may be pardoned for feeling that I have sounded the depths of this subject, and for predicting, further, that no other effort of the kind will arrive anywhere. My long and wide experience as household edition of several great women's magazines 331 320and national chains of newspapers, my experience in addressing women's clubs, farm granges, advertising clubs and Chautauqua circuits; and my experience with many thousands of letters from women on all society levels on the subject of buying family goods,—at least prevent me from being ignorant of the difficulties involved, and restrain any theories and optimisms I might have.

Consumer club movements for testing of goods, the preparation of specifications and other plans to set up arbitrary schemes to guide buyers in their purchases, must fail primarily because we have already far better machinery for guiding and protecting the consumer than any purely voluntary organization can hope to set up; far better machinery indeed than we now use. This machinery consists of three very different kinds. First, is the consumer voting power, through repeat buying. Second, is the magazines’ and newspapers’ consumer service and testing departments and their advertising standards of admission. Third, are the purging, policing efforts of the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureaus and the aid of various Government Departments, universities, experiment stations. Last, but not the least, is the work of retailers and manufacturers themselves. I will grant that this machinery is not perfect, nor is it completely coördinated; but the defects are many distribution defects and not defects of honesty, quality or information—with the exception of the canned goods field.

Theoretically there ought to be “one great clearing house,” but the fundamental defect in the consumer's club plan of Messrs. Chase and Schlink, as well as others, is that there is lacking any really cohesive centrifugal force that makes such a huge enterprise possible. The public does not really believe the premise such clubs are based upon, namely,—that the public is being “gyped” right and left, or that it can really save a lot of money by joining up with the suspicious, “big-business hating” ideas advocated.

226. Public Wants Less, Not More Work.—Furthermore, the public seeks less burdensome buying and consumption, not more technical labor and care. It wants more, not less short 332 321cuts; and, finally, it is fundamentally educated out of mixing, grinding, and compounding for itself. It is willing to pay generously for being saved even the bother of thinking overmuch about its purchases. What is more, it does not believe in the capacity of any one organizations to make sound judgments as to what brand of any or all types of goods is “the best.” Every woman who buys, (and that means all of us,) knows from oft-repeated experiences that there is no omniscient standard for “the best” for her. There are too many factors that enter into the situation, not only quality and price, but service, convenience, distribution, size, packaging and other considerations, even such a strange factor as social prestige. Theologians in the middle ages debating how many angels could stand on the point of a needle represent a simple discussion compared with a debate on the relative virtues of Borden's or Horlick's malted milk; or watersnake shoes versus sharkskin shoes, or an Atwater-Kent versus the Radiola set. I am not excited over the discovery that I pay 25 cents a carton for salt coming from the same salt beds as the other brand which sells for 15 cents a common bag. Time is money, and so, conscious and open-eyed, I choose the handy carton, with confidence in the name and its higher sanitary and convenience standards, at five or ten cents extra. It is worth an extra nickel to deal with the more up-to-date, careful company, taking especial pride in the carton bearing its name, and exercising additional care in handling its contents. The chances are that by my action in preferring the carton this maker will be able later to reduce his price and pay better wages, use cleaner methods of handling and maintain uniform quality standards. We consumers simply do not care to waste time on the great mass to technical data about household goods; we would become a walking encyclopedia if we tried to master it all. And very especially we do not care to waste time on the hopeless idea of Messrs. Chase and Schlink of having us mix our own chemicals and foods from raw materials.

Somebody should convey to Messrs. Chase an Schlink the simple mathematics of consumer buying in relation to the 333 322modern woman's budget and leisure requirements. So far as I can figure out, an average woman following the “consumer club” ideas and instructions, could save as much as $40 or $50 a year, but at the cost of almost twice the number of hours it now takes her to purchase. Doubtless certain hard-pressed types of household buyers with large families and small budgets, would gladly exchange 150 hours of time for $50. But these are precisely not the kind of women who will ever join a Consumer's Club, or if they did, have intelligence enough to be interested in its technical data. As for just accepting the dictum of the consumer club arbiters, few women are willing to subordinate their shopping judgment in this wholesale manner.

227. Inability to Reach Large Masses.—Observe, if you will, the present status of the Chase-Schlink Consumer's Club: After all the immense “ballyhoo” which their book obtained for the idea, in the book itself, in reviews, interviews, speeches, public debates and discussion, the net result is at the present writing, I am told, a little over 1,000 consumer memberships! I submit that this is the veriest “drop in the bucket”; and my prediction is that it cannot ever reach the 100,000 level; possibly not even the 10,000 level; which means that it is just a mere fly-speck in the consumer situation; a tool utterly incapable of its large self-assigned task. In a country of 28 million housewives, we must devise tools capable of touching millions of them; and more than that they must be, to a large degree, automatic, self-operative and simple. There is just no time for holding inquests over the purchase of spools of thread, or drawing up and studying specifications for every nickel purchase.

228. Mrs. Consumer's Effective Vote—Repeat Buying.—The first great machinery for the protection of the public is repeat buying. There is simply nothing to equal it in overwhelming force and finality. The merchandising system of today is in itself a great consumer's club and the members vote in broad democratic fashion at great popular elections, the polls bang open every day at a million or more retail 334 323stores. We consumers are “turning out the rascals” among commodities far faster than any consciously organized Consumer's Club will ever accomplish, simply by that decimating weapon of failure to buy, or at least failure to buy second time. You may, by hook or crook, slipping past all the watchers along the line induce me to buy a package of breakfast food that is simply so much sawdust, or a pair of shoes that is made of paper, but I will make note of the name and give it a very wide berth the next time. Possibly I should have consulted some Omniscient Merchandise Bible prepared by a Schlink or Chase, turned to Page 641 in the Division of “Shoes,” and run my fingers down the line of some thousands of brand names until I came to Footlux, and when I saw “Grade K,” and read 100 words of detail, I should have said nay, nay to my buying impulse. But I do not like omniscient bibles of any kind, nor would I like to see, as a consumer, so much power centered in the hands of a few men. And as I have already indicated, when I finished reading the details of a Consumer Club report on Horlicks and Borden's malted milk, I would doubtless still be in a quandry as to which to buy.

We see the same idea in politics. There are plenty of voter's clubs or well-meaning citizens burning with zeal to tell me how to vote, and to supply me with bundles of facts as to the candidates; but I find my confusion only worse confounded, and my trust finally in the trial and error method, and in the power of my ballot. The collective common sense of American voters has not very notably or persistently gone wrong in politics; nor has the collective common sense of consumers in their purchases. Each has notably advanced their standards, their intelligence and their critical judgement. A candidate for public favor in the shape of an article of merchandise is quite as foolish,—if a crooked and incompetent candidate,—to hope a successful public career, as a crooked and incompetent political candidate. Indeed, far more so, for the “rascals” and incompetents are turned out of business far faster than they are turned out of politics. The white light of the consumer's household beats very pitilessly upon merchandise 335 324that doesn't satisfy. In years gone by millions of consumers bought shoddy, cheap goods because they could not afford the better goods, but that day is going very fast.

229. Consumer Guidance by Periodicals.—The second important machinery for protecting and informing the consumer is the magazine and newspaper service and testing departments. There are not many of these which are really capable, but these few have millions of circulation, are tremendously valuable, competent and entirely trustworthy.

Why wish for impossible million-membered consumers’ clubs, when virtually every magazine or newspaper is already, in effect, a consumer's club? They are reality; the consumer's clubs are dreams from the land of maybe. Every subscriber to a woman's magazine, every reader of a good newspaper woman's page (and this means something like 12 million women) is in effect enrolled in a consumer's club. Two great magazines and one or more newspapers are providing far better advisory laboratory testing and selecting facilities than any present “club” has to offer, or, in my opinion, ever will have to offer. The very lack which is fatal in such consumers’ clubs—cohesive, large-scale membership and organs of communication—is already overcome by the women's magazines or large newspapers. These can give publicity to educational material, and bulletins, distribute new ideas in the form of booklets and leaflets, maintain high-priced staffs and laboratories, answer inquires and conduct food and appliance tests. At the same time they can and do set standards for admission of advertising, plus a symbol of tested merit, and thus in a practical manner prevent important purchasing errors. I look for this type of “consumer's club” work by periodicals to continue to increase in importance and scope. In recent years the work of newspapers in holding great public cooking schools and demonstration lectures, even pure food and household equipment fairs, has been increasing, and has rendered important educational service; bringing consumers in closer personal touch with sources of expert information.

230. Bureau of Standard's Certification Plan.—The third type of machinery for protecting and guiding consumers is 336 325policing effort by public bodies, and also includes every other type of consumer intelligence work. The various sources of consumer information are constantly increasing. The Government's Bureau of Standards has now put into action a plan of publishing and distributing lists of manufacturers who have complied with the specifications of the Bureau for their type of goods. It is called the “Certification Plan,” now applied to 200 master specifications, 146 of which are available on request to the Bureau of Standards. Most of these are technical goods, but it also includes (1) all varieties of soap; (2) all varieties of brooms; (3) all varieties of electrical goods; (4) all varieties of leather; (5) all varieties of roofing; (6) silverware; and (7) fire extinguishers. Nearly 4,000 manufacturers have complied with these standards; and as a matter of course you will find on this list the names of the well-known advertisers. It is the non-advertiser, not the advertiser, who is most conspicuous by his absence on such a list—as he is, of course, on any selected list of tested household goods.

The difficulty with all these isolated sources of information is the same difficulty that is faced by any consumer's club. How few thousands of household consumers will bother with guiding their shopping by this government “certification plan!” We home economists know how few, from the experience with other government leaflets for housewives. Even Mr. McAllister of the Bureau of Standards admits that “it is not self-evident” that the consumer would use the data of the Certification Plan even if it were simplified for her—which now it is not! The difficulty always resolves itself into one of simplification, and of reaching of millions of women, not just the limited body of intelligent, mentally discriminative housewives who are already pretty familiar with such buying information as can be assembled and which has any practical value.

231. Buying for Utility is Limited.—After all something like 60% to 75% of household goods, I estimate, isn't bought on a basis of strict utility value or nutrition or chemical efficiency at all; and I should judge that 50% of it is not bought on a pinching, economy basis. The decline of the effectiveness 337 326of price cuts in chain stores is good evidence of the tendency. I estimate that 50% of goods is bought on the basis of individual taste, or style. The style factor is every day becoming more important. Even when utility does enter in the matter, it is absurd to spend time over a 1% difference in sheer efficiency between several well-known makes. Automobiles and radio are a good example. Who wants to, or who does buy an automobile today on a fine-cut laboratory test of engineering efficiency? The engines of a dozen makes are often made in the same plant, and their parts are standard—Timken, Stromberg, Goodyear, Champion, etc. The actual technical differences are not a great, and inevitably their selection turns more on style, equipment, design, color, pride of name, luxuriousness, etc. Often the buyer never even lifts the hood of the engine before buying! I would greatly enjoy seeing some the these consumer club enthusiasts in the throes of deciding upon the relative desirability of Chrysler, Buick, Nash etc! In my opinion, they would suffer a brainstorm before the end of the test.

232. Futility of the “Best.”—Frankly and finally, there is no master brain and no laboratory equal to the task of deciding which is the “best” this or that article, among a larger group of products for home use. You can calculate the chemical contents of a soap, and judge the excellence of the materials and workmanship of a watch, but it is a large order indeed to say which is “best” for me. You may place 500 words of perfectly clear laboratory analysis in front of a woman who is buying face powder, and you will still be of no particular assistance to her even if she condescends to read it. She will still probably “blow herself” to a French face powder of identically the same chemical composition, at twice the price, because she wants the French trade name to which someone through advertising has given a value;—and, mind you, a value which isn't spurious, but a real economic value. Authentic economic value is made in the consumer's mind, we must remember;not—as the old economists believed—in the cost of labor and materials. One economic fallacy in the consumer club formula is the repudiation of this modern psychological 338 327value, and an effort to push us back to the old utility and cost of labor and materials formulæ; even to the old hand labor formula. Relative desirability, prestige, distribution, service and many subtle factors figure in a woman's computation of the justification of a purchase; also the “needs” of the consumer from her family, space, and service points of view.

Let us assume that some other soup makers put precisely ten more peas in their vegetable soup than does Campbell's, and thus a little extra vitamins,—and a consumer's club at once bulletins the fact. Mrs. Housewife is impressed, but finds that to get this new and slightly more advantageous soup, which is measureable as one-tenth of one per cent. superior, she must walk six blocks away to find a retail store that sells it, whereas she can get Campbell's at any store. Even if the ten extra peas and the little extra quantity of vitamins tempt her to think of changing brands (which is very doubtful) she will cancel out this advantage with the greater accessability of Campbell's. Thus is illustrated how much distribution has to do with consumer preference. Even the kind and quality, as well as the quantity of advertising has something to do with it. There are plenty of us who drink Maxwell House Coffee or smoke Old Gold because we like the advertising; we want to be in the class of people who use these goods. A laboratory coffee test—or a cigarette test—what a smile it brings to those of us who have any knowledge of either of these two industries! It would take a Solomon, no less, to decide on “the best.” Consumer common sense and the three above-described existing machines of test, information and selection have long ago worked out the human equation on these and other industries; and as long as this machinery is being improved constantly and no practical possibility of a better substitute is brought forward, we women will cling to it.

233. The Values a High Grade Manufacturer Offers.—A study of this subject is not completely without a consideration of what the alert manufactures of quality goods are themselves doing in the interest of consumer protection. “Buying by specification rather than by brand,” the slogan of the consumer's 339 328club and certain retailers who are antagonistic to nationally advertised brands—is somewhat pointless, since inquiry only proves that, with a very small margin of exceptions, the quality of the goods of the national advertisers, (who are the most active proponents of brand buying) is already up to and beyond very rigid specifications of quality. The insistence upon buying by specification instead of by brand is something of a herring dragged over the fox's trail—the fox being the “private brand,” which, even if it is of fair quality and a legally pure article by the ordinary specification test, is in a great majority of instances much below the representative nationally advertised article of quality in values offered. In perfect fairness it must, of course, be said that there are commodities of a perfectly standard type, like sugar of flour and other standard staples to which no additional technical quality can readily be added. Here emerges, then, those other values, which as every alert consumer knows are as much or more prized than technical, specified commodity values. They bulk very large in the public's mind—and well they may. A few of the prominent items of such values are:

1. Assurance of quality.

These are matters beyond all specifications. They represent that individualization which is at the same time the basic commercial reason for existence of a particular company, and also the keynote of its appeal to us as consumers. It doubtless also saves the company from the ruthlessness of that jungle of business, where sheer ruthless price competition rules—that disease which decimates the business world like a Black Plague.

234. The Defect in “Buying by Specification.”—The promoters 340 329of the idea of buying by specification versus buying by brand would—perhaps unwittingly—reduce the business world to the same terrible shambles, “sharp of tooth and red of claw” out of which it has evolved to the great good of the public.

If a perfectly good set of specifications were made up for pianos, for example and some Iowa maker of pianos offered to sell me at a very attractive price a piano meeting these specifications—I would still be a very wise consumer to prefer a Steinway, a Mason and Hamlin or a Chickering at two or three times the Iowa man's price. Individuality, reputation etc., are very real considerations to us after we attain the income level which permits us to have a deliberate, carefully weighed choice.

Buying by specification is natural for a buyer of many kinds of factory goods but not for housewives or the ordinary man. We householders in the course of five years buy from 20,000 to 80,000 separate kinds of items of goods, and merely the details of the specifications would require a very considerable encyclopedia—if they were available, which they are not. To use the specifications when buying would be an even more unlikely task! The woman needing a spool of thread and who is 100% sold on the use of the specification plan, would find herself in anyone of these positions:

(1) she would have to rely on a brand in any case to distinguish the goods of the manufacturer who guarantees his goods to be according to the specification she chooses.

It will be seen from the above that however well meant and theoretically sound, the idea of the public buying from specifications is a very nebulous matter and likely to remain so. Life is too short and modern interests and demands too many to spend so much mental energy becoming something of an engineer and technician in order to be able to buy thread expertly. The short-cut-method—buying by brand on experience and reputation—is in any case practically unavoidable, and certainly has worked to increase rather than lower the practice of buying better goods.

Let all the specifications possible be made. The quality maker of goods will welcome them all, for they will only demonstrate anew his own superiority, and the correctness of the public's faith in his trademark. Purchase by specification is in fact already here: specification of brand, the symbol of the quality or lack of quality, as judged by both test and actual experience. We seem sometimes to forget that when a brand is used advertised, and the goods is poor, it serves just as much to steer people away from it as toward it! The trademark is the product's specification.

235. The Political Approach Wrong.—Miss Ruth O'Brien, of the U. S. Bureau of Home Economics, is quite right in saying “Quality rating is what the consumer needs more than anything else.” But I am not in agreement with Miss O'Brien when she talks the same old language of a political appeal to “use the consumer's power at Washington” and “write your Congressman.” I am convinced that all political routes to utopias are snares and delusions, and that quality ratings are obtainable with greater ease and efficiency through the use of our present business machinery than in any other way. The statement of Mr. F. J. Schlink, “I do not think it possible to buy intelligently in the modern market, because there is not standardization of quality,” * is simply untrue. * Address before Home Economics Conference, University of Chicago, 1927. 342 331There are many things which consumers would like to see improved, but the idea that one can't buy intelligently as matters stand today is a slur upon Mrs. Consumer which should not go unchallenged. It is also far too sweeping a slur upon manufacturers of quality goods, who are numerous and alert today as never before. The consumer's real hope is not political agitation, but coöperation and consultation with manufacturers, plus the use of the purchasing vote, instead of the political ballot.

The political approach to consumer problems is further exemplified by Mrs. Janet L. Ramsey, vice president of the National League of Women Voters, who says “women have very little practical knowledge of the merchandise they set out to buy. How many women can distinguish between mahogany, birch or satin wood; how many know what blankets convey warmth without bulk; what linens withstand laundering?” She wants women to use politics to secure better goods.

The points she makes are perfectly true. I can add plenty more examples, but one will suffice. I astonished a big rug manufacturer some time ago by saying that I did not think more than a few women knew the difference between a Wilton and an Axminster carpet. A test on consumers disclosed they did not individualize between “Chenille” and Tapestry, and could not distinguish between Wilton and Axminster—even confusing Axminster with “Westminster.” But to talk about such things as though they were always the fault of selfish, gouging, misrepresenting manufacturers is ridiculous and born of political bias. The fault in many instances lies with women themselves, for not enough of them look at labels and seek information, or read it when it is put under their noses in large print at considerable expense. Our pure food label requirements illustrate this. Women have some information on labels to help avoid many a poor purchase, but far too many women are careless, ignorant, or uninterested. There is still far too much buying on neither a brand nor a specification basis—simply “give me a can of beans”, “give me a tooth brush,” etc. It is for this reason alone that the private brand has been able to reach such a large 343 332sale, for the private brand is no brand at all. I view the identifying brand—that which is recognized and asked for by the consumer—as a first great step out of the wilderness of ignorant purchasing; and discrimination between brands as a second great step. Adequate, explicit labeling should make a third step. The certification of brands as meeting the best standards, whether of the Bureau of Standards, or a publication, or store laboratory, may have some excellent additional usefulness, but will certainly perform no miracles for the housewife.

Let it be understood from the beginning that, to be very accurate, Mrs. Consumer has no conscious attitude toward advertising. Ask us more or less officially as to our attitude, and we will bridle and hedge, and we may even flatly deny that we are greatly influenced by it. A minority will even be very critical of advertising as a principle and a few will argue very vigorously against it. This will especially be true of the coterie of economic radicals and half-radicals among women, who consider our whole “economic system” as wrong and see in advertising the means by which the hated “big business” imposes its will upon the docile public. It will point to the billion and a half dollars spent in advertising annually in America, (even though this is but 2% of the total volume of business of all kinds) and call it a wasteful tax upon the consumer.

236. Why Women Deny the Potency of Advertising.—The average woman consumer, for a very simple reason, will not let her conscious self admit that advertising greatly influences her. It is the same reason why, if a salesman persuades 345 334her to buy an article, she is loath to admit the force of such persuasion and is more likely to say that she bought on her own judgment alone—which is quite true. Everybody who sells to men or women knows that the buyers does not like to admit that he has been persuaded. He likes to believe that his action was taken on his own processes of logic. Every salesman knows that you should try to let the prospect “sell himself,” or believe that he sold himself. A woman is certainly no exception. She most decidedly does not visualize herself as an automaton told what to do by advertising, and of course she is no such thing. She clings, as we all do, in our rôles as buyers and sellers to the age-old trading instinct which keeps us wary of the seller.

But nevertheless the American woman has accomplished something which no other women in any other civilization appears to have done. She has struck up a closer entente cordiale and co-partnership with industry and trade (even if it is so largely unconscious), than has ever before been known in the history of trading. Encouraged by the combined wisdom of the periodicals which have set up high standards of advertising acceptance, and given every more benefits through the enlightened efforts of high-class manufacturers, she has developed a “consumer acceptance” spirit,—a readiness to follow where she is led, that has had an immense bearing upon American industrial prosperity and standards of living.

The electric medium of communication for this has been advertising—responsible, cleansed and protected advertising, as exemplified in the best American periodicals. I still remember the sense of relief and gratification I felt when the first large magazine—I think it was Good Housekeeping or Ladies’ Home Journal—announced that it would guarantee all its advertising to its readers. This stand broke down consumer resistance to a minimum and began a new era of domestic progress, since women could now give a far large amount of credence to what advertising told them. Naturally this credence or confidence is not easily won or kept—it must be earned, and continuously earned. Consumer good-will is after 346 335all somewhat like steam$mdash;it is powerful, but it evaporates quickly and must be generated constantly.

237. Mrs. Consumer's Close Partnership with American Industry.—A reciprocal, practical, working partnership is now in operation between the best manufacturer of family goods and the American woman, which is the very spearhead of American progress, both domestic and industrial. Its tangible evidence of existence is the readiness with which American woman “snap into” the adoption of new ideas for domestic advance. A good article does not go begging for years in America, nor a new idea for greater family health, sanitation, comfort or efficiency meet with cool indifference. Scientific advance is working in America in far closer coôperation with housewives than in any part of the world. I have in recent years traveled much in foreign countries, making a special point of studying kitchens, family budgets, foods and the attitude of foreign housewives toward new ideas in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. I was a speaker at the International Home Economics Congress at Rome in 1927 and presided over the Home Exposition (“Salon du Foyer”) at Paris in October, 1927. I have no hesitation in saying that American housewives in the mass are fully twenty times more responsive to new ways, new foods, new devices than are foreign housewives. Now, however, many leaders overseas are becoming aware of the seriousness of this defect, and this lack of interest, as are also the directors of foreign industry.

Twenty times as responsive to new offerings, inventions and improvements by industry! That is a mighty make-weight in the balance of progress in America,both for individual health and happiness and for business. The American woman's relation to American manufacturing is positively startling to foreign eyes—but a commonplace here. She writes letters to Home Service heads employed by the manufacturer, and secures a woman-to-woman reply. She attends household lectures and secures free education. She is supplied with general household information, recipes and housekeeping 347 336aid that is only indirectly connected up with the manufacturer's product. Abroad this would frankly be regarded as philanthropic folly. She is asked for her opinion both before a new product is put out, and afterward; she is offered prizes and rewards for participating in the improvement of the product and the widening of its scope of usefulness. She is given information in the newest developments, told promptly of new inventions, and is offered through reduced prices made possible by mass production, a dividend share in the patronage she supplies.

238. Mrs. Consumer Fully Approves Advertising.— All this is an advertising technique. The printed page acts as the constant inter-communicating telephone or radio between manufacturer and Mrs. Consumer. They were strangers before this was the fact, but are in effect now co-partners in advancing American standards of living. It is even not unusual for a parlor game to consist of a test of remembrance of advertising slogans, or for society costume balls to be sprinkled with characters representing advertising trademarks.

Little wonder then that we do not resent the very considerable amount of advertising in the women's magazines. I believe I speak accurately for my sister American housewives when I say that we would certainly be distressed and discommoded if the magazines were to drop their advertising. We feel precisely—and for the same reasons—like the reader of the Iron Age who considers the advertisements in that famous old trade paper a genuinely useful, even indispensible part of his technical news and information, equal in interest to the editorial pages. Advertising is a live part of our trade and technical information on women's special fields—food, furnishings, children, equipment. I have often noted that the carping critics of advertising are not housewives, and do not possess, as we do, the manifold remembrances of the benefits and new ideas we derive from advertising.

But always this attitude of ours toward advertising is unconscious. We inhale advertising as we breathe in air—and exhale unconsciously that part of it which is without interest, without merit, or without sincerity and sense. We live in a 348 337vast whirligig of advertising, to be sure, and shop-windows, signs, displays are all about us. To be conscious of it would invite irritation or surfeit. We women simply adapt ourselves to an advertising age as men adapt themselves to a machine age—because it is as important element of modern life, and far more vital to it that casual criticism makes out. In fact, there is much absolute nonsense talked in the name of criticism of advertising, and none, when she thinks, knows it better than Mrs. Consumer. Her superbly practical mind quite readily grasps the basic economics involved—not theoretically but in daily practice.

239. Advertising as a Modern Merchandise Fair.—In the old days if a man invented a new mechanism, produced a new food or wove a new fabric, it was six months or six years before some country or other held an Exposition where, for the first time, this cloth or device or food could be seen; but it takes today no temporary exhibitions or expositions to tell us housekeepers what are the latest and most improved and perfected products in every line of manufacture and industry. Puffed wheat and rice were first proclaimed as marvels at the St. Louis Exposition; but that food, shown there at great expense, and demonstrated to only a few thousand women, did not become familiar or utilized by the great body of housekeepers until some years when it was exhibited on the printed pages of extensive advertising.

As a consumer I always think of advertising as a tremendous moving-picture device to keep ever and constantly changing before us, in firms after film, reel after reel, all the good things that manufacturers make everywhere, set in a dramatic scenario which compels attention through the touch of advertising genius. Not only has it by force of example made a bath in a porcelain tub and a brushing of our teeth national, daily rites, but it is performing the task that the churches have long given up—it is strengthening our characters. I am really serious. Advertising is truly forcing us to develop strength of will to resist its alluring temptations to buy articles which we do not need.

240. How Advertising Strengthens Rather than Weakens 349 338Character.—I used to be one of those women consumers inclined to deplore the alluring shop window, the ever present ad. But I know now that it is compelling women to think and compare values more closely. Advertising still does tempt many of us to buy what we shouldn't, but we are learning to adapt ourselves to the new environment, and as consumer-Eves, emerging out of the Garden of Innocence, we are learning to refuse the wiles of the so-called advertising serpent. We have eaten of the fruit of knowledge, and we are sure that publicity never hurts, but always helps.

The advertising I read does not make me or other Mrs. Consumers more extravagant. On the contrary, my self-control has become stronger. The more plentiful the bait and the more numerous the fishermen, the more suspicious and fastidious become the trout! To see and hear much about various articles through advertising, is not a hypnotic command to purchase, but an intelligent invitation to compare values. If I am any judge, looking on their work from the consumer's angle, advertisers who skirt the truth and have no real values to offer must be finding it harder and harder to get response to their advertising. This does not seem mysterious to me as a consumer. It is because much reading of advertising makes us constantly more intelligent, and we don't buy until really convinced that we will get value.

When we become convinced we tend to stay so. The thing that ought to make the advertiser of sound values glad is that, because of this intelligence, we are becoming constantly less fickle. Once we are won over, our trade is held as long as we are given a square deal. Thus advertising functions as a winnowing-out process. The more advertising I read about baked beans, the more careful I am to compare one brand with another, and to test all brands as to their net contents, cost and quality before making any purchase whatever. When finally I have satisfied myself, I am more or less permanently won to the brand selected. Does anyone suppose that because I have read four different ads of four different kinds of hosiery, each making telling points, on the car cards in the subway yesterday in New York, that I will 350 339rush out at the next station and extravagantly purchase a pair of each? On the contrary, I shall be just exactly four times as cautious about hosiery buying in general; I shall be so undecided as to which brand is the most onyxly, holeproofly, everwearingly darnless,—that I shall defer any purchasing until I can go into the subject in a business-like way and standardize my hosiery purchase upon the one brand that meets any tests—and then stick to it.

241. The relation of Good Advertising to Consumer Individuality.—The education that the advertiser is giving us through advertising is definitely changing our habits of dealing with things. We are expressing our individuality in more details—we go so far as to specify the wood and the nails by trademark name in our new house (so much so that architects are rather annoyed at us). We don't trust so much to intermediaries. Architects may think they have developed a modern and distinctive type of American architecture, but Curtis woodwork, Crane plumbing, Celotex and Johns-Manville roofing, specified to us by advertising (sometimes against the over-technical advice of architects!) have been vital factors in that change.

Surprisingly much of what we know we have learned from advertising. I heard some years ago of a man who got his suggestions of how to make a marriage proposal from a Cóles-Phillips’ advertisement! Public health boards may think they are responsible for the aseptic attitude of the modern housekeeper, but Cleanliness Institutes, ads for disinfectants, antiseptics, and other sanitation goods had a vast deal to do with it.

Pure food champions there were half a century ago, but it was Heinz who precipitated the big pure food fight and reform. It is an historical fact that when bath tubs were first introduced in 1845, laws were passed making it illegal to take a cold bath excepting under a doctor's care, and people who wanted bath tubs in their homes were considered a bit crazy. It took years of advertising to bring us to the present astonishingly distant point when we demand two or three bathrooms in the home, and consider it one of the most important 351 340rooms in the house. Most of the major changes in the public standards of living, housing, interior decorating, of intelligent family care and feeding, clothing, are directly traceable to constructive advertising—and we admit it.

242. Buying Economy and Standardization Through Advertising.—But we women don't consciously follow advertising in order to make great basic changes. We think in short cycles, not long cycles; of today, rather than of tomorrow. So the usefulness of advertising is much more immediate and concrete. My object as a consumer, and the object of every consumer, is to get the greatest value for my money with the least expenditure of time and effort. And in order to do this, it is necessary to standardize my purchases. The housewife's time today is valuable, and she cannot afford to lose time in repeated analyses of the same article. What shoes shall I purchase, what flour, what canned soup, what underwear and toilet requisites? It is quite a problem to decide, and the only way I can do so is by possessing standards of comparison, by choosing brands which have become standards to me of specific qualities of weight, size, quality and wear. My object, then as a consumer is always to find dependable articles as to quality and price which suit my particular needs. The more widely distributed such articles are, and the more quick and easy it is for me to purchase them, the more simplified are my problems as a consumer. Dependable goods at the same unvarying quality and price mean that with little effort I can order such and such articles, and know that they will always be the same. If brands are always changing and disappearing, if quality and prices are not uniform and dependable, then I have to analyze my purchase standards all over again each time of purchase, which is entirely wasteful of time, and decidedly inefficient.

The manufacturer's mark or trademark offers the consumer the maximum guaranty of protection and convenience, because it is in effect and in theory a guaranty by the manufacturer that he will continue these standards of quality and price at any time and any place. The manufacturer's trademark, the nationally advertised article which passes the tests 352 341of periodicals of high repute, assures the consumer five vital things which nothing else could do so straightforwardly and logically:

1. Quality.

243. Inferior Goods and Trademark Advertising.—My hope as a consumer, speaking for women consumers generally, is that there will be much more trademarked merchandise and continued national advertising so that more women will buy a good article and thus cut manufacturing costs so that retail prices may be lowered. When there are still more articles of good quality and fair price, known to me by name and by details, I will be able to better test many so-called “bargains.” There are trademarked goods inferior to unnamed goods; but less seldom are nationally advertised goods inferior to goods not nationally advertised. The very fact that inferior goods are trademarked or advertised, enables me to recognize them and refuse to buy them. The trademark, the consistently advertised article, identifies both quality and lack of quality. It is a guide against inferiority as well as for excellence. It is a mistake to believe that advertising is a ticket of entree to Mrs. Consumer's good graces. Advertising is only a means to secure my attention and inform me. It should be the most ordinary commercial prudence not to try to market or advertise an inferior article, as the investment is very likely to be a loss because I will not be convinced or repeat my purchase.

There is still plenty of room for advertising to build up my confidence by pitching out of Advertising Land, for good and all, the fringe of advertisers who are trying to sell me goods which are false to label, extravagant in claims or absolutely untrustworthy. This applies to the large firm as well as to the small one, and is still particularly needed in the advertising of foods, toilet preparations, drug and textile goods. No reasonable consumer can fail to see that this is 353 342a very heavy task, and for this reason she is only the more kindly disposed toward the advertisers and periodicals which set high standards and discourage misleading advertising.

Some rather interesting corroboration of this resulted from a test made by representatives of the International Advertising Association. Similar products, the advertising association says, were placed on sale by reputable dealers in a number of representative communities. One item was advertised, the other item was not.

Results show that:

87.6 times the customer bought the advertised product.

3.6 times the customer bought the unadvertised product.

8.8 times the customer had no preference.

Two similar articles were placed on sale at another time. One was advertised and sold at a higher price than the other. The result showed that:

60.0 times the customer bought the advertised product.

2.2 times the customer bought the unadvertised product.

15.2 times the customer had no preference.

244. Waste in Advertising.—As the woman out of whose pocketbook the cost of advertising largely comes, Mrs. Consumer has a right to ask that advertising be made more effective, and less expensive per unit of merchandise. She has the right to challenge waste in advertising and distribution, and to ask that the business world reward her mass purchasing with reduced mass production and selling cost, handed back to her in reduced price. This is the American economic gospel of the present day, one which I have fought for in many years past, including four speeches before the advertising clubs annual conventions. The co-partnership of Mrs. Consumer with the nationally advertised manufacturer must be still more fruitful.

245. Research of Consumer Opinion of Advertising.—Despite the grave doubt as to its value or accuracy, due to the discrepancy between unconscious and conscious consumer opinion, it is of some interest to record the results of a survey of consumer opinion about advertising made at Marquette 354 343University, Wisconsin. College students and householders constituted the “consumers.” Here are some of the results; for what they are worth:

“Do you think advertising raises or lowers prices to consumers?” 67.3% of all women, and 57% of all consumers said it raises prices.

“Which has the higher quality—advertised or unadvertised goods?” 83.7% of all women, and 86% of all consumers said advertised goods was highest in quality.

“Does advertising make people work harder in order to get money to buy goods they see advertised?” 86% of all women, and 83% of all consumers said it does.

“Does advertising cause people to buy goods they could better do without?” 79% of all women said yes, and 81% of all consumers.

“Does advertising aid you in any way in buying?” 100% of all women said yes, and 94% of all consumers.

As to medium most favored: Out of 76 women, 55 ranked newspapers first; and 14 ranked magazines first.