Keep Your Money at Home? In Kennewick, the Shoe-Leather Trail Led to Pasco

Mr. Editor— I see by the papers that they are still singing that old, old song, “Keep Your Money at Home,” and I want to say that the man who preaches that doctrine in a town like Kennewick is talking through his hat and singing to empty galleries, for it can’t be done. The daily necessities of even Kennewick require the products of nearly the entire globe: teas, sugar, coffee, spices, tropical fruits, silks, laces, cotton and woolen goods, shoes, hats, and other things without number that are not produced anywhere near Kennewick. To assemble such things in Kennewick brings into service the various agencies of manufacturer, importer, wholesaler, jobber and transportation companies, and our retailer must bow to all these forces before he can begin to take profits unto himself. If every consumer in the Kennewick valley should spend every cent for their entire necessities in our own local stores, all the money that would finally remain here would be the operating expenses of the various stores plus the profits of each individual firm, and every one of our dealers will tell you, and with truth, too, that their profits are not at all burdensome. And the chances are that if a dealer did accumulate a surplus he would send it away to a distant city for an automobile, which is strictly his own business. Only, when a merchant solicits or demands patronage on the grounds that he is a public benefactor, or rather, the life of the town, he should not object to showing the public his private expense account, for the only valid reason that any merchant can give for soliciting patronage is that he is in a position to give equal or greater values for the same money than can be obtained elsewhere. In the matter of shoes, alone, Kennewick is paying a big tribute to many an eastern city and if our dealers expect to hold that trade they must be in a position to satisfy exacting demands. And that was brought to my attention the other afternoon while waiting for the opening of “The Birth of a Nation.” Nearly a dozen of Kennewick people came together for a few minutes in front of the Pasco Hotel. Two-thirds of the crowd were ladies, including three members of two business firms in Kennewick. And there were ranchers from down the valley. Almost immediately the ladies began to swap shopping experiences in Pasco and a bystander not knowing anything about conditions in either town would say at once that while not one of this crowd would go as far as Spokane to trade, yet they all would go to Pasco quite often both to relieve their feelings and their pocketbooks. And women’s and children’s shoes were the particular articles upon which all thought centered. If it were not a sad commentary on how we keep our money at home, it would be amusing to hear them tell how Mrs. Let-It-Go-At-That always goes to either Pasco or Walla Walla to buy shoes for herself and girls. When I read that Mrs. — visited in Pasco, I wonder if her best shoes were getting shabby, too. Now, money spent in either place is as dead to Kennewick as though it was sent to a distant city, but as Postum says: “There’s a Reason.” And if our shoe dealers would spend more time in plugging up this leakage and less in telling Mr. Rancher where to spend his money they would be in a position in the course of time to hit the bull’s-eye at least once in a while. It is quite natural that the local dealer should look upon the mail order catalogue as an interloper in his special territory, but the consumer must be the judge. A former president has aptly said that publicity cures or kills a multitude of evils. A consumer who keeps from three to six mail order catalogues of different houses in his home all the time has a standard price for almost every salable commodity under the sun, and he knows to what tune he is being gouged by unscrupulous and out-of-date dealers. The mail order house has come to stay and their number will soon be legion and we may expect to see both the express and parcel post perfected to such a degree that the lady on the sandy road in the Finley district can well afford to let Uncle Sam attend to both buying and selling for her, though it will likely rob her of the pleasure of shopping over bargain counters, where values are marked down to any figure but five or its multiples. For five seasons we have been yelling ourselves hoarse over our grape carnivals because we live in the “Ne Plus Ultra” fruit district of the Northwest, but up to this season carload upon carload of various kinds of fruit would not sell for enough to pay cost of picking and boxing, and yet if a rancher came down from the hills for supplies and should ask to see the “K Brand” of dried and canned fruit and vegetables he would not get a smell, for “there ain’t no sech animile.” A short time since I saw a shipping case that had once contained tinned sweet corn, packed in Portland, Maine, and shipped to Portland, Oregon. That’s keeping our money at home with a vengeance. Now, if we know what we want to buy and know the price of the article and can buy it just as cheap as our dealer can, why pay a commission to someone else to do for us what we can just as well do for ourselves? And old Jump-Off-Joe sends back the echo, why, why, why. J. N. ELY.