"All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes of articles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the great central warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly from the producers. We order from the sample and the printed statement of texture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to the warehouse, and the goods distributed from there.... That must be a tremendous saving of handling....By our system, the manufacturer sold to the wholesaler, the wholesaler to the retailer, and the retailer to the consumer, and the goods had to be handled each time. You avoid one handling of the goods, and eliminate the retailer altogether, with his big profit and the army of clerks it goes to support. Why, Miss Leete, this store is merely the order department of a wholesale house, with no more than a wholesaler's complement of clerks. Under our system of handling the goods, persuading the customer to buy them, cutting them off, and packing them, ten clerks would not do what one does here. The saving must be enormous...but of course we have never known any other way."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch.10
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Looking_Backward%3A_2000%E2%80%931887
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Looking Backward: 2000–1887
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian science fiction novel (1888) written by Edward Bellamy, a U.S. journalist and writer. It was the third largest bestseller of its time. Over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas, in the U.S. alone, stimulating an almost instant political mass movement.
88 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Looking Backward: 2000–1887 →
Related Quotes
"Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. the idea of indefinite…"
"The cities of that period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them splendid, which I would not b…"
"What we did see was that industrially the country was in a very queer way. The relation between the workingman and th…"
"It was no doubt the common opinion of thoughtful men that society was approaching a critical period which might resul…"
"The nervous tension of the public mind could not have been more strikingly illustrated than it was by the alarm resul…"
"As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my…"
"The thirtieth day of May, 1887, fell on a Monday. It was one of the annual holidays of the nation in the latter third…"
"It was agreed that affairs were going from bad to worse very fast, and that there was no telling what we should come …"
"After this, I remember drawing Edith apart and trying to persuade her that it would be better to be married at once w…"
"In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which Society could get along…"