Dry-Goods Men

Supercilious, smart-Alex fiction writers have taken occasion from time to time to throw jibes at the department store of the U. S. They have tried to make dry-goods men, furniture men, carpet men, glass, china and home-fixture men look funny. But last week they had their answer. "Where would the American home be without the dry-goods industry?" was asked, and well and fitly answered at the annual convention of the National Retail Dry Goods Association in the Hotel Pennsylvania, Manhattan.

From far and wide the delegates had gathered. The slogan of the convention was GOODWILL, a word which had been thought up by the directors of the association. They knew that their fellow members understand as well as any merchants in the U. S. the meaning of that fine phrase, and the dry-goods men, as is their wont, responded heartily. Many were the delighted slaps and winks, the chewed cigars, the roguish stories passed from lip to lip amid shouts of, "Brother, you surely made a sale with that one" . . . "Let me tell you a red-hot one" . . . "Now down south they say" . . . "The one about the man with a harelip and the woman with St. Vitus' dance. . . ." It is true that among the 3,000 owners or executives of dry-goods stores who checked into the hotel there were several who did not know how to be regular fellows, and even a few individuals who thought they could attend the meetings without paying their dues. Lew Hahn, managing director of the association made a speech in which he said that after 15 years it was time to close the doors to "that group failing to pay $10 a year for membership." The delinquents were promptly ejected. The convention settled down to hear the reports of the distinguished merchants who had come to address them.

Herbert J. Tily (Strawbridge & Clothier, Philadelphia): . . . "We saw in Philadelphia ... a rather marked slowing up. . . ."

Theodore Kaufman (Kaufman & Baer, Pittsburgh): . . . Pittsburgh has suffered. . . ."

Robert W. Pogue (President of H. & S. Pogue Co., Cincinnati): "We look for a very good spring business. . . . There was a nice increase. ... The people have more money and the tendency is today for people to spend money for quite a few luxuries. We notice this because we deal in many of the higher-class lines of merchandise. . . ."

Other merchandisers gave their analyses of general conditions. They found that the railroads Lad just ended a happy year; that the automobile industry had again confounded pessimists; that 1925 set another record for building; that steel, silk, wool, cotton and rayon were prospering. Then a banker, O. H. Cheney, Vice President of the American Exchange-Pacific National Bank, oriented once and for all the importance of the dry-goods industry, and answered those supercilious ones who have jeered at dry-goods men. "I think," he said, "that the department store might be considered the greatest single factor in raising the American standard of living to where it is today, the highest in the world."