“This giving away,” said the crockery man, “has made a big hole in our business. Some one suddenly discovered that crockery would be a taking thing to help work off poor goods. Of course, the home jobber benefited by it for a very short time, and then the New York importers stepped in and took the cream. Baking-powder men, coffee-grinders, tea houses, and others sent out crockery, and people, got so much of it for nothing they had no excuse for buying any.” “I doubt if it really hurts us much in the long run,” said the Meriden man. “Here was a baking-powder concern in Ohio that offered a set, consisting of fifty-one pieces, of silver-plated ware with every case of their own goods. If you had read their advertisement you would have been sure that Rogers never turned out any better goods than these they were giving away. But the fifty-one pieces cost them just $7.50! They used a good many thousand sets. The table caster was worth about 70 cents. You can imagine the quality! Now, I hold that in the long run cheap stuff will help good goods. People who have it will get disgusted with it, and will replace it with reliable ware, while if they had never had the trash they would not have had their own consent to buy the better goods.” “Perhaps the most wonderful thing about business today,” was said, “is the amount of information given in circulars, price lists and advertisements. I can remember twenty years back where a price list simply gave you the briefest statement of the article, sometimes the size, but oftener not, and the price. Nowadays an ordinary list is a mine of information. I remember having reached the conclusion that one of the things particularly needed was a circular for the consumer about the way to strop and take care of a razor. I could not find a syllable on the subject in any English or American price list. I wrote to four manufacturers for points, but received the briefest of replies and no practical help. I sat down to write the circular. Did you gentlemen ever try your hand at such a job?” No one had. “Then I just want you to try it once, and you will believe what I tell you, that it will be about as tough a job as you ever undertook. I had been selling razors for ten or twelve years; I had talked with barbers, as you all have; I had heard customers talk; I had heard shrewd remarks and silly remarks; I had heard manufacturers occasionally drop a hint, and now I was to sit down and evolve out of my memory and experience a circular on the subject that would be of benefit to every one handling a razor.” “How did you make out?”