“Of Chicago? Yes, indeed. Poor fellow, I received a card a day or two ago announcing his death. He ought to have been good for twenty years yet. I bought some of his patent goods sixteen or eighteen years ago, and sold more or less of his brand ever since. His plant in Chicago shows what was in him. I hated, like thunder, to sell his goods when they were branded 'Chicago,' but when he changed that to 'American' I bought as freely of him as from others. He was jovial, sociable, and wide awake. I wish he might have lived to enjoy his well-earned success.” “What has become of Jim Frary?” “I have lost sight of him. If any man ever had a good chance to make a strike I think Frary is the man. With Weibusch back of him, furnishing money and brains, with a combination in prices on a profitable basis, and with the boom in business, that concern ought to have made piles of money. But it is not generally supposed that they did. Frary has become temporarily eclipsed, and General Trunk manages it as if it was an orchestra. I don't know if he gets much music out, but he probably enjoys bossing things; that's worth a great deal to him.” [Footnote: As is known to the trade, within a very few weeks after the above article was written the Frary Cutlery Co. failed, and have since been sold out under the hammer. And prices of table cutlery are once more “booming.”] “Don't you like Trunk?” “Like him? Of course I do. You would if you were to meet him. He's one of the most unassuming and gentle-mannered men you ever met. If he only had a little confidence in himself he would be the Napoleon of the table cutlery trade, but he is inclined to listen to everybody's advice and not assert himself.” “I had a deal with Frary once that amused me. I had been handling a small, one-bladed knife that we paid about 40 cents per dozen for. We made quite a leader of it, but were told, in answer to our last order sent, that the stock was out. We tried to get it two or three times afterward, but without success. The next time I saw one of the men I asked him why the dickens we couldn't get that knife again. 'We have given it up,' I was told; our cost book showed the cost to be 36 cents per dozen, so we supposed we were getting our money back, but somebody had the curiosity to foot up the items not long ago, and found an error in adding of 20 cents; the knife had really cost 56 cents! Fancy a concern doing business in that way!” “There are any numbers of just such concerns. Every little while you see changes made in prices to correct errors. There's a deal of guessing done around factories, and also a good deal of figuring on what a competitor does. One man learns of a competitor making a certain price, and says, 'If he can sell at that, I can,' and that becomes his price, without his even knowing that he is making money or losing at these figures.”