“Indeed, I’ll be very glad to give you all the information I can. If more women studied how to buy, we would have less complaints about overcharges and high prices. But I am afraid I can’t give you much time this morning. Our busy hour is at hand. If you had come in between eight and nine, I could have taken you over the store and shown you how the wheels go round. In ten minutes our rush will set in, and last until one o’clock. Practically all of our customers crowd their marketing into those hours.” “How odd!” said Claire. “I don’t think it’s odd,” said Mrs. Larry. “I suppose every woman does just what we did this morning--stops to tie loose ends in the home, before starting to market.” “More telephone, I imagine,” said Claire. Mr. Benton nodded his head briskly. “Right there you have struck one fundamental cause of the high cost of living--service! We employ five men to take orders in your home; one man to answer telephone calls, and a dozen delivery men. I am not criticizing the efforts of this firm to give its customers the best and promptest service. I am merely stating the cold facts when I say that order, telephone and delivery service is added to the cost of everything you buy. “If the women of America would band together for the purpose of ordering efficiently, and thereby reduce the cost of delivery, they would enable grocers to sell at lower prices. Let me make this clear with an illustration: [Illustration: “If the women of America would band together”] “Mrs. A. is busy getting the children off to school when the order boy calls at her door. So she tells him to send her a pound of butter, a package of crackers and a dozen of oranges--whatever she happens to remember in the haste of the moment. She starts to get lunch and finds that there is no vinegar for the salad dressing, no rice for the soup. So she telephones to have these articles delivered ‘special.’ Her first order is already on the way by our first regular delivery. The ‘special’ wagon or boy is rushed around with her second order. During the afternoon she makes an apple pie for her husband’s dinner, and discovers that the cheese box is empty. So she telephones again, and a second messenger or special wagon is dispatched to her home. Now, no matter how closely we may price butter or rice or cheese, this woman undoes our efforts to give her low prices by her inefficient system of ordering. She has spent ten cents in telephones, and she has made it necessary for us to keep extra help for her special orders. “Each one of these belated orders is a small item in itself, but when I tell you that some of our customers order groceries from four to six times a day, you will understand what extra service amounts to. And when I add that on busy days, like Saturday or the day before Christmas, we send out anywhere from a thousand to fifteen hundred orders, you will have a better idea of what delivery service costs the housewives of America.