"Certainly, my young friend. Because by doing so it would _help_ Mr. Black. Don't you see that, if one hardware man, and one druggist, and one dry goods store, and so on, had our stamps, _all_ those merchants would be in a class by themselves? It would make them the _leading_ merchants in the town, for people would trade with them so that they could collect the Garter stamps." "I see," returned Fellows quietly. "And the man who gets stamps here from Mr. Black would be able to buy, let us say, a hat or some china ornaments through you people, which would, incidentally, deprive the local men's furnishing store or china store of the sale of those articles. And, of course, that same man might get trading stamps from other stores, and with those stamps he could buy a pocketknife through you people, and thus take the sale of that pocketknife away from Mr. Black." Bulder waved the question aside as though not worth bothering with. "My dear man," he asserted, "the people who get things for those trading stamps get things they would not buy otherwise. That is surely a _very_ trivial contention." Fellows looked at me and said: "Black, I have no reason to take any more of yours or Mr. Bulder's valuable time, as I see nothing else to say except that I strongly advise against the adoption of this or any other trading stamp or profit-sharing scheme which you do not control yourself. Of course, a few merchants in a town can get together and run this trading stamp system, whereby your stamps are accepted for cash in other stores and other stores' stamps are accepted for cash in your own, and by that system there might possibly be some benefit in the trading stamps. But I believe that any merchant who uses trading stamps--and I do not refer to your excellent company, Mr. Bulder--is merely building up business for some outside organization. He is merely diverting some of his own profits into the pockets of the trading stamp concerns, which do not really build up any business at all; because, if the stamps prove successful for one merchant, it will not be long before other merchants take them up and then every one is giving profits to the trading stamp concerns without any of them getting any real benefit from it. I believe the use of trading stamps is more or less an admission of inability to think up plans of getting business for oneself." Bulder smiled. He was once again the acme of courtesy. "That argument of yours _sounds_ excellent, Mr. Fellows," he said suavely. "Excellent! But why not apply it to _your_ business? Why not say that if one merchant advertises, _all_ merchants will advertise and thus the benefits of advertising are nullified?" Fellows was once again beaten down, I thought. He was plainly stumped for a few seconds. Then he replied: