"Excuse me a moment, George," says MacFurdle, who has absorbed some pointers on Distribution from a book entitled "The World Salesman," "I don't think that it is so important to get after the psychology of the thing first as it is to outline thoroughly the Theory of Zone Apportionment on which we are going to work. If we could make up a chart, showing in red ink the types of retail-stores and in green ink the types of jobber establishments, in this district, then we could get at the window display from that angle and tackle the psychology later, if at all. Now, on such a chart I would try to show the zones of Purchasing Power, and from these could be deduced...." "Just a minute, Harry," Inglesby interrupts, "let me butt in for half a second. That chart system is all very well when you are selling goods with which the public is already familiar through association with other brands, but with ours it is different. We have got to estimate the Consumer Demand first in terms of dollar-and-a-quarter units, and build our selling organization up around that. Now, if I know anything about human nature at all--and I think I do, after being in the malleable-iron game for fifteen years--the people in this section of the country represent an entirely different trade current than...." At this point I offer a few remarks on one of my pet hobbies, the influence of the Gulf Stream on Regional Commerce, and then we all say again the same things that we said before, after which we say them again, the pitch of the conversation growing higher at each repetition of views and the room becoming more and more filled with cigar smoke, Our final decision is to have a conference to-morrow afternoon, before which each one is to "think the matter over and report his reactions." This brings the day to a close. There has been nothing remarkable in it, as the reader will be the first one to admit. And yet it shows the secret of whatever we have not accomplished in the past year in our business. And it also shows why we practical business men have so little sympathy with a visionary, impractical arrangement like this League of Nations. President Wilson was all right in his way, but he was too academic. What we practical men in America want is deeds, not words. X TURNING OVER A NEW LEDGER LEAF New Year's morning approximately ninety-two million people in these United States will make another stab at keeping personal and household accounts for the coming year. One month from New Year's there will be approximately seventy-three of these accountants still in the race (all started). Of these, sixty will be groggy but still game and willing to lump the difference between the actual balance in their pockets and the theoretical balance in the books under the elastic heading "General Expenses" or "Incidentals," and start again for February. The remaining thirteen, who came out even, will be either professors of accounting in business schools or out and out unreliable.