2867. If you were selling your goods for cash over the counter instead of for hosiery, would you reduce your prices?-We could do that quite easily; because often we buy hosiery articles which lie on our hands for years and the moths get into them, and we get nothing for them at all. 2868. Therefore, in consequence of being paid in hosiery you must put a higher price upon the drapery goods and tea that you sell?-I do not put a higher price on them in consequence of that, because I generally charge the same price to those from whom I get hosiery as to those who pay me in cash. 2869. But if there was no such thing as paying hosiery with goods, you could sell your goods a little cheaper, because you must calculate upon a little loss on the hosiery?-Yes. 2870. So that both the customers who pay in hosiery, and those who pay in cash, are made to pay for a possible loss upon the hosiery?-Yes. 2871. In that way they are made to pay rather higher for their goods?-Yes. 2872. Does not that rather show that the system is a source of loss to the whole community?-There is not the slightest doubt about it, but what can we do until things are put upon a better footing. 2873. You would be glad to pay in cash if you could get your goods disposed of?-I would be very glad. For one thing, it would save us a little trouble. 2874. There is a complicated system of bookkeeping entailed by the present system?-There is. 2875. Have you had any balances to settle on lines or acknowledgments or vouchers?-No; I do not give any lines. I have always been against it. 2876. Did you give any formerly?-I gave them very rarely, unless when I could not help it. 2877. That is to say when a person came to sell hosiery to you and she did not want to take the whole price out in goods, you gave her a line?-Yes; if there was a balance then they would want a line for it. 2878. Would they not have preferred money?-They never asked for money; at least very seldom. 2879. How long, is it since you ceased to give these lines?-I have not given any lines for the last two years, or nearly that time, and I just gave them occasionally. 2880. What was your reason for laying down that rule?-Because there was such a great deal of bother about it. At a time when you were busy they would come in and pop down their lines and that is another secret in the line business. Some of the people like to sell shawls and get a line for them and then they go away and give that line to some other person, and that person comes in and orders goods of different kinds and prices them at the lowest rate we can give them for. Then, when they have screwed us down to the lowest price, they throw their line down upon the counter the same as if it were a bank-note.