I have before me a Macy advertisement from a New York newspaper of recent date. In a conspicuous place in it there is a card which says: "For sixty-two years we have sold dependable merchandise at lowest in the city prices. We are doing so now and shall continue to do so." This was published at a time when the recent reaction from the extremely high prices of the war period already had begun to set in; and yet this was the big store's sole acknowledgment of the deflation sentiment--to say nothing of hysteria--which was sweeping the town. Its competitors had been offering their wares at reductions of from twenty to fifty per cent. from their topmost prices, but, serene and secure in the knowledge that its policy in selling had been consistently adhered to, Macy's only reiterated that its prices would continue to be the lowest in the city--quality for quality. To hold fast to this policy, through thick and thin, has not always been easy. Macy's has fought some royal battles in its behalf--yet not so much because it was a policy as because with the big store in Herald Square it has become a principle of the most fundamental sort. More than twenty years ago the principle became extremely difficult to maintain, because of the growing tendency of the proprietors of articles, so patented or copyrighted as to make their imitation practically impossible, to attempt to fix their final retail sales price. It no longer became the mere question of whether Macy's or any other store would have the right to undersell its competitors; it became the fundamental question of whether the great centuries-old open market of the world could continue to remain an open market, in the interest of the consumer; and not a closed market, in the interest of the producer. To maintain the first of these positions, in behalf of its patrons, Macy's entered upon and won, almost single-handed, one of the notable legal battles in the history of this country. As far back as 1901--if you are a stickler for exact dates--this whole question of price maintenance became an acute issue with Macy's. It came to pass that when the prominent publishers of America formed an association, one prime purpose of which was to fix the prices at which their books would sell at retail, the store quickly saw that if this trust agreement was permitted to stand unchallenged, its cardinal principle of underselling its competitors, would have to be sacrificed. Macy's did not propose to make such a sacrifice--to permit its customers to be sacrificed--without a protest. And such a protest it prepared to make.