It has been estimated that in some of New York's most representative and most elegant department-stores something like eighty-five per cent. of all retail transactions are upon the credit accounts. Assuming even that all of these accounts are promptly collectible--or collectible at all--the expense of the machinery of their collection becomes no small item in store management cost. This item Macy's saves--entirely and completely. And so, to no small extent, the store justifies itself in that other rigid rule--the pricing of its merchandise at a uniform rating of six per cent. less than that of its competitors. Upon this thought, alone, a whole book might be written. III. Buying to Sell Up the broad valley of the Euphrates a caravan comes toiling upon its way. It is fearfully hot; frightfully dusty. For it has come to mid-September; the rains are long weeks gone; and with the crops harvested, even the sails of the great mills that pump the irrigation canals full are stilled. The time of great heat and of little work. But still the caravan--the long, attenuated file of horses and camels must press on. Ahead is Bagdad, that self-same ancient Bagdad which three thousand years ago was the commercial capital of the world. Through the heat waves and the blinding dust, the trained eyes of the Moslem can see the sun touching the gilded minarets and towers of her great mosques. Bagdad ahead. And at Bagdad the market-places which have stood unchanged for tens of centuries. Save that in recent years there have come to them these Americans--these shrewd agents of a little known folk, these rug-buyers of a far-away land of which they spin such fascinating tales. Tales far too fascinating ever to be believable. Yet Allah keeps his own accounting. In the foyer of a lovely new home in newest New York a Persian rug is being spread for the first time. Its owner dilates with pride upon his purchase; shows those roundabout him the symbolism of its rarely delicate design; even to the tiny fault purposely woven into the creation by its maker to show in his humble fashion that only Allah may be faultless. A great French city; this Lyons, by the bank of the lovely Rhone. For two centuries or even more its tireless looms have spun the rarest silk fabrics of the world. Nearby there is a little French village. Were I to put its name upon these pages, it would mean nothing to you. Yet out from it there comes a lace, so rare, so delicate, that one well may marvel at the human patience and the human ingenuity that conceived it. The silk comes to America, straight to the chief city of the Americas; so do the laces; and so in a short time will come once again the wondrous cotton weaves of Lille and of Cambrai--and will come as a tragic reminder of the five fearful years that were.