Pine Bluff Daily Graphic

MAIL ORDER BUSINESS.
Chicago, April 2.-Julius Rosenwald, president of a mail order house, will pay the largest federal Income tax of any one in Chicago. His return, which was filed during the thirty-day extension time, which ended yesterday, showed an income for the ten months ending December 31, 1913, of $1,100,000. This would be on a basis of $1,320,000 for twelve months.-News item.

And still they buy from the mail order houses! Is there a person with the ability to do ordinary sums in addition and subtraction who is unable to see that the mail order houses are reaping enormous fortunes? And if they make such fortunes from the mail order business is it not clear that the patrons of the mail order houses are supplying the money? If you traded horses with a friend of yours and you afterwards found that he had profited about $50 by the transaction wouldn't you think you had been cheated?

But it was not necessary to get this news item to inform us that the mail order houses are making enormous fortunes from their business. In the first place they buy in enormous quantities and they buy the cheapest materials and employ the cheapest labor to be found in the large cities. The things they sell are cheaply made and there isn't a merchant in Pine Bluff who could handle the same line of goods and continue in business. You would not buy the goods sold by the mail order houses if could see them before you purchase. The pictures and descriptions in the catalogs are all you have to guide you in making the purchases.

Yet the enormous profits made by the mail order houses are proof that there are thousands of people who are caught by the catalog snare every day. If the employes of the postoffice department and the express companies could talk they could tell astonishing stories of the number of packages which pass through their hands daily from the mail order houses to people in this city. Thousands of articles are bought from the mail order houses which could be purchased at home for the same price and in many instances for less. In every instance the purchaser would be assured of better quality and, best of all, would have the privilege of seeing the goods before he buys.

Unfortunately it is the poor people who patronize the mail order houses. They get the catalogs and are lured away from their home merchants by the glowing descriptions and the pictures. We feel safe in making the assertion that any one who finds an article in a mail order house catalog can get the same or a better article from his home merchant by asking for it. We suggest that the next time you are tempted to buy from the mail order house, you clip out the picture and description from the catalog and take it to your merchant and ask if he can duplicate the article and the price. If he can not do it, order it. If he can duplicate it, buy it from him.