"Can a Woman Shop in a Lumber Yard?"

That's easy. No-not in a Lumber Yard; but she most certainly can and should in a modern retail building material store.

Let's see what Mrs. Neighbor Woman thinks about this.

She has already told us something about her attitude in relation to the buying of a home, but that's a pretty big unit.

The business of our merchants in other lines is not built up of big single purchases but of a multitude of small partial purchases.

There would be no Marshall Field-no Altmann-no Palace-if it were not for the woman-who-shops.

And that person-no, rather should we call her a "personage"-is a very profitable and desirable appendage to our industry.

Mrs. Neighbor Woman meets Mr. Retail Building Material Merchant in the post office just as a shower starts.

Being a real merchant, Mr. R. B. M. M. greets Mrs. N. W. and propounds this question: "Can a woman shop in my building material store?"

Can she? Here is what Mrs. N. W. answered: r'$q1s-4 woman is not a carpenter; she is not an expert in woods and building materials; that is, the average house-keeper, I mean.

"If you men would only find out what we women wanted and then would show us that you could fill that want you would enlist us as unpaid but highly profitable and enthusiastic sales people.

"I u'onder if you have ever thought of the fact that the material you have for sale is about the only material used in and around a home that women cannot buy.I might indeed go farther, and take the experience of my husband as an example, and say that it is hard for anyone to buy it as it is used.

"I believe that there is not a single home in this town where at this very moment there is not something wanted which you have for sale.

"It seems as though when the last workman leaves a house and the family moves in that the interest of you men stops then and there.

"I am sure that you haven't the slightest idea of all the ways and means in which you could use the things you have for sale-not even in yonr own homes.

"There's nearly always a place for an extra shelf. There's an attic that can be made into an extra room. There is always a step or so that needs fixing. There are stairs that can be made into various receptacles rvith the greatest convenience to the woman of the house.

"There are innumerable built-in features; clothes racks and posts ; porches to be inclosed; hardwood floors to be laid over the old soft wood floors; closets enlarged or rearranged; doors replaced or cut in ; flower-boxes; sleeping porches; pergolas, repairs and improvements without end. And every single one of them absolutely requires the very things you have for sale in your store.

"But do I know it? Not from anything you have said to me. I do know, though, because my common sense tells me that to make a shelf takes wood and that to get wood I must go to a place where lvood is sold. But in that case, where I do all the thinking, you are merely-at the very most-a convenience; you are certainly no particular help to me in my difficulty !

"It is a woman's nature to make the best of things as long as she can-and it's a good thing for you men that she does. But just try awakening her,to.the benefit of those things; call them to her attention in an appealing manner; and tell her exactly how and'why and how much and all about-and then see what happens.

"But if she can perform the miracles she cb,n with a few slats off an old box and a yard. of cambric or oilcloth, using a carving knife for saw, plane and chisel ; and a few bent tacks and the heel of a slipper for nails and hammer; just think what she could do if she had the real honest to good-