These Are the Kind of Times When It Pays to Be a Merchant

By Jack Dionne

When business is good, and when every hour brings to the door of the lumber merchant people seeking stock, or bids, or both and you don't have to go outside your own door to keep busy selling building materials-those are the times when Mr. Pip often feels that he is just as well off as Mr. Pep, and even Mr. Pep himself wonders if his merchandising efforts and expenses are hot overdone.

But in times like the present, when no one is spending money easily, when no one is building except those who actually need buildings and need them RIGHT NOW, when the trade that "drops in" to buy has become a very small trade indeed,-THESE are the times when a knowledge of merchandising becomes a blessing, indeed.

For what can Mr. Pip do, when people stop coming to buy of their own accord? ffe doesn't advertise, doesn't solicit, doesn't go out in the highways and the byways to CREATE business by developing building NEEDS. The PRICE route is Mr. Pip's route-the only one he believes in,or knows how to travel.

But not so with Mr. Pep. When drop in trade gets slow, Mr. Pep begins dropping OUT withall his spare time, to see what he can PROMOTE in the line of building action.

He KNOWS that there are hundreds of homes in his town that need things of a building character. if he can