Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Read online

  CHAPTER X.

  "If I am going to explain our way of shopping to you," said mycompanion, as we walked along the street, "you must explain your wayto me. I have never been able to understand it from all I have read onthe subject. For example, when you had such a vast number of shops,each with its different assortment, how could a lady ever settle uponany purchase till she had visited all the shops? for, until she had,she could not know what there was to choose from."

  "It was as you suppose; that was the only way she could know," Ireplied.

  "Father calls me an indefatigable shopper, but I should soon be a veryfatigued one if I had to do as they did," was Edith's laughingcomment.

  "The loss of time in going from shop to shop was indeed a waste whichthe busy bitterly complained of," I said; "but as for the ladies ofthe idle class, though they complained also, I think the system wasreally a godsend by furnishing a device to kill time."

  "But say there were a thousand shops in a city, hundreds, perhaps, ofthe same sort, how could even the idlest find time to make theirrounds?"

  "They really could not visit all, of course," I replied. "Those whodid a great deal of buying, learned in time where they might expect tofind what they wanted. This class had made a science of thespecialties of the shops, and bought at advantage, always getting themost and best for the least money. It required, however, longexperience to acquire this knowledge. Those who were too busy, orbought too little to gain it, took their chances and were generallyunfortunate, getting the least and worst for the most money. It wasthe merest chance if persons not experienced in shopping received thevalue of their money."

  "But why did you put up with such a shockingly inconvenientarrangement when you saw its faults so plainly?" Edith asked me.

  "It was like all our social arrangements," I replied. "You can seetheir faults scarcely more plainly than we did, but we saw no remedyfor them."

  "Here we are at the store of our ward," said Edith, as we turned in atthe great portal of one of the magnificent public buildings I hadobserved in my morning walk. There was nothing in the exterior aspectof the edifice to suggest a store to a representative of thenineteenth century. There was no display of goods in the greatwindows, or any device to advertise wares, or attract custom. Nor wasthere any sort of sign or legend on the front of the building toindicate the character of the business carried on there; but instead,above the portal, standing out from the front of the building, amajestic life-size group of statuary, the central figure of which wasa female ideal of Plenty, with her cornucopia. Judging from thecomposition of the throng passing in and out, about the sameproportion of the sexes among shoppers obtained as in the nineteenthcentury. As we entered, Edith said that there was one of these greatdistributing establishments in each ward of the city, so that noresidence was more than five or ten minutes' walk from one of them. Itwas the first interior of a twentieth-century public building that Ihad ever beheld, and the spectacle naturally impressed me deeply. Iwas in a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windowson all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feetabove. Beneath it, in the centre of the hall, a magnificent fountainplayed, cooling the atmosphere to a delicious freshness with itsspray. The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculatedto soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior.Around the fountain was a space occupied with chairs and sofas, onwhich many persons were seated conversing. Legends on the walls allabout the hall indicated to what classes of commodities the countersbelow were devoted. Edith directed her steps towards one of these,where samples of muslin of a bewildering variety were displayed, andproceeded to inspect them.

  "Where is the clerk?" I asked, for there was no one behind thecounter, and no one seemed coming to attend to the customer.

  "I have no need of the clerk yet," said Edith; "I have not made myselection."

  "It was the principal business of clerks to help people to make theirselections in my day," I replied.

  "What! To tell people what they wanted?"

  "Yes; and oftener to induce them to buy what they didn't want."

  "But did not ladies find that very impertinent?" Edith asked,wonderingly. "What concern could it possibly be to the clerks whetherpeople bought or not?"

  "It was their sole concern," I answered. "They were hired for thepurpose of getting rid of the goods, and were expected to do theirutmost, short of the use of force, to compass that end."

  "Ah, yes! How stupid I am to forget!" said Edith. "The storekeeper andhis clerks depended for their livelihood on selling the goods in yourday. Of course that is all different now. The goods are the nation's.They are here for those who want them, and it is the business of theclerks to wait on people and take their orders; but it is not theinterest of the clerk or the nation to dispose of a yard or a pound ofanything to anybody who does not want it." She smiled as she added,"How exceedingly odd it must have seemed to have clerks trying toinduce one to take what one did not want, or was doubtful about!"

  "But even a twentieth-century clerk might make himself useful ingiving you information about the goods, though he did not tease you tobuy them," I suggested.

  "No," said Edith, "that is not the business of the clerk. Theseprinted cards, for which the government authorities are responsible,give us all the information we can possibly need."

  I saw then that there was fastened to each sample a card containing insuccinct form a complete statement of the make and materials of thegoods and all its qualities, as well as price, leaving absolutely nopoint to hang a question on.

  "The clerk has, then, nothing to say about the goods he sells?" Isaid.

  "Nothing at all. It is not necessary that he should know or profess toknow anything about them. Courtesy and accuracy in taking orders areall that are required of him."

  "What a prodigious amount of lying that simple arrangement saves!" Iejaculated.

  "Do you mean that all the clerks misrepresented their goods in yourday?" Edith asked.

  "God forbid that I should say so!" I replied, "for there were many whodid not, and they were entitled to especial credit, for when one'slivelihood and that of his wife and babies depended on the amount ofgoods he could dispose of, the temptation to deceive the customer--orlet him deceive himself--was wellnigh overwhelming. But, Miss Leete, Iam distracting you from your task with my talk."

  "Not at all. I have made my selections." With that she touched abutton, and in a moment a clerk appeared. He took down her order on atablet with a pencil which made two copies, of which he gave one toher, and enclosing the counterpart in a small receptacle, dropped itinto a transmitting tube.

  "The duplicate of the order," said Edith as she turned away from thecounter, after the clerk had punched the value of her purchase out ofthe credit card she gave him, "is given to the purchaser, so that anymistakes in filling it can be easily traced and rectified."

  "You were very quick about your selections," I said. "May I ask howyou knew that you might not have found something to suit you better insome of the other stores? But probably you are required to buy in yourown district."

  "Oh, no," she replied. "We buy where we please, though naturally mostoften near home. But I should have gained nothing by visiting otherstores. The assortment in all is exactly the same, representing as itdoes in each case samples of all the varieties produced or imported bythe United States. That is why one can decide quickly, and never needvisit two stores."

  "And is this merely a sample store? I see no clerks cutting off goodsor marking bundles."

  "All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes ofarticles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the greatcentral warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly fromthe producers. We order from the sample and the printed statement oftexture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to the warehouse,and the goods distributed from there."

  "That must be a tremendous saving of handling," I said. "By oursystem, the manufacturer sold to the wholesaler,
the wholesaler to theretailer, and the retailer to the consumer, and the goods had to behandled each time. You avoid one handling of the goods, and eliminatethe retailer altogether, with his big profit and the army of clerks itgoes to support. Why, Miss Leete, this store is merely the orderdepartment of a wholesale house, with no more than a wholesaler'scomplement of clerks. Under our system of handling the goods,persuading the customer to buy them, cutting them off, and packingthem, ten clerks would not do what one does here. The saving must beenormous."

  "I suppose so," said Edith, "but of course we have never known anyother way. But, Mr. West, you must not fail to ask father to take youto the central warehouse some day, where they receive the orders fromthe different sample houses all over the city and parcel out and sendthe goods to their destinations. He took me there not long ago, andit was a wonderful sight. The system is certainly perfect; forexample, over yonder in that sort of cage is the dispatching clerk.The orders, as they are taken by the different departments in thestore, are sent by transmitters to him. His assistants sort them andenclose each class in a carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerkhas a dozen pneumatic transmitters before him answering to the generalclasses of goods, each communicating with the corresponding departmentat the warehouse. He drops the box of orders into the tube it callsfor, and in a few moments later it drops on the proper desk in thewarehouse, together with all the orders of the same sort from theother sample stores. The orders are read off, recorded, and sent to befilled, like lightning. The filling I thought the most interestingpart. Bales of cloth are placed on spindles and turned by machinery,and the cutter, who also has a machine, works right through one baleafter another till exhausted, when another man takes his place; and itis the same with those who fill the orders in any other staple. Thepackages are then delivered by larger tubes to the city districts, andthence distributed to the houses. You may understand how quickly it isall done when I tell you that my order will probably be at home soonerthan I could have carried it from here."

  "How do you manage in the thinly settled rural districts?" I asked.

  "The system is the same," Edith explained; "the village sample shopsare connected by transmitters with the central county warehouse, whichmay be twenty miles away. The transmission is so swift, though, thatthe time lost on the way is trifling. But, to save expense, in manycounties one set of tubes connect several villages with the warehouse,and then there is time lost waiting for one another. Sometimes it istwo or three hours before goods ordered are received. It was so whereI was staying last summer, and I found it quite inconvenient".[2]

  "There must be many other respects also, no doubt, in which thecountry stores are inferior to the city stores," I suggested.

  "No," Edith answered, "they are otherwise precisely as good. Thesample shop of the smallest village, just like this one, gives youyour choice of all the varieties of goods the nation has, for thecounty warehouse draws on the same source as the city warehouse."

  As we walked home I commented on the great variety in the size andcost of the houses. "How is it," I asked, "that this difference isconsistent with the fact that all citizens have the same income?"

  "Because," Edith explained, "although the income is the same, personaltaste determines how the individual shall spend it. Some like finehorses; others, like myself, prefer pretty clothes; and still otherswant an elaborate table. The rents which the nation receives for thesehouses vary, according to size, elegance, and location, so thateverybody can find something to suit. The larger houses are usuallyoccupied by large families, in which there are several to contributeto the rent; while small families, like ours, find smaller houses moreconvenient and economical. It is a matter of taste and conveniencewholly. I have read that in old times people often kept upestablishments and did other things which they could not afford forostentation, to make people think them richer than they were. Was itreally so, Mr. West?"

  "I shall have to admit that it was," I replied.

  "Well, you see, it could not be so nowadays; for everybody's income isknown, and it is known that what is spent one way must be savedanother."

  [Footnote 2: I am informed since the above is in type that this lackof perfection in the distributing service of some of the countrydistricts is to be remedied, and that soon every village will have itsown set of tubes.]