We were getting to a place
where no one cared about costs or service. Orders came without effort.
Whereas once it was the customer who favored the merchant by dealing
with him, conditions changed until it was the merchant who favored the
customer by selling to him. That is bad for business. Monopoly is bad
for business. Profiteering is bad for business. The lack of necessity to
hustle is bad for business. Business is never as healthy as when, like a
chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets.
Things were coming too easily. There was a let-down of the principle
that an honest relation ought to obtain between values and prices. The
public no longer had to be "catered to." There was even a "public be
damned" attitude in many places. It was intensely bad for business. Some
men called that abnormal condition "prosperity." It was not prosperity--
it was just a needless money chase. Money chasing is not business.
It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get
burdened with money and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget
all about selling to the people what they want.
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