"
He is a wise merchant. He would rather take less profit and keep
business moving than keep his stock at high prices and bar the progress
of his community. A man like that is an asset to a town. He has a clear
head. He is better able to swing the adjustment through his inventory
than through cutting down the wages of his delivery men--through cutting
down their ability to buy.
He did not sit around holding on to his prices and waiting for something
to turn up. He realized what seems to have been quite generally
forgotten--that it is part of proprietorship every now and again to lose
money. We had to take our loss.
Our sales eventually fell off as all other sales fell off. We had a
large inventory and, taking the materials and parts in that inventory at
their cost price, we could not turn out a car at a price lower than we
were asking, but that was a price which on the turn of business was
higher than people could or wanted to pay. We closed down to get our
bearings. We were faced with making a cut of $17,000,000 in the
inventory or taking a much larger loss than that by not doing business.
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