Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/307

 AIMS OF THE CONSUMERS' LEAGUE 293

of the high price in the form of wages. While it is true that the Brotherhood of Tailors ordinarily commands better wages, by reason of their strong organization, than workmen in the ready- made branches, it is nevertheless true that the tailor in this case, as in scores of others known to me, was driven by extreme poverty to conceal the dreadful fact that he had smallpox in his family, through fear of losing a few days' or a few weeks' work. So the high price of his coat did not even entitle the customer in Helena, Mont., to an easy conscience on the score of wages.

It is sometimes questioned whether, in spite of the special cases set forth, and the evils which they typify, it is not true that in a general way the laws protect the purchaser, and the producer bends all his energies to meet the consumers' wishes ; so that another organization in these organization-ridden times might seem to be superfluous. These are really two questions, and must be answered separately.

First, as to the producer, and his effort to meet the wishes of the consumer. It is true that every manufacturer studies the market ; he is constrained, if he would succeed in his business, to calculate, infer, guess, from the action of the buyer of last year, yesterday, and today, to the action of the buyer of tomorrow and next year. The failure of an enormous percent- age of manufacturers shows how difficult is this task of inference. Recurring crises show that the difficulty is sometimes an insuper- able one for the whole body of manufacturers at once. Successful manufacturers approximate to the wants of large bodies of buyers ; but the approximation is far from being always satis- factorily close. How few of our ready-bound books are just as we like to have them ; or of our ready-made shoes, or other gar- ments ! Bakers' bread is a classical example of ready-made food intended to suit the "average" buyer, and really suiting the taste of no one. The difficulties of the manufacturer are greatly intensified by the extraordinary incompetence of the "average" purchaser to judge the desired articles on their merits. What housewife can detect, alone and unaided, the injurious chemicals in her supplies of milk, bread, meat, home