Page:The Science of Advertising (1910).djvu/55

Rh and purest to eat; while the dealers' chief interest—which the trade conditions then exposed were designed to satisfy—apparently lay in procuring the worst and most adulterated to sell profitably again.

The competition for cheap, bulk and adulterated supplies meant not only cutting of grades, lowering of quality and continual adding of adulterants and preservatives injurious to the eater, but—what had already begun to change the conditions in large sections of the industries—it meant for the manufacturers also continuous cutting of prices and reductions of his profits. For competing with an unidentified and anonymous product—as most of the suppliers really did—after getting in all the cheapening he could and putting in all the adulterants to compete with some other manufacturers for the dealers' favors, the manufacturer then found himself competing in cutting down his own profits. For his product, being unidentified with him and anonymous as far as he was concerned, was most eminently supplantable. Any dealer or jobber, dissatisfied with the profits from the sale of any brand of such goods, could merely change to another manufacturer without a single consumer being the wiser.

So after the manufacturer had sacrificed himself in every particular, he could be sure of no positive good will as a basis of future sales.