March 



1902.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER ^VORLD 



187 



THE RETAIL SHOE DEALERS AND RUBBERS. 



ON February 6 was organized in Boston a Retail Shoe 

 Dealers' National Association, at a well attended 

 meeting, the credit for which belongs to the Boot and 

 Shoe Recorder, whose proprietor, Mr. W. L. Terhune, 

 called the meeting to order. The need of such an organization 

 had been felt in the trade since the old National Retail Shoe 

 Dealers' Association ceased to exist in 1891, and the recent call 

 for a meeting was responded to by about 300 retailers and re- 

 presentatives of manufacturing and jobbing concerns. The 

 business sessions of the convention were devoted to an en- 

 thusiastic exchange of opinions on topics pertinent to the 

 trade, and followed by a banquet at the Hotel Brunswick. The 

 officers chosen were : 



President — Sherman Collins, Ithaca, New York. 

 Vice PtesidenI — E. H. Kelzer, Mansfield, Ohio. 

 Secretary — F. W. Gilbert, Somerville, Massachusetts. 

 7 reasurcr — Joseph Boucher, Woonsocket, Rhode Island. 

 Executive Committee — H. E. Hagan, Boston ; James O'Sullivan, 

 Lowell, Mass.; C. N. Buchell, New Bedford, Mass.; M. F. Cosgrove, 

 Worcester, Mass.; J. 11. Murphy, Boston. 



Many references to the rubber shoe trade were made during 

 the proceedings, including one address by a retail shoe dealer 

 of Boston, the salient portions of which follow : 



SOME VIEWS ON THE RUBBER SITUATION. 

 BY H. E. HAGAN. 



Ever since I entered the retail shoe business the rubber 

 question has been the bugaboo of the retail shoe man. In the 

 early days of midsummer the wily salesman comes to hand 

 and he tells you of that advance in price that is bound to 

 come, and he generally books an order. And then the inno- 

 cent shoe man, if he is a retailer with visions of the profits in 

 store for him, complacently folds his arms and waits for the 

 snowstorm that never comes, particularly if he does business 

 in Boston. Before he knows it December i is round, and then 

 he writes or sees his rubber man, and it is the same old story, 

 no snow no money. So it goes on year after year — we do not 

 seem to profit by the experience of the past. 



Perhaps the presumption is that you men are all plentifully 

 supplied with capital, but there is a great host of shoe men all 

 over this country and your proceedings will be reported in the 

 Recorder, and these men will see what you have done, and it is 

 to them that I am talking now. 



Let's not do it any more ; let's buy rubbers as intelligently as 

 we buy leather goods. Provide in the early summer time for 

 the early snowstorm. That is the harvest week for shoe men. 

 Buy enough for that and then stop, and then buy from hand to 

 mouth. Don't load up again. Better let the price of goods 

 go up and you pay it rather than buy too heavy. We buy too 

 heavily of both leather and rubber goods. The hardest factor 

 in my mind that the retail shoe man has to contend with is to 

 say no, for the salesmen are all good fellows. 



It is a chronic statement with the retail shoe man that he 

 does not make any money on rubber goods, and he certainly 

 does not make as much as he ought to. This year it was a 

 little diflferent; not because the United States Rubber Co. 

 loved him, but because they hated the other fellow more. It is 

 not the fault of the United States Rubber Co. ; you have got 

 yourselves to blame. You don't put profit enough on your 

 goods. You know and I know that men in the small towns or 

 suburbs of small cities sell rubber goods at less price than the 

 high grade men in the center of the city. It may be, and is 



to quite an extent, true that a man or a woman may go to the 

 large city to buy their footwear, but when they wake up some 

 morning and find a big snow storm, then they think of your 

 store, and you should get your profit then. If you will slash, 

 do it when the ground is clear and when people don't want 

 your goods at any price. 



What I am going to say will tread on the toes of my friends 

 in the rubber business. It is an unfortunate circumstance that 

 they have planted the rubber men at this table, and I believe 

 each one has a gun. To my mind the men who control the 

 destiny of the United States Rubber Co. do not intelligently 

 grasp the situation from the retailers' standpoint. In discuss- 

 ing this question from the retailers' standpoint, I want to take 

 up the question of production. You and I have attended auc- 

 tion sales in this city in the past. What do we find at rubber 

 sales ? As a whole, it is rubbers out of style. The presumption 

 is they could not be sold at a profit and therefore they were 

 sold at a loss. Somebody took that loss, and it reduced some- 

 body's profit just so much. Take last season in this city. lam 

 told by a representative of one of the largest rubber houses that 

 during the month of December they might have sold $70,000 

 worth of goods if they had had the size that would fit your 

 customers' shoes and mine. They had rubbers galore, but they 

 did not have what we wanted. There was a period of two or 

 three weeks when I could not get rubbers in this city for any 

 price that would fit the shoes they were supposed to fit. Why 

 did not the men who control the production look ahead and 

 see what the prevailing styles were to be, and then make a 

 large quantity of rubbers in those styles? It is a loss that can 

 be avoided. 



There is a question of distribution. I am not going to over- 

 paint or overdraw this picture. I am going to state conditions 

 as they exist in this city, and I believe the same conditions 

 exist in all large centers of distribution. We have in this city 

 four exclusive rubber houses, each carrying a special brand and 

 all controlled by the United States Rubber Co. The money 

 from all eventually finds its way into the box. But thfese four 

 houses pay rent tor four stores. They are under the manage- 

 ment of high salaried men. Each has a separate corps of sales- 

 men and clerks. There is a tremendous expense of cartage to 

 and from the various depots. To my mind the proper distri- 

 bution of rubbers can be made through leather jobbers. They 

 send their representatives wherever a man opens a shoe store. 

 They can sell rubber goods at no more expense when they are 

 selling the leather goods. If the United States company must 

 distribute their own rubbers why can they not do it with one 

 set of men and one store under one management? Then the 

 items of expense would find their way to the proper side of the 

 ledger and the rubber people would stop saying that they do 

 not make money. But what good is that going to do the re- 

 tailer? I don't know as it would do him any good. But if we 

 could as an organization by any method get them to give the 

 retailer a small percentage of the saving we could save some 

 money and they would noi lose anything by the transaction. 



Ask the rubber man why this condition exists and he will 

 tell you that all retailers want the various brands. There 

 may be some locations in which it was so when these various 

 companies were all rivals in striving for business, but that con- 

 dition does not exist to-day. I have seen two retailers each 

 marvel how the other man could sell a special brand of rub- 



