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commission men, who receive the goods from the individual, 

 the firm or corporation in California which ships them, but 

 the auction people sell the goods and the cost to the people 

 in California ranges from one and five-eighths per cent, 

 commission to two and a half per cent, commission. Now, 

 where they pay the commission man several cents above 

 that, it is just as you are paying to our department five per 

 cent, for what we only pay three per cent, to have done, 

 but we have a general supervision, we look after the re- 

 ceipts, we see that the ears are handled, we exercise the one 

 bid for the owner if we are requested to do so, and I would 

 say right here that only about one car in a thousand is taken 

 out of the auction at the owner's request. As a rule, the 

 goods are sold. That is the way this auction is moving 

 down there in New York. 



You say, is there any other economy? Yes, there is 

 one other. When goods arrive on the dock and are sold, for 

 instance, they are sold, we will say, to James Butler, the 

 ;.^reat chain-store man of our city; he would correspond 

 with your Kennedy Brothers of Boston, who are old time 

 friends and customers of mine, and most excellent men, even 

 though they do live in Boston. These people are not Alone 

 in business, there are other chain store people, and they are 

 all represented and they are direct retailers and buy in the 

 auction. Then there are the Greeks, and Italians and Jews, 

 distributing on street corners and often push carts, for we 

 have 12,000 push carts represented by padrones at the auc- 

 tion, and then the brokers, so we have a great mass of peo- 

 ple, who are not a bit friendly; they are a good deal more 

 .■pt to get into a fight and kill one another than they are to 

 fix prices. They co-operate about as the French and Ger- 

 i^ians are co-operating at the present time, or the Turks and 

 Russians; in fact, co-operation has not done very well, ex- 

 cept where all the people, who co-operated, spoke the same 

 tongue and had tho same interests, and were willing to be 

 led by their oAvn people and not by somebody from a for- 

 eign clime. 



