244 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



a locomotive engineer from Massachusetts, and a 

 banker from Michigan. 



Here social distinctions so often insisted on at 

 home exist in least possible measure. Perhaps for 

 the first time one realizes the common America. 



Several years ago, at a large dinner of salesmen 

 for clothing manufacturers, I sat beside a man who 

 owned four factories making women's suits. 



"These National Parks you talk about," he said, 

 "have saved me a lot of money." 



Wonderingly, I inquired how. 



"Well, you see we get the fashions from Paris 

 far in advance from our agents over there, but we 

 couldn't sell that stuff in our trade just as it comes. 

 Not a bit of it. In New England they have certain 

 notions of their own, to meet which these new styles 

 must be modified. Southern women have still dif- 

 ferent notions, and out in the Middle West, they 

 don't like what the New Englanders and Southerners 

 like. They differ again down the Mississippi Valley, 

 and again in Texas. So elsewhere in the West. 

 Say, we used to carry a big department to study 

 the new Paris styles and readapt them to twelve or 

 fourteen different types of trade, and of course if 

 we overestimated sales in any one of these divisions 

 it was almost a total loss, for you couldn't sell the 

 surplus anywhere else. And, mind you, all this had 

 to be done twice every year. But now, we've got 

 these differences down to four or five. That means 

 a lot of money saved in these days." 



