^oV^mber,13!™'}    National  Wholesale  Druggists  Association.  525 
possible  to  do  so,  all  three  branches  of  the  trade.  For  this  reason 
the  Proprietary  Committee  of  this  Association  has  probably  given 
as  much  time  and  thought  to  the  interests  of  the  retailers  during 
the  last  seventeen  years  as  it  has  to  the  protection  of  our  own  mem- 
bers. The  basis  of  the  plan  under  which  the  two  national  associa- 
tions (the  N.A.R.D.  and  the  N.W.D.A.)  are  working  at  the 
present  time  was  first  promulgated  by  our  own  Proprietary  Com- 
mittee at  the  annual  meeting  in  Detroit,  in  1893. 
The  pioneer  work  in  establishing  a  system  of  uniform  selling 
prices  for  proprietary  articles  was  done  by  this  committee  under 
the  chairmanship  of  Mr.  Daniel  Myers,  of  Cleveland.  Associated 
with  him  were  a  number  of  men  who  have  continuously  remained 
on  the  committee  since.  He  was  succeeded  as  chairman^  by  Mr. 
George  A.  Kelly,  of  Pittsburg,  and  Mr.  Kelly  was  succeeded  at  the 
meeting  of  the  Association  in  Boston,  in  1887,  by  myself.  I  held 
the  chairmanship  for  ten  years,  and  at  the  meeting  in  Richmond,  in 
1897,  was  succeeded  by  Mr.  Frank  A.  Faxon,  of  Kansas  City,  who 
held  the  office  for  three  years,  and  upon  resigning  at  the  recent 
meeting  held  in  Chicago,  was  succeeded  by  Mr.  C.  F.  Shoemaker, 
of  this  city.  The  amount  of  work  devolving  upon  this  committee, 
as  already  stated,  is  probably  greater  than  that  of  any  other  com- 
mittee in  the  Association ;  and  the  amount  of  attention  given  by  it 
to  the  interests,  both  of  the  retailers  and  of  the  proprietors,  has  not 
by  any  means  been  inconsiderable. 
Other  trade  organizations,  which  were  formed  most  of  them  after 
the  N.W.D.A.,  have  attempted  to  regulate  selling  prices  some- 
what upon  the  same  plan  as  our  rebate  system ;  but  while  our  As- 
sociation has  been  continuously  successful  and  there  has  been  com- 
paratively little  disturbance  in  prices  amongst  the  wholesale  trade, 
the  other  organizations  have,  for  the  greater  part,  failed  in  similar 
efforts.  The  reason  for  this  is,  of  course,  not  difficult  to  understand. 
A  proprietary  medicine  is  arbitrarily  placed  upon  the  market  by  its 
maker  at  a  price  and  under  a  name  which  he  arbitrarily  con- 
trols, and  upon  which,  under  the  trade-mark  laws  of  the  country, 
he  is  given  a  monopoly.  He  is  thus  in  a  position  to  also 
control  the  prices  and  terms  under  which  he  will  market  his  pro- 
duct, and  occupies  a  very  different  position  in  this  regard  from  the 
manufacturer  of  dry-goods  or  hardware,  or  any  other  class  of  mer- 
chandise. 
