Page 16 Advertisements Column 1

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20175, 2 March 1931, Page 16

■J. • . "COT OUT THE MIDDLE MAN." ' Most of ua In our time have used, the ■statu: "Oat out the middle man." Most of o» hATO received or given thait advice. It ia one of the catchwords that are pxihutd when men are talking nt large about business, as they do in a railway carriage g? at a committee meeting. Young men übo it around the time they change over from • cigarette to a pipe. Old men use it by At club fire. Titos* who follow experience rather than catchword* know that it is difficult, and unprofitable, to cut out the middle man. They have found that the middle man, like •very other in the business world, exists by the service he renders, and as soon as he ecases. to giva that service he cuts hin^seu OUt. The hoarding-house keeper reads that the fishermen in the harbour aro getting a farthing a pound for their herring. She finds the has to pay 8d a pound. She thinks how profitable it would be if. she c< "?' d Bet her fl«h direct from the trawler. The stopper thinks how profitable it would be if he could deal direct with the boarding-house keeper. But it is a long way from port to city. If the two are to be brought into touch some sort of organisation has to be 'devised. ■ The hoarding-house keeper decides it would be ftdnfitonou to combine her order vita that of tho- house nest door and that of he* sister at tho other- end of the street. The ■kipper decides he had better get a man ashore to deal with the orders, as he must tie off to catch the tide. Hey presto! the organisation and the middle men come into existence. So it i« with pearls and potatoes, cotton and cabbages. Consumers and growers alike epssmodictlly grumbla at the middle man. Occasionally they try to do for themselves what the middle man h*s been doing for them. If they find that he has been ing them no service he is eliminated «nd pastes out of existence Uko every other person who tries to live by taking money for nothing. Most often ther the IMB between the potatoes in' the field atid the verson who eats them are each performing • function at least as difficult as growing potatoes. aro doing something for the eater Mad the grower better and more cheaply than they could do it for themselves. The process ot production of coal hasa lone, long way to go after the man at the coal face has done bis shift. The man who devises an • advertisement which finds the coal a market is as much a cosl producer •a the hewer or the cheokweightman. So it ia with the whole of modern ecosomio life. Production is a-long and complex process that embraces the. difflcult processes of distribution and salesmanship. There are redundant -selling organisations as there are redundant manufacturing organisations. Botn of them 1 tet "cut out" of the productive process by the drastic surgery ot economic competition. Tho possibility- ot being "OUT, OUT'' has no fear for vs. 65 years of trading as bonaflde stock and station agents extending to all those who have", entrusted business to ui. Our very best efforts in the shape of Salesmanship* Energy,- • S«ne Service, and Assistance is surely a unique record. *. ■* 1 v * He' dOobt' the. steady lines along which we conducted our business «nd the sound advice oft repeated by uti ■Will, during th« preseat period of ..TMdJiptAtnt. be appreciated sad x«pieSji*rea by. many of thos« who thought that ourfpolicy was, perhaps, not mOdexn fcaopgh. & X>t*on Mid Co.'s advice and ser-