Knowledge that Transforms

"Cut out the middleman." Thus runs the slogan adopted by a conference of representatives of farm and labor organizations held in Chicago a few weeks ago. Perhaps no one of the many suggestions for reducing the high cost of living is more popular or more prevalent at the present moment than this one which recommends the elimination of the middleman. The American Farm Bureau Federation, a national organization with executive committee members from Massachusetts to Calitfornia, charges that the high prices paid by the consumer are altogether disproportionate to the prices received by the producer and that the middleman is the guilty party. Believing that it is hopeless to wait for governmental relief from "the merciless exploitation to which they are now subjected by the profiteers," the Plumb Plan League called an all-American farmer and labor co-operative commission to meet in Chicago February 12, 1920. At this meeting several hundred delegates from farmer organizations and various branches of the American Federation of Labor sought to institute a plan for direct dealing between farm producers and city consumers. The United States Council of National Defense, composed of the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, having made a careful investigation of the high-cost-of-living problem, recently reported to the public its findings and the remedies needed. The idea of co-operation is conspicuous in all of the proposals.

Marketing, as I should define the term briefly, is a study of the principles that govern the policies of business management in the distribution of commodities from producers to consumers. This includes the activities of retail and wholesale merchants, manufacturers' sales organizations, the various agencies engaged in the distribution of raw materials, and all other means of facilitating and promoting the sale of merchandise. Take a shoe manufacturer, for example, who has just organized a new business. The first marketing problem for him is the determination of the agencies through which his product is to be sold. He has a choice between selling entirely to wholesalers, entirely to retailers, or to both. He has a choice, furthermore, between the various types of retailers-unit stores, department stores, chain stores, and mail-order houses. He probably will find it inadvisable to plan to sell to all these indiscriminately. Some degree of selection will be essential. There is also the possibility that he may elect to operate a chain of manufacturers' retail branches. Following this selection of agencies, and interwoven with that problem, questions relating to the manufacturer's sales organization arise. How large a sales force shall he maintain? What plan for management of the sales force is to be developed ? Is a stock department to be operated? Then come the problems of brands. Is this manufacturer to sell his product unbranded, entirely under his own brand, or under wholesalers' and retailers' private brands? What is to be his advertising policy? How are his shoes to be priced ? These are roughly the marketing problems that the shoe manufacturer must consider. Take another case. I recently had an inquiry from a young man who is just about to engage in a new business venture. He