saw about me, or children, who did their business
on such a plan? Could they be reasoning beings, who did not see the folly which,
when the product is made and ready for use, wastes so much of it in getting it
to the user? If people eat with a spoon that leaks half its contents between
bowl and lip, are they not likely to go hungry?
    I had passed through Washington Street thousands of times before and viewed
the ways of those who sold merchandise, but my curiosity concerning them was as
if I had never gone by their way before. I took wondering note of the show
windows of the stores, filled with goods arranged with a wealth of pains and
artistic device to attract the eye. I saw the throngs of ladies looking in, and
the proprietors eagerly watching the effect of the bait. I went within and noted
the hawk-eyed floor-walker watching for business, overlooking the clerks,
keeping them up to their task of inducing the customers to buy, buy, buy, for
money if they had it, for credit if they had it not, to buy what they wanted
not, more than they wanted, what they could not afford. At times I momentarily
lost the clue and was confused by the sight. Why this effort to induce people to
buy? Surely that had nothing to do with the legitimate business of distributing
products to those who needed them. Surely it was the sheerest waste to force
upon people what they did not want, but what might be useful to another. The
nation was so much the poorer for every such achievement. What were these clerks
thinking of? Then I would remember that they were not acting as distributors
like those in the store I had visited in the dream Boston. They were not serving
the public interest, but their immediate personal interest, and it was nothing
to them what the ultimate effect of their course on the general prosperity might
be, if but they increased their own hoard, for these goods were their own, and
the more they sold and the more they got for them, the greater their gain. The
more wasteful the people were, the more articles they did not want which they
could be induced to buy, the better for these sellers. To encourage prodigality
was the express aim of the ten thousand stores of Boston.
    Nor were these storekeepers and clerks a whit worse men than any others in
Boston. They must earn a living and support their families, and how were they to
find a trade to do it by which did not necessitate placing their individual
interests before those of