Second Hundred Billion

". . . great, big get-together . . . mingling in friendly contact . . . learning the difficulties with which each other has to contend . . . comradeship . . . better understanding . . . engaged in a fight for a common cause. . . ."

Reading these phrases in the National Association of Retail Druggists Journal, 2,500 members of the association packed, started off to their convention.

And as the druggists did last fortnight, so did many another earnest business man of other occupation. For with late summer comes the crescendo of the U. S. convention phenomena and last week the movement became acute. Going to, gathered at, departing from national conventions were druggists (wholesale, retail), chain store men, credit men, life insurance underwriters, traveling engineers, bakers, merchant-tailors and designers, bankers (men, women), radio manufacturers, accountants, safety engineers, laundry owners. Traveling at reduced railroad rates they had seen new places, participated in bridge and golf tournaments, elected officers, passed resolutions, been grave.

Of chief interest to each convention were the problems facing that particular industry and tactics to be employed in the future. Thus while the American Bankers' Association mulled over the credit situation, members of American Bakers' Association in Chicago discussed the advisability of having a national doughnut week soon and announced crackers in the shape of states to tempt, to educate unruly infants.

Members of the National Association of Life Underwriters, faced by the usual question of how and where to sell, were apparently still groggy from the recent topping of the $100,000,000,000 mark in total life insurance. Titles of addresses were: "The Market for the Second Hundred Billion," "The Conservation of Human Life in the Era of the Second Hundred Billion," "Creating the Second Hundred Billion," "Conserving the First While We Create the Second Hundred Billion," "Selling to Women in the Era of the Second Hundred Billion," "The Second Hundred Billion Salesman: He Faces East."

Also faced by the question of how and where to sell, the Radio Manufacturers' Association in the Astor Hotel, Manhattan, found at least a partial answer.

Of chief concern to the retail druggists was how to fight chain stores and whether a store can sell books, caviar, lamps, vases and still fill prescriptions reliably. One figure that pleased the druggists was that 30 out of 100 druggists survive in business compared to eight grocers.

But while this figure pleased the druggists it was annoying to the National Chain Store Association, to whom a major problem is escaping the charge that the failure of small community stores is a result of chain methods. As an answer to this accusation Dr. Julius Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce told the Association that most retail store keepers are grossly inefficient and W. T. Grant, head of a chain of 100 stores, declared that chains create new business and that the retailer should profit by chain store competition instead of going bankrupt.