Business Without a Buyer Is It Possible?

Take Sam's own case. There he sits on the bench in the middle of his general emporium, warming his feet at the airtight stove and his imagination at the yarns of the village loungers. There he sits by the hour, discussing the question whether there are more crows around this spring than usual.

In due course, the patriarch of the Solons clears his throat and brings the discussion to an end. 'Seems like it's this way,' says he. 'There ain't so many crows as usual, but they're larger and more numerous.'

'Well,' observes Sam, 'crows may be more numerous, but customers ain't. If I could only sell a few crowbars, I wouldn't care how many crows there were.'

But few people come in, to buy crowbars or much of anything else. So the stocks repose on the shelves and Sam on the bench, collecting dust. All around him are hoes as well as crowbars, shoes and socks, and other goods in great array, all waiting for customers who do not come. Sam is right: There is no such thing as business without a buyer.

Wherefore a lot of traveling salesmen are laid off. There is no use in sending them around to talk to Sam about ordering more goods, when he cannot sell the goods he has on hand.

Wherefore wholesale clothiers and hardware dealers and shoe dealers and the rest postpone ordering. They do not dare to buy, until there is some prospect that retailers will buy.

Wherefore clothing-makers and tool-makers and shoemakers curtail output, and throw men out of work. They have no inducement to make more goods, when they cannot sell the goods they have already made -- no inducement, consequently, to buy more cloth and iron and leather.

Wherefore some of the mills and foundries and tanneries shut down.

So it is everywhere, all the way from mansion to mine, from restaurant to ranch, from filling station to oil field, in every nook and corner of commerce and industry. There is scarcely anybody who is able to go ahead with his part of the world's work. All because there are not enough customers in Sam's store, and in Bill's store, and in stores generally.

Business is waiting for a buyer. It is like an engine house waiting for a fire-alarm. Take a look at the firemen. Some of them are reading the morning paper; some are playing checkers; some are tipped back against the wall, yawning.

Suddenly the fire-bell rings. Every man is on his feet, instantly.

In the engine houses of the business world, a buyer can ring the bell any time; and nobody else can ring it.

You, for example, want to buy the services of a barber; so you step into a shop. At once, every idle barber jumps to his chair, alert, expectant. That little barber shop shows what a buyer means to the whole industrial world.

Once buyers begin to flock into the shops and throw their money down on the counters, the clinking of the coins is heard around the world. The storekeepers hear the merry music first and broadcast it. Even Sandwich Center is heard from. For Sam Witham, who has left the debater's bench, and is now hurrying all day from counter to counter, remains long past supper-time to make out orders for new stocks; and there is never enough static in the air to prevent dealers from hearing that tune. Sam is no longer concerned about the number of crows around the village; he has birds of a different feather to count.

Sam personifies the world of business, brought to life by buyers, galvanized by the current of consumers' money. For the jobbers no sooner hear from Sam and the other retailers than they send larger orders to the wholesalers. Then the wholesalers, not to be left behind, increase their orders to the manufacturers; and the manufacturers, to meet the new demand, take on more workers, and order more copper and cotton, more lumber and lathes, more tin and turbines. All of which induces the miners to dig out more ore, the farmers to plant more cotton, the lumbermen to fell more trees. And all of which is commonplace enough, and would not be repeated here, were it

not that so few people see the significance of the fact that this whole elaborate and far-reaching sequence of activities is set in motion by the customer who comes into Sam Witham's store and buys a crowbar. These activities cannot be started in any other way. When there are enough such customers, in enough stores, buying enough crowbars and enough other things, business is prosperous -always, inevitably -- all the way from the retailer to the rancher, no matter what else happens. And when there are not enough such customers, business as a whole is far from prosperous -- always, inevitably -- all the way from the retailer to the rancher, no matter what else happens.

It is the buyer for consumption, not the buyer for production, who controls the whole chain of processes. Consumers never stop buying because they fear a slump in the market for producers' goods; producers often stop buying because they fear a slump in the market for consumers' goods.

Enough buyers to take away the current output of finished goods is a project upon which everybody can unite with enthusiasm, for it looks not only to the welfare of the people generally, but to the welfare of each and every class. It has nothing in common with the many schemes for bringing gains to one group at the expense of other groups. Various projects are urged to further the interests of farmers, railroad workers, importers, cotton manufacturers, stockholders, postal clerks, and so on; but here is a project which would promote the welfare of these groups and all other groups. Indeed, if consumer buying were adequate, decade after decade, no considerable group of the population could possibly fail to gain some share of the resultant increased output, for most of it would have to be distributed as larger real wages and larger real profits.

Enough buyers for final consumption -- that, then, is essential. There can be no progress in Sam Witham's business until sales are larger and more numerous,' and that cannot happen until individual incomes at Sandwich Center are larger and more numerous. What is true of Sam and Sam's village, moreover, is true of the entire country.

So the question arises whether the problem of prosperity is not, in the main, the problem of making the flow of money to consumers keep pace with the flow of goods to market, to the end that the corner store at Sandwich Center and stores generally may always be able to broadcast, 'Plenty of buyers and business good.'

Source: Business without a Buyer