Soon after my talk with Barlow, I planned a big sale to reduce my stock. I was most anxious to reduce it $2,000.00 worth, and at the same time I wanted to see if I could not hit back at Stigler. He was keeping up his price-cutting campaign, although he had evidently realized the fact that I took my cut prices off the goods as soon as he cut his, so that he had begun to put the same kind of goods in his window that I did, but cut them about 10 or 15 per cent. from the regular prices.

I had spoken to Jock McTavish about this, and had suggested that perhaps I ought to cut all goods down to cost for a little while, for apparently Stigler could sell at a 15 per cent. reduction and still make a profit.

"No," said Jock. "Dinna ye ken that he loses money when he cuts his goods that much?"

"Why, how can that be?" I asked. "Suppose he buys something for $1.00, and the regular price is $1.50. He cuts that 15 per cent.—he would be selling it at—at $1.27. He would make 27¢ profit!"

"Ye're wrong," replied Jock. "The cost o' the goods is no the bare invoice price, but the cost plus the cost o' selling. Noo, as ye ken, it will cost ye round aboot 30 per cent. on cost to sell your goods, so that those goods would cost $1.00 plus 30¢, the cost o' selling; and when he sells them for $1.27 he'll be losing 3¢ on every sale.""But he could care for his overhead on his regular stock," I replied.

"Verra foolish reasoning," snapped Jock, "for a mon to mak' a part of his sales carry the freight for aw o' 'em!"

I had thought about this afterward, and finally had been able to see how, if he cut his goods 15 per cent., he couldn't make anything on the deal.

However, several people had been saying that Stigler had got me "on the run," so I decided it was up to me to have a whack at him. Therefore, I planned what I called an "Automatic Sale." I picked out a whole lot of stock, goods a little bit damaged, lines that I had no sale for at all—I found a lot of things which the two previous owners of the store bought and stored away and apparently never did anything with. I found about a gross of painted rubber balls; I found a lot of juvenile printing outfits; and padlocks—I dug up about three gross of padlocks, of the strangest patterns you could think of! I found eleven different makes of safety razors, and there were only two of them I had ever sold any quantity of. I planned to reduce the number of lines as much as I could and just push the real sellers—put my money into goods that would sell quickly and so increase my turn-over.

All the five-cent articles that I wanted to dispose of in this sale I tied in pairs—two for ten cents.

I intended to run four narrow tables down the center of the store. The first one was to contain ten-cent goods, the next twenty-five cent, the next fifty-cent, and the last one all the odds and ends at various prices.My idea was to run the sale on the plan of automatic reduction of price. I had got the idea from a magazine which had said that, if you could offer anything to people which appealed to the sporting instinct that is in every one of us, you would attract attention. So I decided to try to appeal to this sporting instinct by automatically reducing the goods one cent in every ten cents every day, until the goods were reduced to nothing,—and then give away what was left.

I had talked this over with the boys at our Monday's weekly meeting—which, by the way, had been a most interesting one and continued for over an hour instead of the three-quarters of an hour we had planned—and they had been very enthusiastic over it. I had also talked it over with Betty and Jock and Fellows. While Jock shook his head and said, "Ye're takkin' a big risk, mon," Betty had said, "Go ahead and do it, boy!" Fellows just said, "Bully, you're going to be a real man before you're through!"

Larsen seemed to be getting younger every day. When I came out of the store the day after I had announced my plans, he was talking over the idea with the other boys in a very excited and enthusiastic manner.

The sale was planned to start in two weeks hence, and, during those two weeks, car signs were displayed in all our trolleys, worded like this:

In addition to this, Larsen and Wilkes tacked these signs on all the trees and blank spaces they could about the town.

Just one week before the sale started, I put the following "ad." in both our local papers for three days, without any change of copy:

I ordered from the printer four circulars which were clipped together with wire. One sheet talked about the ten-cent goods, another about the twenty-five-cent, another about the fifty, and the fourth about the mixed table. The sheet explanatory of the twenty-five cent goods was as follows:—

On the reverse side was the following list:—

Over each table I had a big card, of which the following is a sample:—

Jock had said: "Mon, they'll all wait till the last day and then come and steal the goods awa' frae ye!"

"No," Betty had replied, "many will buy, before the goods are reduced much, for fear somebody else will buy them first."

Larsen suggested having a big sign in the window headed:

"WATCH THIS LIST. ARTICLES SOLD OUT WILL BE POSTED ON IT."

"You see, Boss," he had said, "the folks'll see a number of things put on the list. They'll figure they'd better not wait else what they want will be sold."Fellows chimed in with, "Tell you what to do, Black. Put in just two or three of some articles, so that by the end of the first day you'll be able to post up some goods that are sold out."

Jock had a further suggestion, "Ye've got an unusual plan there, laddie; why don't ye tell the newspapers aboot it. Maybe they'll give ye a stor-ry in reference to it."

"That's a good idea," I had replied, "I'll try it."

"Don't ye think," he continued, "that it would pay ye tae put a list in the papers each day o' the goods that are sold, and call it 'Too late to buy the following at Dawson Black's Automatic Sales—Some one else got ahead o' ye',' or-r something like that?"

I decided to adopt that plan and that I would call on the newspaper people to see if I could not get a write-up on the sale from them.

I really was getting anxious for the sale to start so that I could see how it would come off. I felt that I was taking a big risk, since, if it failed, I would lose a few hundred dollars. But, even then, I would turn some dead stock into cash, and I remembered that, at the trade convention, one fellow had said a dollar in the till was worth two dollars of unsalable goods on the shelves, "for," said he, "if you turn that two dollars' worth of goods into a dollar cash and you turn that dollar over three and a half times in a year, you are going to earn a profit on three and a half dollars' worth of live stuff instead of the questionable profit on two dollars' worth of dead stuff!"

I guess we are all gamblers at heart, for every one, even the Mater, had become interested and excited over my first attempt at a big sale.I hadn't quite decided whether to send the circulars by mail, or to have them delivered to every home in town by messenger; but was inclined to adopt the latter plan.

Fellows suggested, "Why don't you get some pretty girls to go around and deliver them? They would make a hit!"

"Do you think so?" flashed back Betty. "That's just where you're mistaken, Mr. Smarty—if you think a woman is going to be tickled to have a pretty girl come up to the door: send a homely one and it might work!"

Aren't women queer?