204 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN
we are entitled to better than busy-season values on these
orders, for they permit the economies of slack-season manu-
facturing. Most successful producers are glad to cooperate
with their customers to induce them to place orders for sub-
stantial quantities of goods to be manufactured at a slack
time at a lower price. They see their opportunity for increas-
ing their own total profits by accepting such an order. They
recognize that it involves the same principle under which
they, themselves, are able to buy electricity from a central
station on its comparatively low industrial rates set to keep
the electric company’s generating plants and its distribution
lines earning revenue during the day’slow demand time, before
the evening’s peak demand for lighting purposes has set in.
Of course, the closer a manufacturer can come to keeping his
plant busy every day in the year the lower will be his overhead
expense per unit produced. He has his plant and equipment,
and a certain proportion of his people which must be kept
on the payroll whether or not there is enough for them to do.
Moreover, by laying off his factory force he loses the advan-
tage of their training in his particular work, for he can seldom
hope to hire them all back when work picks up. If he is
able to give them year-round work, or something pretty
close to it, he gets the pick of the workers available and keeps
the people he has trained to his special needs. Moreover,
people who have good steady jobs are less likely to cause
labor troubles.
By using the Model Stock Plan, and particularly its buying
and selling calendars, we can help a desirable resource to
eliminate wastes and increase his total profits by giving him
orders, especially for staples, which he can manufacture in
his slack season. On some types of goods we can give him
orders with no specified delivery dates, permitting him to
deliver at his convenience any time within the term of the
contract. Our share of the wastes, which he eliminates
by our cooperation, he will, naturally, be able to give to us
in lower prices on these goods.
In fact, it is largely the low price that makes it pay us to
buy at an off season. There is plenty of experience to show
