118 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
purchases in those channels which combine the savings of 
mass production and mass distribution. The savings that 
come to the customers from stores which make use of these 
means to give better prices, better qualities, and better 
styles will draw trade like a magnet draws iron. 
It is probable that general purchasing and consumption 
will in almost all lines increase under mass production as fast 
as mass production increases its output. Then the method 
of reaching every neighborhood by goods sold at the lowest 
price under the Model Stock Plan will not only be found—as 
it has already been found in the food lines by chain grocery 
companies—but also good minds will increase the efficiency 
of the method. 
When this happens, the small merchant doing business in a 
single neighborhood along old-fashioned, traditional lines 
will lose his sense of security of holding the trade of his neigh- 
bors. Most neighborhood grocers,. lacking knowledge of 
scientific retailing, have already lost this sense of security; 
many have also lost their businesses. 
The Model Stock Plan embodies principles so basic that 
they will help a small independent retailer or a metropolitan 
department store. Bui the independent retailer, doing a 
small business against actual or potential chain-store or depart- 
ment-store competition, is in as urgent need of this guide to 
planning and operation as is the big-business merchant down- 
town. Competitors profitably operating at lower prices 
constitute a grave threat to either one. 
Great new markets are found by lowering the prices at 
which commodities are sold, thus bringing the goods within 
a range of prices which more people can pay. This is the 
fundamental principle upon which mass distribution is 
based, the principle behind the growth of the chains. Mass 
distribution is largely what has made it possible to sell the 
same articles measurably cheaper and in far larger quantities 
than ever before. The reductions in price are brought about 
not by reducing wages either in production or distribution, 
for that would lessen the purchasing power of the very people 
to whom we wish to sell, but by the elimination of waste and