HELPING PRODUCERS ELIMINATE WASTE 199

able amounts they save together in this way, each can
increase his own total profits far more than he can by dealing
in the spirit of old-fashioned horse traders. Moreover,
these waste-saved profits are not made at the expense of
either.
It is possible to attain such great economies because the
whole current system of making and selling goods is permeated
 with needless wastes. A comparatively small
number of manufacturers have grown very large and very
prosperous because, through scientific mass production,
they have succeeded in eliminating the most flagrant wastes.
But the bulk of the manufacturing is still predominantly
wasteful. So is the bulk of the selling. Much of this waste
arises from the unscientific, unstudied, unorganized merchandising
 of retailers whom the manufacturers serve;
retailers who operate on opinion and tradition instead of on
a fact method such as the Model Stock Plan.
Most of the manufacturers who have attained the greatest
success in mass production have done so because they are
men of exceptional fact-finding ability; they have used their
ability to the utmost in overcoming, often against distribu-~
tors’ active opposition, the many obstacles in their paths.
The average manufacturer has a very difficult task in trying
to do the best job single handed in the face of wasteful practices
 by his distributors.
Under the Model Stock Plan we can help the producer
make the most progress in this direction, to our own profit;
for we can help free him to concentrate more of his attention
on his manufacturing. Using this plan we shall give him
more large orders and fewer small orders, thus helping him get
for himself and us the great benefits of mass production.
We shall help him reduce largely his factory overhead per
unit of output; help him increase the stability of employment
that he offers his workers and, therefore, enable him to
obtain and hold the very best grade of labor available to
him; help him eliminate much of the guesswork from his
raw material buying, through giving him extraordinarily
early our decisions on the materials that will best suit our