220 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN
permits us to offer our customers better values than cen-
tralized chains can offer, unless they also decide to stand-
ardize their prices.
Goods can be produced for all the three full-line prices
in practically any class of merchandise. To accomplish
this it will sometimes be necessary to get much lower costs;
but savings can be made in directions which up to now have
never been thought possible. For instance, take railroad
freight rates. These for many commodities, are at present
so high that they actually interfere with yielding the greatest
total profits to the railroads by interfering with mass produc-
tion and, consequently, with mass freight delivery of this
mass output.
Anyone of wide experience in business now accepts the
general principle that mass sales need not and will not be
confined to Fords, Chevrolets, radios, electric refrigerators,
low-priced shoes, and the rest of the articles that are com-
monly offered at mass prices. Mass sales can also be
obtained for any desirable class of goods, provided the price,
through mass production and distribution, is reduced rela-
tively as much as the prices of Chevrolets and Fords have
been reduced.
Everyone should cooperate to make the final price one
within the consumer’s ready reach, one which will sell the
Commodity in mass quantities. This would benefit not only
the producers but also the consumers and everybody who,
like the railroad men and people in other transportation
agencies, has a hand in bringing the goods from the factory
to the consumer,
In the long run, we must have “companionate prosperity,
or no prosperity. The more businesses there are enjoying
prosperity the more prosperity there will be for each business,
No factory is safe against competition if it is busy only
half of the time. The same is true of railroads. It would
pay railroad executives to realize that many classes of goods
would be bought in mass quantities if the prices were brought
down to one of the three standardized prices in the Model
Stock Plan. Therailroads would find it profitable, therefore,
