MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN DISTRIBUTION 237 
Other possibilities exist. In the Filene store in Boston,! 
for instance, a department handling only first shoes for 
infants and first walking shoes has been very successful. 
The basic rule that has made this department of value to 
customers and, consequently, profitable to the store is that 
everything else is subordinated to selling for a child only 
shoes that will assure correct development of its feet. 
The general principle is that wherever specialization is 
profitably possible, the greater the specialization the better. 
The department buyer or assistant buyer who buys and sells 
only one small class of merchandise quickly becomes really 
uncommonly expert at both buying and selling these goods. 
This is merely applying the dominant factory principle of 
getting the best results for employer and employee by having 
each employee perform one operation and nothing else. So 
important is this principle in the Model Stock Plan that we 
may expect to keep splitting and resplitting departments 
and increasing total profits through each of these divisions. 
Each time we take a step toward further specialization, we 
assure the merchandise a still more intensive application 
of the sales point of view as contrasted with the buying. 
This is a sure way to greater total profits.® 
As we have already seen, resources to be kept on a depart- 
ment head’s favored list must be profitable. We have gone 
over the ground that our business must be profitable to any 
resource if we are to continue to get the benefit of its best 
ideas and best merchandise. When the department head 
thinks in terms of selling, the reasons why this is true become 
even clearer. 
We must understand that we are not buying of any pro- 
ducer as a favor to him any more than he is selling us only 
as a favor. We must, likewise, see that our resources know 
1 Let me restate, for emphasis, that my reason for citing illustrative inci- 
dents from this store is that it is the business which I know most intimately 
from personal experience. But the Model Stock Plan is just as profitably 
applicable to any line of business or to any types of merchandise. 
s The Filene store in Boston deals only in clothing and furnishings for 
women, children, and men, Yet, having followed for many years this policy 
of intensive specialization, its sales volume is so large that it must be listed 
as one of the ten or fifteen largest retail stores in the United States.