Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887

by Edward Bellamy

  Chapter 10

  "If I am going to explain our way of shopping to you," said mycompanion, as we walked along the street, "you must explain your way tome. I have never been able to understand it from all I have read on thesubject. For example, when you had such a vast number of shops, eachwith its different assortment, how could a lady ever settle upon anypurchase till she had visited all the shops? for, until she had, shecould not know what there was to choose from."

  "It was as you suppose; that was the only way she could know," Ireplied.

  "Father calls me an indefatigable shopper, but I should soon be a veryfatigued one if I had to do as they did," was Edith's laughing comment.

  "The loss of time in going from shop to shop was indeed a waste whichthe busy bitterly complained of," I said; "but as for the ladies of theidle class, though they complained also, I think the system was reallya godsend by furnishing a device to kill time."

  "But say there were a thousand shops in a city, hundreds, perhaps, ofthe same sort, how could even the idlest find time to make theirrounds?"

  "They really could not visit all, of course," I replied. "Those who dida great deal of buying, learned in time where they might expect to findwhat they wanted. This class had made a science of the specialties ofthe shops, and bought at advantage, always getting the most and bestfor the least money. It required, however, long experience to acquirethis knowledge. Those who were too busy, or bought too little to gainit, took their chances and were generally unfortunate, getting theleast and worst for the most money. It was the merest chance if personsnot experienced in shopping received the value of their money."

  "But why did you put up with such a shockingly inconvenient arrangementwhen you saw its faults so plainly?" Edith asked me.

  "It was like all our social arrangements," I replied. "You can seetheir faults scarcely more plainly than we did, but we saw no remedyfor them."

  "Here we are at the store of our ward," said Edith, as we turned in atthe great portal of one of the magnificent public buildings I hadobserved in my morning walk. There was nothing in the exterior aspectof the edifice to suggest a store to a representative of the nineteenthcentury. There was no display of goods in the great windows, or anydevice to advertise wares, or attract custom. Nor was there any sort ofsign or legend on the front of the building to indicate the characterof the business carried on there; but instead, above the portal,standing out from the front of the building, a majestic life-size groupof statuary, the central figure of which was a female ideal of Plenty,with her cornucopia. Judging from the composition of the throng passingin and out, about the same proportion of the sexes among shoppersobtained as in the nineteenth century. As we entered, Edith said thatthere was one of these great distributing establishments in each wardof the city, so that no residence was more than five or ten minutes'walk from one of them. It was the first interior of a twentieth-centurypublic building that I had ever beheld, and the spectacle naturallyimpressed me deeply. I was in a vast hall full of light, received notalone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point ofwhich was a hundred feet above. Beneath it, in the centre of the hall,a magnificent fountain played, cooling the atmosphere to a deliciousfreshness with its spray. The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellowtints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which floodedthe interior. Around the fountain was a space occupied with chairs andsofas, on which many persons were seated conversing. Legends on thewalls all about the hall indicated to what classes of commodities thecounters below were devoted. Edith directed her steps towards one ofthese, where samples of muslin of a bewildering variety were displayed,and proceeded to inspect them.

  "Where is the clerk?" I asked, for there was no one behind the counter,and no one seemed coming to attend to the customer.

  "I have no need of the clerk yet," said Edith; "I have not made myselection."

  "It was the principal business of clerks to help people to make theirselections in my day," I replied.

  "What! To tell people what they wanted?"

  "Yes; and oftener to induce them to buy what they didn't want."

  "But did not ladies find that very impertinent?" Edith asked,wonderingly. "What concern could it possibly be to the clerks whetherpeople bought or not?"

  "It was their sole concern," I answered. "They were hired for thepurpose of getting rid of the goods, and were expected to do theirutmost, short of the use of force, to compass that end."

  "Ah, yes! How stupid I am to forget!" said Edith. "The storekeeper andhis clerks depended for their livelihood on selling the goods in yourday. Of course that is all different now. The goods are the nation's.They are here for those who want them, and it is the business of theclerks to wait on people and take their orders; but it is not theinterest of the clerk or the nation to dispose of a yard or a pound ofanything to anybody who does not want it." She smiled as she added,"How exceedingly odd it must have seemed to have clerks trying toinduce one to take what one did not want, or was doubtful about!"

  "But even a twentieth century clerk might make himself useful in givingyou information about the goods, though he did not tease you to buythem," I suggested.

  "No," said Edith, "that is not the business of the clerk. These printedcards, for which the government authorities are responsible, give usall the information we can possibly need."

  I saw then that there was fastened to each sample a card containing insuccinct form a complete statement of the make and materials of thegoods and all its qualities, as well as price, leaving absolutely nopoint to hang a question on.

  "The clerk has, then, nothing to say about the goods he sells?" I said.

  "Nothing at all. It is not necessary that he should know or profess toknow anything about them. Courtesy and accuracy in taking orders areall that are required of him."

  "What a prodigious amount of lying that simple arrangement saves!" Iejaculated.

  "Do you mean that all the clerks misrepresented their goods in yourday?" Edith asked.

  "God forbid that I should say so!" I replied, "for there were many whodid not, and they were entitled to especial credit, for when one'slivelihood and that of his wife and babies depended on the amount ofgoods he could dispose of, the temptation to deceive the customer--orlet him deceive himself--was wellnigh overwhelming. But, Miss Leete, Iam distracting you from your task with my talk."

  "Not at all. I have made my selections." With that she touched abutton, and in a moment a clerk appeared. He took down her order on atablet with a pencil which made two copies, of which he gave one toher, and enclosing the counterpart in a small receptacle, dropped itinto a transmitting tube.

  "The duplicate of the order," said Edith as she turned away from thecounter, after the clerk had punched the value of her purchase out ofthe credit card she gave him, "is given to the purchaser, so that anymistakes in filling it can be easily traced and rectified."

  "You were very quick about your selections," I said. "May I ask how youknew that you might not have found something to suit you better in someof the other stores? But probably you are required to buy in your owndistrict."

  "Oh, no," she replied. "We buy where we please, though naturally mostoften near home. But I should have gained nothing by visiting otherstores. The assortment in all is exactly the same, representing as itdoes in each case samples of all the varieties produced or imported bythe United States. That is why one can decide quickly, and never needvisit two stores."

  "And is this merely a sample store? I see no clerks cutting off goodsor marking bundles."

  "All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes ofarticles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the greatcentral warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly fromthe producers. We order from the sample and the printed statement oftexture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to the warehouse, andthe goods distributed from there."

  "That must be a tremendous saving of handling," I said. "By our system,the manufacturer sold to the wholesa
ler, the wholesaler to theretailer, and the retailer to the consumer, and the goods had to behandled each time. You avoid one handling of the goods, and eliminatethe retailer altogether, with his big profit and the army of clerks itgoes to support. Why, Miss Leete, this store is merely the orderdepartment of a wholesale house, with no more than a wholesaler'scomplement of clerks. Under our system of handling the goods,persuading the customer to buy them, cutting them off, and packingthem, ten clerks would not do what one does here. The saving must beenormous."

  "I suppose so," said Edith, "but of course we have never known anyother way. But, Mr. West, you must not fail to ask father to take youto the central warehouse some day, where they receive the orders fromthe different sample houses all over the city and parcel out and sendthe goods to their destinations. He took me there not long ago, and itwas a wonderful sight. The system is certainly perfect; for example,over yonder in that sort of cage is the dispatching clerk. The orders,as they are taken by the different departments in the store, are sentby transmitters to him. His assistants sort them and enclose each classin a carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerk has a dozen pneumatictransmitters before him answering to the general classes of goods, eachcommunicating with the corresponding department at the warehouse. Hedrops the box of orders into the tube it calls for, and in a fewmoments later it drops on the proper desk in the warehouse, togetherwith all the orders of the same sort from the other sample stores. Theorders are read off, recorded, and sent to be filled, like lightning.The filling I thought the most interesting part. Bales of cloth areplaced on spindles and turned by machinery, and the cutter, who alsohas a machine, works right through one bale after another tillexhausted, when another man takes his place; and it is the same withthose who fill the orders in any other staple. The packages are thendelivered by larger tubes to the city districts, and thence distributedto the houses. You may understand how quickly it is all done when Itell you that my order will probably be at home sooner than I couldhave carried it from here."

  "How do you manage in the thinly settled rural districts?" I asked.

  "The system is the same," Edith explained; "the village sample shopsare connected by transmitters with the central county warehouse, whichmay be twenty miles away. The transmission is so swift, though, thatthe time lost on the way is trifling. But, to save expense, in manycounties one set of tubes connect several villages with the warehouse,and then there is time lost waiting for one another. Sometimes it istwo or three hours before goods ordered are received. It was so where Iwas staying last summer, and I found it quite inconvenient."[1]

  "There must be many other respects also, no doubt, in which the countrystores are inferior to the city stores," I suggested.

  "No," Edith answered, "they are otherwise precisely as good. The sampleshop of the smallest village, just like this one, gives you your choiceof all the varieties of goods the nation has, for the county warehousedraws on the same source as the city warehouse."

  As we walked home I commented on the great variety in the size and costof the houses. "How is it," I asked, "that this difference isconsistent with the fact that all citizens have the same income?"

  "Because," Edith explained, "although the income is the same, personaltaste determines how the individual shall spend it. Some like finehorses; others, like myself, prefer pretty clothes; and still otherswant an elaborate table. The rents which the nation receives for thesehouses vary, according to size, elegance, and location, so thateverybody can find something to suit. The larger houses are usuallyoccupied by large families, in which there are several to contribute tothe rent; while small families, like ours, find smaller houses moreconvenient and economical. It is a matter of taste and conveniencewholly. I have read that in old times people often kept upestablishments and did other things which they could not afford forostentation, to make people think them richer than they were. Was itreally so, Mr. West?"

  "I shall have to admit that it was," I replied.

  "Well, you see, it could not be so nowadays; for everybody's income isknown, and it is known that what is spent one way must be savedanother."

  [1] I am informed since the above is in type that this lack ofperfection in the distributing service of some of the country districtsis to be remedied, and that soon every village will have its own set oftubes.