ctual value, is a calamity--for the seller. Business is built
on confidence. We make our money out of our friends--our enemies will
not trade with us.

In law the buyer and the seller are supposed to be people with equal
opportunity to judge of an article and pass on its value. Hence there is
a legal maxim, "Caveat emptor"--"Let the buyer beware"--and this
provides that when an article is once purchased and passes into the
possession of the buyer it is his, and he has no redress for short
weight, count or inferior quality. Behind that legal Latin maxim,
"Caveat emptor," the merchant stood for centuries, safely entrenched. It
was about Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five that it came to John Wanamaker, a
young merchant just starting business in Philadelphia, that the law is
wrong in assuming that buyer and seller stand on a parity, and have an
equal opportunity for judging values. The dealer is a specialist, while
the buyer, being a consumer of a great number of different things, has
only a general knowledge, at best. The person with only a general idea
as to values, pitted against a trained specialist, is at a great
disadvantage. Therefore, to be on ethical ground the seller must be the
friend of the buyer--not his antagonist. For a seller to regard the
buyer as his prey is worse than non-ethical--it is immoral--a violation
of the Golden Rule.

These things came to the young man, John Wanamaker, with a great throb
and thrill, and he at once proceeded to put his theories into execution,
and on them his business was founded. The One-Price System--all goods
marked in plain figures, and money back if not satisfied--these things
were to revolutionize the retail trade of the world.

John Wanamaker, of all men in America, seems to know that to stand still
is to retreat. For more than forty years he has led the vanguard of the
business world. He has been a teacher of merchants. His insight,
initiative, originality and prophetic judgment have set the retailers of
the world a pace. Many have learned much from him, and all have been
influenced by him. Whether they knew it or not, and whether they would
acknowledge it if they did know it, matters little.

Professor Zueblin once said of William Morris: "There is not a
well-furnished house in Christendom but that shows the influence of his
good taste and his gracious ideas of economy, harmony and honesty in
home decoration." Likewise, we can truthfully say that there is not a
successful