f selling our products direct to the consumer and the
exceptionally rapid growth of the business bred a certain antagonism
which I suppose could not have been avoided, but this same idea of
dealing with the consumer directly has been followed by others and in
many lines of trade, without creating, so far as I recall, any serious
opposition.

This is a very interesting and important point, and I have often
wondered if the criticism which centred upon us did not come from the
fact that we were among the first, if not the first, to work out the
problems of direct selling to the user on a broad scale. This was done
in a fair spirit and with due consideration for everyone's rights. We
did not ruthlessly go after the trade of our competitors and attempt
to ruin it by cutting prices or instituting a spy system. We had set
ourselves the task of building up as rapidly and as broadly as
possible the volume of consumption. Let me try to explain just what
happened.

To get the advantage of the facilities we had in manufacture, we
sought the utmost market in all lands--we needed volume. To do this we
had to create selling methods far in advance of what then existed; we
had to dispose of two, or three, or four gallons of oil where one had
been sold before, and we could not rely upon the usual trade channels
then existing to accomplish this. It was never our purpose to
interfere with a dealer who adequately cultivated his field of
operations, but when we saw a new opportunity or a new place for
extending the sale by further and effective facilities, we made it
our business to provide them. In this way we opened many new lines in
which others have shared. In this development we had to employ many
comparatively new men. The ideal way to supply material for higher
positions is, of course, to recruit the men from among the youngest in
the company's service, but our expansion was too rapid to permit this
in all cases. That some of these employees were over-zealous in going
after sales it would not be surprising to learn, but they were acting
in violation of the expressed and known wishes of the company. But
even these instances, I am convinced, occurred so seldom, by
comparison with the number of transactions we carried on, that they
were really the exceptions that proved the rule.

Every week in the year for many, many years, this concern has brought
into this country more than a million dollars gold, all from the
products produced by