BARTER. Dealing by an exchange of goods. This was the original mode of dealing before the use of money and is still very common wherever money and banking facilities are scarce. Coun try dealers are often obliged to take eggs, butter, etc., as pay for sugar, starch and soap, and when they can move the produce quickly and well, and are not paying too much for it, the barter seems to have a double profit, because they make something on the sale of the groceries and something on the sale of the produce, But it is often a great snare because of the following reasons : First, the produce may move slowly and so tie up capital, deteri orate in quality and deand much time and attention. Second: the feeling that there is a double profit in barter, leads dealers to pay the fullest price for goods taken in trade, relying on the grocery profit alone. But there is really no double profit. For keeping, handling, and selling ,groceries, one profit is realized : for receiving, shipping and selling the produce, another profit should be earned, and the dealer who does both for a single profit, is doing half his work for nothing. Third, it
requires a good deal of sense to make a successful grocer, and many men who try to combine the business of buying and ship ping produce, and its freights, account sales, drafts, returns and commissions, with that of keeping a grocery store, find out that they are not masters of both, but that one of them eats up all the profits of the other. Barter leads to a competition in buying which is worse than that which "cuts" in selling, because the dealer who cuts the prices of his groceries, generally stops before he gets to cost, because he knows just where that point comes, but the buyer who competes on produce does not know the price at which the goods will sell in the city and is often and easily lead to pay more than he can realize after all the charges are paid. No dealer can do two transactions for one profit ; few are capable of man aging a double business, and when goods are sold below their value or bought above it, it is well to let others control the market.