The machinery of the scheme, once its aim is realised, is also simple. It is simply an amplification of the methods that have been employed for some years by the big stores in a great centre. The big store, by extensive adver tising in the press, by wholesale distribution of booklets, by lavish shop window display, by exceptional bargain announcements, and by allowing railway fares on purchases over a certain amount, aimed at bringing people from the city and the districts to its establishment by its own individual enterprise. The method employed by the organisers of the shopping week is exactly the same, only instead of the enterprise being an individual one, it is run by many traders in one particular district. In Leeds a committee was formed, which comprised representative shopkeepers in certain districts. Retailers were canvassed in these districts to see how far they would support the idea, and sufficient were found prepared to enter into a scheme which attempted to do for the whole area what single traders have been doing for themselves for many years. The parties to this scheme undertook to subscribe sufficient money to a central fund to ensure an extensive advertising campaign. They also undqrtook to make special window shows as part of a concerted policy in relation to the shopping-week campaign, while many of them supplemented these effiarts by carrying on additional advertising campaigns which largely supplemented the central scheme, though individually pressing the ,claims of the separate stores which entered into this side of the enterprise. With these joint forces it was not difficult to secure a lot of free publicity from the newspapers of the district, who regarded the work as partaking of something of the nature of a public movement, while this gratuitous attention was supplemented by strong pages in the local press, which circulates widely over all the small adjacent towns.
The effect of this concerted action was to arouse a great deal of interest in the localities, and of course the result was a great impetus to business in the central thoroughfares which combined to produce this effect. Articles in the newspaper referring to the interest of the proceedings, supplemental pages giving publicity to the general idea, with individual publicity by many of the parties of the compact, a uniform tendency to make special shows, and the use of street decoration, were all parts of the programme, and their employment certainly produced a great effect right throughout the West Riding. There is no doubt this tendency is bound to extend. The
Leeds shopping week was barely over before two towns in the same district developed a similar idea. Their aim was to discourage the tendenc:, of local residents to go to Leeds, and also to prevent, if possible, the people of one town going to another. Here again the same met hods were employed. The traders of the main shopping streets subscribed to a central fund administered by a representative committee ; they carried on special press campaigns, then went in for uniform display, and also combined to decorate and light the streets concerned in the enterprise in an exceptional manner. What the permanent effect of this form of competition on the retail interest will be, it is difficult to say, but from the events of the last two years there seems no ground for doubting that the idea is capable of many extensions for a variety of purposes. Carried to its logical extreme, not only is it possible to set cities against London, provincial borough against its city, and town against town, but it seems likely that even thoroughfares in towns may be pitted against each other in the same kind of competition. It is possible that this form of competition may wear itself out, as it is obvious the public are not going to get unduly excited over shopping schemes if they are organised too often. At the best, it would seem that the various interests in the retail trade in the end will be very much where they were at the beginning; but there seems no doubt that it is a modern departure, which more and more emphasises the tendency of retail trading interests to succeed Only in the established central business streets at the expense of the small capitalist and shopkeeper in the outlying districts. The provincial city can protect itself by combination against aggressive London methods ; the small borough can also protect itself against aggressive city methods. A combined movement in one district will protect it against the more aggressive methods of another district of the same town ; but with all these movements going on sin.ul taneously, it seems reasonably obvious that the position of the isolated shop keeper outside the established centres must become a little more precarious.