Page:Adventures in Thrift (1916).djvu/238

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We, therefore, conclude that the gloves at one dollar were overpriced, so we are getting no bargain at seventy-nine cents. None of the prices in such a store are, therefore, reliable.

"Next we trailed a ribbon sale. Here we found one lot of ribbons offered at twenty-one cents, usual price twenty-five cents; and another lot at eleven cents, usual price fifteen and seventeen cents. We secured samples of both lots and then sleuthed. We found that the same quality and design employed in the twenty-one-cent lot was actually to be bought at the regular counter at twenty-five cents a yard, but with this difference—the bargain-counter ribbon was three inches wide, the ribbon at the regular counter about four inches wide. In other words, the bargain-counter ribbon was priced at just what it was worth—twenty-one cents. It was not worth twenty-five cents, because at the regular counter the twenty-five-cent ribbon was nearly an inch wider.

"The ribbon at eleven cents was such in name only. It was the flimsiest sort of cotton, almost transparent, wiry and highly mercerized. We duplicated it at a near-by five and ten-cent store