ABSTRACT
The manufactures—continuation industries—and their management stand in a relation to the rest of the community which is analogous to that in which the key industries stand to the rest of the industrial system. The various concerns that have been doing business in manufactures have been competitive sellers in a limited market whose purchasing capacity has habitually fallen short of the productive capacity of the industries which supply the marketable output. The manufacturers and merchants are engaged on a business of competitive selling in a closed market in which prices may fluctuate but cannot substantially decline; a market in which one seller's gain is another's loss. The business reduces itself to a traffic in salesmanship, running wholly on the comparative merit of the rival commodities, or rather of the rival salesmen. Saleable containers are only the beginning of wisdom in latterday manufacture and merchandising.
