Trading Stamps by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 24, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 34.

Trading Stamps

By Editor

"Trading Stamps."—The San Francisco Evening Post, of August 6, devotes nearly a whole page to the showing up of the "trading stamp" swindle. It clearly reveals that the scheme is absolutely of no profit to merchant nor to customer. It is as the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, in a decision sustaining an act of Congress prohibiting trading stamps in the District, declares it to be:

"One of the most shrewdly planned of the many devices to obtain something for nothing. They have intervened in the legitimate business carried on between seller and buyer, not for the advantage of either, but to prey upon both. There is not a shadow of rational foundation for the stamp company's claim that it confers a benefit upon buyers by procuring for them an actual discount. Their business is the exploitation of nothing more nor less than a cunning device."

The one benefited is the trading-stamp company. Both buyer and seller are swindled.