ons may interest you. The customer's willingness to part with his
money is usually in inverse ratio to the permanent benefit he expects
to derive from what he purchases.

MEREDITH--Sounds a bit like John Stuart Mill.

BENSON--Even so, it may be true. Folks will pay a darned sight more to
be amused than they will to be exalted. Look at the way a man shells
out five bones for a couple of theatre seats, or spends a couple of
dollars a week on cigars without thinking of it. Yet two dollars or
five dollars for a book costs him positive anguish. The mistake you
fellows in the retail trade have made is in trying to persuade your
customers that books are necessities. Tell them they're luxuries.
That'll get them! People have to work so hard in this life they're shy
of necessities. A man will go on wearing a suit until it's threadbare,
much sooner than smoke a threadbare cigar.

GLADFIST--Not a bad thought. You know, Mifflin here calls me a
material-minded cynic, but by thunder, I think I'm more idealistic than
he is. I'm no propagandist incessantly trying to cajole poor innocent
customers into buying the kind of book _I_ think they ought to buy.
When I see the helpless pathos of most of them, who drift into a
bookstore without the slightest idea of what they want or what is worth
reading, I would disdain to take advantage of their frailty. They are
absolutely at the mercy of the salesman. They will buy whatever he
tells them to. Now the honourable man, the high-minded man (by which I
mean myself) is too proud to ram some shimmering stuff at them just
because he thinks they ought to read it. Let the boobs blunder around
and grab what they can. Let natural selection operate. I think it is
fascinating to watch them, to see their helpless groping, and to study
the weird ways in which they make their choice. Usually they will buy
a book either because they think the jacket is attractive, or because
it costs a dollar and a quarter instead of a dollar and a half, or
because they say they saw a review of it. The "review" usually turns
out to be an ad. I don't think one book-buyer in a thousand knows the
difference.

MIFFLIN--Your doctrine is pitiless, base, and false! What would you
think of a physician who saw men suffering from a curable disease and
did nothing to alleviate their sufferings?

GLADFIST--Their sufferings (as you call them) are nothing to what mine
would be if I stocked up with a lot of books tha