—“Will Big Business Last?” by Jesse Rainsford Sprague, from the June 13, 1925, issue of The Saturday Evening Post
When a newly arrived immigrant woman starts housekeeping,” said the salesman, “she’s afraid the shopkeepers are going to take advantage of her ignorance of American ways. She has no certain knowledge of the value of American money, weights, or measures. So she usually consults some neighbor woman of her nationality as to the safe way to buy. The neighbor woman shows her a package bearing a certain picture for its trademark and tells her that the shopkeeper cannot cheat her on such a purchase because the package must be of a certain weight, and that moreover it is sold at all shops for the same price. I have dozens of such immigrant women coming in my place every day. They can’t read English, but they have learned to know the pictures on the packages; they look along the shelves until they see the picture they want, and then they buy.”
This article is featured in the May/June 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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