President-elect Jas. W. Morrisson.

during all the years of its existence. Many matters of importance to the trade as a whole were taken up and the discussions proved unusually profitable. In the accounts of the deliberations special mention is made of retiringpresident Charles Gibson's address, and also of an address delivered by Dr. James H. Beal, who conveyed the greetings of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Chicago was selected as the next convention city, the matter of time being left to a standing committee. The following officers were elected: President, Jas. W. Morrisson, Chicago; first vice-president, Harvey H. Robinson, Baltimore; second vice-president, William Scott, Indianapolis; third vice-president, I. A. Solomons, Savannah; fourth vice-president, S. D. Andrews, Minneapolis; fifth vice-president, Nelson P.

Snow, Syracuse; secretary, F. E. Holliday, New York. C. E. Bedwell, chairman; Geo. R. Merrell, A. D. Parker, F. C. Groover, and L. D. Sale comprise the Board of Control.

A NEW VICEPRESIDENT AND A NEW EDITOR.

Francisco.

One of the new vice-presidents of the N. A. R. D. is W. B. Cheatham, of San Mr. Cheatham was formerly an N. A. R. D. organizer on the Pacific Coast, having served in that capacity for five years; and for three years he was the Pacific Coast manager for the A. D. S. He now has retail interests in California's capital, and is also president and general manager of the Associated Pharmacists, a corporation doing a manufacturing business. The organization is of a coöperative nature, and it will be recalled that it secured the services of J. Leyden White a short time ago, Mr. White taking on the title of "director of publicity." A very creditable little monthly magazine, known as The A. Ph. Spokesman, is put out, Mr. White, of course, being the editor.

*

The Michigan Board of Pharmacy has decided to grant to applicants who obtain an average of 75 but who fall below 60 in one. or more subjects the privilege of making their low marks good at the next examination, or at any examination held within a year. When these subjects are thus taken up separately, however, a marking of 75 in each is required.

Up to the middle of August, according to Commerce and Finance, there had been 11,117 cases of infantile paralysis in the United States since the outbreak of the present epidemic. Of the 38 States in which the disease has appeared Arkansas and Oregon rank lowest with three cases each, and New York highest with 7753

cases.

Frederick W. Mansfield, Democratic candidate for governor in Massachusetts, was formerly a Boston druggist. He gave up pharmacy to study law.

James B. Rayner, one of the founders of the firm of Buck & Rayner, Chicago, is dead. He retired from business in 1888.

EDITORIAL

THREE MISTAKES!

The merchant who makes 10 per cent net on his sales and turns his stock over five times a year makes 50 per cent on his invested capital. The man who makes the same percentage on his sales, but who turns his stock only twice, makes only 20 per cent. Wouldn't you rather make $5000 per year than $2000?-Book, Stationery, and Novelty News.

A pretty short paragraph to cram three mistakes into, isn't it, but here they are: Mistake No. 1. Stock turnovers are figured on costs instead of on the selling volume. And so "the merchant who makes 10 per cent net on his sales, and turns his stock over five times a year," really makes better than 50 per cent on his invested capital. He makes nearer 80 per cent on it with the average business.

Mistake No. 2. "The man who makes the same percentage on his sales, but who turns his stock only twice," makes more than 20 per

other turns over his stock twice year and, therefore, has an investment of $3250. In the one case $1300 is tied up, and in the other case $3250 is tied up. The man with the relatively slow turnover uses $1950 more capital than the other man, but what has he lost that the other man has gained? Simply this—the interest on $1950 that might otherwise have been put into outside investments.

The interest on $1950, figured at 6 per cent, is $117. Therefore it follows that if two men do a business of $10,000 a year, and make 10 per cent net, the man who turns over his stock five times will make $117 in actual money more than will the man who turns over his stock only twice. How absolutely absurd, then, is the question asked in the paragraph we are criticizing: "Wouldn't you rather make $5000 per year than $2000?"

Let us figure the thing out on the basis of the investment involved. The man with five turnovers has an investment of $1300, and if he makes 10 per cent net on his sales, he real

tal if his business represents the average.

Mistake No. 3. So far we have proved the author's case better than he intended to prove it himself, but now we must show that his entire argument is false. Two merchants with the same volume of sales, each making 10 per cent net, one turning over his stock twice a year and the other five times a year, do not make $2000 and $5000 respectively. Merely turning over the stock five times instead of twice isn't going to make anything like a difference of $3000. It would ordinarily make a difference of exactly $117-that's all.

This quotation from the Book, Stationery and Novelty News is a good specimen of the loose thinking that prevails on this subject of stock turnovers. It is so loose, indeed, that it wouldn't hold together for a single instant.

Let us analyze it briefly.

Take our average merchant with sales of $10,000 annually. His expense of doing business is 25 per cent, and his net profit is 10 per cent. These two items, therefore, total $3500, and the cost of goods sold during the year is consequently $6500.

Now take these two men with different turnovers. The man who turns over his stock five times a year has an investment of one-fifth of $6500, which means a capital of $1300. The

80 per cent of his investment. The other man has a capital of $3250. Like his friend, he makes $1000 also in the way of net profit, but in this case it is only a little over 30 per cent on his investment. One man makes his capital yield 80 per cent and the other 30. This seems like a heaven-wide difference, but in actual money it means only a little over a hundred dollars.

A merchant who makes 10 per cent net on his sales certainly makes that and nothing more, no matter how often he turns over his stock. It is perfectly childish mathematics to assume that if one man turns over his stock twice as frequently he makes twice as much money. The only way this can be done is to sell twice as much goods. If, by greatly increasing your sales, you can sell five times as much goods, you will make five times as much money. Or, if, on the other hand, you can sell only twice as many goods, you will make only twice as much money. Under these conditions it would be perfectly proper to ask a merchant: "Wouldn't you rather make $5000 per year than $2000?"

But that isn't what these mathematical jugglers mean when they talk about increased turnovers. They mean keeping the stock low, and buying from hand to mouth, so that you

reduce your investment on a given volume of sales. The statements that continue to be made on this subject are almost incredible, and yet they keep bobbing up time and time again, and editors of trade journals repeat them without stopping to indulge in a little plain analysis.

A NEW DANGER THREATENS.

Within the last few years a movement has originated, and seems gradually to be gaining headway, that will soon demand the determined opposition of druggists in every State in the Union. The N. A. R. D. will be forced to jump into the breach and make use of its powerful legislative machinery.

What is this movement?

It is a plan to create compulsory health insurance by the enactment of both Federal and State laws, and a society known as the American Association of Labor Legislation has been created for the purpose of pushing the scheme through. Bills were introduced last year in the legislatures of New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. They failed of passage, but they will appear and reappear over the country until success has been met or until the whole propaganda has been given its death knell.

The purpose of this proposed legislation is to provide compulsory insurance for all manual laborers, no matter what their pay may be, and for all other employees earning less than $100 a month. In all cases of sickness or disability from accidents employees will receive two-thirds of their wages during absence from work. They will also be granted free medical service, surgical and nursing attendance, medical supplies, hospital service whenever necessary, dental work, and the like. Not only that, but the same service will be given to all dependents of employees.

Who is to pay for this enormous outlay? The employer will be charged with 40 per cent of the cost, the employee with 40 per cent, and the State is to make up the remaining 20 per cent.

Where does the druggist come in, and why should he oppose such legislation tooth and nail?

He is involved in three ways. In the first place, the plan proposes the establishment of "operating units" scattered thickly over the State for rendering medical, surgical, hospital and nursing service. These "operating units"

will include compounding and dispensing laboratories for the supply of the needed medicines. This means State competition for the druggist. Three-fourths of all wage-earners and their dependents are involved in this proposition. Three-fourths of the druggist's business in drugs and prescriptions, therefore, would leave his store and would be deflected to these public dispensaries. Such competition would be far worse than anything the druggist has suffered in the past, and in all conscience the menace of it should be serious enough to enlist his active and vigorous opposition.

But the druggist would be involved also as an employer. If any one of his clerks became ill, or suffered an accident, the druggist would be compelled to pay 40 per cent of all the costs. If the clerk were married, and had a wife and children dependent upon him, the same service would have to be granted them. Not only would two-thirds of the clerk's wages have to be paid, but he would be provided with free surgical, medical, dental, and hospital service, where necessary, and there would also be funeral benefits in case of death. Even maternity benefits would have to be granted in case they became necessary at such a time. Forty per cent of all this expense, we repeat, would have to be borne by the druggist as an employer.

In the third place the druggist is involved as a taxpayer. In any State where this scheme might carry, it has been carefully estimated that the taxes would easily be trebled. Does the druggist want to lose three-fourths of his pharmaceutical business on the one hand, and on the other be made to pay three times his normal taxes?

The whole scheme is a visionary piece of socialistic and paternalistic theory of the worst sort. It isn't necessary. There is no general demand for it. Even the labor people themselves are against it, but it is being pushed with ability and vigor, and if the whole propaganda isn't headed off it is more than likely that we shall see such legislation enacted in different States during the next few years.

Organized associations in the drug trade, both State and national, should join in the opposition to this absurd scheme, and in the meantime the movement should be watched with the closest of care and scrutiny. When the bills make their appearance in various State legislatures this winter, as they surely will, they should be fought with determination, and

our lawmakers should be made to understand that we want no European paternalism of this sort in free America.

A SAMPLE!

A few weeks ago a Chicago physician, Dr. Bernard Fantus, came out with a plea for the use of English in the place of Latin in the writing of prescriptions. This is not the first time such a thing has happened, but because of the author's standing the paper attracted a great deal of attention. It is not surprising, therefore, that daily papers all over the country have commented on the subject, and not infrequently have made the most of the opportunity to take a fling at the prescription-writing profession and at the drug business.

We are indebted to J. J. O'Donnell, Pittsburgh, Pa., for a specimen of the comment referred to, clipped from a Pittsburgh paper, and in spite of the fact that it will take up nearly a column of space, we are going to reproduce the editorial in full. Here it is:

Nothing could be more curious than some of the arguments used in defence of the medical profession's long-standing custom of writing its prescriptions in Latin. This official language of the ancient world still survives in the universities, and has not been wholly banished from religion, but in practical, every-day, worldly affairs it no longer exercises much more influence than the "p" in "pneumonia." As the language of scholars, it was employed one hundred or two hundred years ago by men of high learning among all nations for the writing of their treatises on all kinds of subjects. But that use of it has passed, along with most others.

Learning in the twentieth century is held to consist not of misty philosophical dissertation but of scientific research, and an Englishman or American studying the literature of science will have ten times as much need of German as of Latin. In fact, not even books on medical subjects are written in Latin. The medical profession knows only enough Latin to write its prescriptions, and hardly enough even for that. Why, then, does prescription-writing in Latin persist?

About the only answer that a well-known physician is able to suggest in a published article on the subject is that "a prescription in Latin can be filled anywhere in the world." But there's the very point. It can't. The apothecaries' clerks who do most of the compounding are generally as weak on Latin as on the origins. of the New Testament. They know their own tongues —and ragtime-but that is as far as they go, and an honest doctor will admit that ignorant mistaking of Latin letters and words by prescription compounders has hurried hundreds of innocent persons into untimely graves. Besides, who wants to have a prescription filled

all over the world? People who have sicknesses 24,000 miles long generally stay at home.

The truth probably is that the medical profession is still writing its prescriptions in Latin and calling its drugs by Latin names because of inertia. It takes energy to throw off an outworn custom, and the medical profession is just beginning to accumulate the required energy in adequate amount. A resolution to adopt English has already been offered in the American Medical Association; its adoption in the near future seems probable. Many eminent physicians concede that the only advantage in retaining Latin is to "keep the patient in the dark as to what he is taking," which is not an advantage, particularly if, as may be suspected, it just as often keeps the physician in the dark as to what he is giving.

All of which causes us to ponder, after we have ceased smiling-or saying things. If newspapers, in all earnestness, will print such stuff as that, to what extent are we justified in believing anything we see in their columns?

Some of us have the editorial-reading habit. Perhaps we are being hoodwinked.

JOIN THE ASSOCIATIONS.

Pharmacy is a profession—and pharmacy is a business. On the one hand there must be learning and its ethics, and on the other hand there must be the dollar and all that goes with it. Professionalism and commercialism: for better or for worse they have been brought together and made to dwell under the same roof.

Roughly speaking, each segment is represented by a national association; and that is the reason that we have the two big bodies, the A. Ph. A. and the N. A. R. D.

Other spheres of human activity may call for only one organization of this kind. Bankers, hardware men, grocers, etc.-these can get along with a single central association. But the drug trade cannot.

Theoretically every druggist in the country ought to belong to both the national organizations; in practice a great many do not belong to either; and because there is so much discrepancy between the theory and the practice neither organization has the membership it ought to have.

This is all wrong. There isn't a man in the business who hasn't been benefited by both the A. Ph. A. and the N. A. R. D.; and the least he can do is to lend the moral support of his name and the financial aid that the payment of the really nominal dues would afford. Join the associations!