"No, sir. That's your mistake. What you buy is a telly show, in fact
several of them, with all their expensive comedians, singers, musicians,
dancers, news commentators, network vice presidents, and all the rest.
Then you buy fancy packaging. You'll note, by the way, that our product
hasn't even a piece of tissue paper wrapped around it. Fancy packaging
designed by some of the most competent commercial artists and
motivational research men in the country. Then you buy distribution.
From the factory all the way to the retail ultra-market where your wife
shops. And every time that bar of soap goes from one wholesaler or
distributor to another, the price roughly doubles. You also buy a brain
trust whose full time project is to keep you using their soap and not
letting their competitors talk you into switching brands. The brain
trust, of course, also works on luring away the competitor's customers
to their product. Shucks, Mr. Coty, practically none of that twenty-five
cents you spend to buy a cake of soap goes for soap. So small a
percentage that you might as well forget about it."
Mr. Coty was obviously taken aback. "Well, how do I know this nameless
soap you're peddling is, well, any good?"
Warren Dickens sighed deeply, and in such wise that it was obvious that
he had so sighed before. "Sir, there is no difference between soaps. Oh,
they might use a slightly different perfume, or tint it a slightly
different color, but for all practical purposes common hand soap, common
bath soap, is soap, period. All the stuff the copy writers dream up
about secret ingredients and health for your skin, and cosmetic
qualities, and all the rest, is Madison Avenue gobbledygook and applies
as well to one brand as another. As a matter of fact, often two
different soap companies, supposedly keen competitors, and using widely
different advertising, have their products manufactured in the same
plant."
Mr. Coty blinked at him. Shifted in his chair. Rubbed his chin as though
checking his morning shave. "Well ... well, then where do you get _your_
soap?"
"The same place. We buy in fantastically large lots from one of the
gigantic automated soap plants."
Mr. Coty had him now. "Ah, ha! Then how come you sell it for three cents
a cake, instead of twenty-five?"
"I've been telling you. Our soap doesn't even have a name, not to
mention an advertising budget. Far from spending fortunes redesigning
our packaging every few months in attempts to lure new customers, we
don't package the stuff at all. It comes to you, in the simplest
possible wrapping, through the mails. A new supply every month. Three
cents a cake. No middlemen, no wholesalers, distributors. No nothing
except soap at three cents a cake."
Mr. Coty leaned back in his chair. "I'll be darned." He thought it over.
"Listen, do you sell anything besides soap?"
"Not right now, sir. But soap flakes are coming up next week and I think
we'll be going into bread in a month or two."
"Bread?"
"Yes, sir, bread. Although we'll have to distribute that by truck, and
have to have almost hundred per cent coverage in a given section before
it's practical. A nickel a loaf."
"Five cents a loaf! You can't _make_ bread for that much."
"Oh, yes we can. We can't advertise it, package it, and pay a host of
in-betweens, is all. From the bakery to you, period."
Mr. Coty seemed fascinated. He said, "See here, what's the address of
your office?"
Warren Dickens shook his head. "Sorry, sir. That's all part of it. We
have no swanky offices with big, expensive staffs. We operate on the
smallest of shoestrings. No brain trust. No complaint department. No
public relations. No literature on how to beautify yourself. No nothing,
except good soap at three cents a cake, plus postage. Now, if you'll
sign this contract, we'll put you on our mailing list. Ten bars of soap
a month, Mrs. Coty said. I brought this first supply so you could test
it and see that the whole thing is bona fide."
Mr. Coty had to test it, but then he had to admit he couldn't tell any
difference between the nameless soap and the product to which he was
used. Eventually, he signed, made the first payment, shook hands with
young Dickens and saw him to the door. He said, in parting, "I still
wonder why you do this, rather than dragging down unemployment insurance
like most young men fresh out of school."
Warren Dickens screwed up his face. This was a question that wasn't
routine. "Well, I make approximately the same, if I stick to it and get
enough contracts. And, shucks they're not hard to get. And, well, I'm
working, not just bumming on the rest of the country. I'm doing
something, something useful."
Coty pursed his lips and shrugged. "It's been a long time since anybody
cared about that." He looked after the young man as he walked down the
walk.
Then he turned and headed for the phone, and ten years seemed to drop
away from him. He lit the screen with a flick, dialed and said crisply,
"That's him, Jerry. Going down the walk now. Don't let him out of your
sight."
Jerry's face was in the screen but he was obviously peering down, from
the helio-jet, locating the subject. "O.K., Tracy, I make him. See you
later." His face faded.
The man who had called himself Mr. Coty, dialed again, not bothering to
light the screen. "All right," he said. "Thank Mrs. Coty and let her
come home now."
* * * * *
Frank Tracy worked his way down an aisle of automated phono-typers and
other office equipment. The handful of operators, their faces bored,
periodically strolled up and down, needlessly checking that which seldom
needed checking.
He entered the receptionist's office, flicked a hand at LaVerne Sandell,
one of the few employees it seemed impossible to automate out of her
position, and said, "The Chief is probably expecting me."
"That he is. Go right in, Mr. Tracy."
"I'm expecting a call from one of the operatives. Put it through, eh
LaVerne?"
"Righto."
Even as he walked toward the door to the sanctum sanctorum, he grimaced
sourly at her. "_Righto_, yet. Isn't that a bit on the maize side?
Doesn't sound very authentic to me."
"I can see you don't put in your telly time, Mr. Tracy. Slang goes in
cycles these days. They simply don't dream up a whole new set of
expressions every generation anymore because everybody gets tired of
them so soon. Instead, older periods of idiom are revived. For instance,
scram is coming back in."