Planning Sales Campaigns in Forty-Eight Sovereignties

Abstract

PROBABLY most of you think that you have a pretty good understanding of the nation's geography. If the 48 states were hacked out into jig-saw pieces, you could put the puzzle together again in quick order. You think you could-but, as a matter of fact the geography has changed a great deal since you went to school. We don't have 48 states anymore-we have 48 separate kingdoms. I didn't come here to give you a lecture on geography, and so I haven't a complete December, I939, model map to show you. However, I do have a segment of the map and here it is. It used to be, you know, that it was pretty hard to tell when you stepped from one state into another, but you don't have that difficulty today, for each little state or kingdom has raised a high wall. They have guns for defensive purposes -guns in the form of multitudinous tax, inspection, standardizing and grading laws-designed to protect home industry. It's strange that they waited until the Thirties to figure out this form of protection, for the idea is modelled after the Republican Party's Protective Tariff System, Buy American. Buy Bingo State Products. Buy Bilgeville. This big-scale map doesn't show you all of the interesting details. For example-here (pointing) is a gate, and if you are in one principality you may look through the gate into the adjoining kingdom where you see luscious green grass and belching factory smoke chimneys-a perfect picture of sales potentialities. You decide that you would like to do business in such a rich kingdom, and, trustingly, you start through the gate, but immediately you are pounced upon by uniformed guards and embarrassed eve more than the young farmer whose plight was recently described by Governor Sta k of Missouri.