Raymond S. Spears

“ It is the man who has had a notion for a dozen years, and happens to meet the fakir, that gets the greatest success. Considering that a successful trinket nets at least ten thousand dollars, there are naturally hundreds who devote their lives to the trade. Some of them come out with fortunes, but many see others reap the reward, as in the case of the m.an who made a lunch box in the shape of a camera case. Five millions of the boxes were made, but the inventor got only a few hundred dollars from his idea, because he was not careful to cover the field by inclusive patents. ”

“ The street man gets two thirds of the profit; the boss fakir one third. The street man does not need a cent to start with, and only has to have a vender introduce him to the head man to get a stock of wares. Of course some stock goes astray, but not much, considering the men.
A five cent toy is preferred to a ten cent one on general principles. The toys and notions are all sold at either five, ten, fifteen, twenty five, thirty five, or fifty cents. It is a bother to make change, not to mention the hoodoo supposed to lurk in some numbers. ”

“ The boss fakir will put out novelties in any way the inventor or manufacturer wishes. He will hire out street men with baskets or carts to a man who has a novelty to sell. He will take charge of the sale himself, on commission, or for a stated sum. He will buy some ideas outright, and will back an inventor with his experience, or even with his capital. He makes contracts of all sorts, and there is hardly anything he will not undertake to sell. ”

“ Sometimes, in such cases, the sale comes in a week, and again not for a dozen years. Two years ago palm leaf fans, which had enjoyed a sober trade in the rural districts, came out with a whoop in all the overheated cities of the United States.
The inventors of the notions are a curious lot to deal with. They are of all sorts of dispositions, and some think that a quarter million of their kind of toy would be none too many to start with. When these men put all their money into their idea they usually come to grief. ”

“ But some things his instinct tells him not to touch, and he will not have them. He buys old stocks for mere songs, and holds them till the caprice of the public slants that way and the things go with a rush. ”

“ He wants his customers to be the men who pull out a handful of change, and toss the nickels and dimes to him. Nevertheless, the Christmas season is a prosperous one for the boss fakir and his street men, for it gives him an opportunity to get rid of the toys which accumulate in his storerooms. Elaborate preparations are always made for it, and novel mechanical toys are sought for up to the very last day. ”

“ One difference between them is the fact that the fakirs' lists contain articles which will not find their way to the traders for weeks or months hence. There are more than ten thousand different styles of articles in the trader's stock. The fakir has only two or three thousand. One would think that the possible forms of paper, tin, brass, leather, shells, and what not, must long ago have been exhausted, but a hundred new ones spring up in a week, most of them to die in a day, some to revive in after years, some few to live for years and possibly forever. ”

“ There is now a good deal of competition in the fakir and novelty business, and on Ann Street there are several shops, up stairs, where small venders buy their stuff by the dozen or gross. These shops import goods from India, parasols from Japan, and odds and ends from every trading nation in the world. ”

“ Every kind of individual patronizes the fakir, but as a rule nonsensical articles sell best with men able to buy them. For instance, a man in Newark, New Jersey, a laborer, heard the song "If the Soldiers Only Had Razors in the War," at that time very popular, and he conceived the idea of a razor a foot long with a thin blade and a red handle. ”

“ That is why the boss fakir loses seven thousand dollars on a Columbus day and makes thirty thousand dollars selling celluloid buttons.
The line between the legitimate notion wholesale house and the fakir is not very well marked. Both have large warehouses in which to keep their goods, and their salesrooms and account books show the same jumble of miscellaneous articles. They have buyers all over the world on the lookout for trinkets that might "take" as salable oddities in the great cities of civilization. ”

“ Pretty much everybody "stepped up" every day for a week. Meanwhile, customers of a leading hat maker were asking questions about the sale of his five dollar hats for fifty cents each. The maker went to the vender and gave him a hundred dollars to take out the marks of the hats still in his possession. Another hat manufacturer was caught in much the same fashion, and had to buy his hats back at fifty cents each. Old style hats are no longer for sale at a big reduction. ”

“ They buy or make the running mice, the squeaking dolls, the mechanical cars, the walking or running animals, and similar articles which are found in small shops and in hand baskets or push carts along all the great thoroughfares, especially in the shopping districts. Many of them have a sort of conservatism which does not hold with the boss fakirs. The boss fakir likes the novel and strictly new rather than the staple article, and he prefers the rosy hued mirage to the more substantial certainty. ”

“ A small but substantial bellows hangs over the leather heaped desk, in place of a feather duster. The stock is too fragile for ordinary dusting. There are accumulations of samples, many of them broken or out of order, kicking around in crannies where they are out of the wind and the way. ”