The Non-Statistical Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

we’d learned in fifteen years of pushing breakfast cereals and cement blocks. And it busted, went completely flat. People walked past the stacks of Singing Suds in the supermarkets as if they’d never hear the name.
    “It’s all over the trade. In America, anybody can sell soap, but Sloane and Franklin couldn’t push Singing Suds. Unless we do something quick to show it isn’t a habit, the soap company isn’t the.only one who’ll go on the rocks.
    “It’s got us scared, Charles; I don’t mind admitting it. We did everything just right, and it was a bust. Do you think you could do anything to help us find out why?”
    Bascomb leaned back thoughtfully. He had never sympathized particularly with Sloane’s endeavors, but he understood what it meant to a man to take a heavy business setback like this.
    “I can’t do it personally, Mark, but I think somebody in my field could probably do you some good. There are several good men on the West Coast; I’ll give you the names of two or three if you like.”
    “I wish you would,” said Sloane morosely. “The worst part of it is not merely people’s ignoring our campaign completely, but the fact that they bought wholesale lots of a completely unknown product called Dud’s Suds. We tried to figure if the name had anything to do with it, but we couldn’t pin it down.”
    “Dud’s Suds, we found out, is put up locally and hasn’t spent a nickel for advertising in years. It used to be in the little comer groceries; within the past few weeks, has pushed into the supermarkets—past nice packages like Singing Suds—. It’s put up in a repulsive blue, cubical box that any package man would tell you wouldn’t sell in a million years. That’s what has us more scared than anything else—the fact that we couldn’t buck poor competition like that. We must have done something terribly wrong!”
    “Call these men,” Bascomb suggested, passing over a slip of paper with a couple of names and addresses on it. “They both have small polling organizations, as well as statistical services. Let them give it a try.
    “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about since you first mentioned this: which is the better of the two soaps—Singing Suds or Dud’s Suds?”
    Sloane moved his hands disaparagingly. “The other people’s soap is better—but what’s that got to do with it?”
    There had been other times in his life when Charles Bascomb felt this way, and he didn’t like it at all. It was a vague, undefinable feeling that things were snowballing on him and he was powerless to do anything about it.
    The worst part was in not knowing just what was snowballing. He had freely in mind the irritations of the past few days: the short policy claims; the gnawing little news-clipping Hadley showed him, the story of Sloane’s ad campaign that had bungled. But there was something beyond these things—yet somehow connected with each one of them—and he didn’t know what it was. From a national standpoint, there was no possible connection between these events; yet something nagging faintly in his mind suggested there was.
    He grew snappier around the office, and Sarah read the signs and kept quiet around the house. She knew something was bothering Charles, and it was something big.
    In this mood he went with Sarah to the second of Dr. Magruder’s lectures on Saturday night. More intently than before, he listened to the quack doctor. And more than ever, he was convinced that there was something basically wrong in the show Magruder was putting on. The nub of it was that Magruder just didn’t have what it took to be this kind of spieler. At his age, if he’d been in the racket a long time, he’d have had a smooth, flowing delivery and a patter that would sell com plasters to a fish.
    Instead, Magruder clomped along—almost painfully at times—in his rasping voice. He paused frequently, as if uncertain just how to proceed with the group before him. He was not at all at home