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In order to retain the services of his best workmen he starts manufacturing more goods than are needful for immediate use and so he accumulates a stock of merchandise. This occurs very frequently, because he learns that to make up two identical pieces is almost as simple and not much more expensive than to create one of them.
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18INTERIOR DECORATING
So we have the genesis of the large establishment. I am not arguing that this is the typical way in which large establishments come into being. Very frequently they grow up out of furniture-selling concerns which started using the productions of other manufacturers and showing them to the public, and then found that they could manufacture articles more cheaply or more adequately, but it is a possible means of development from the small but increasingly successful professional decorator into the large and more successful decorator and manufacturer combined.
I cannot see any reason why the large manufacturer should be looked upon with less regard as an artist than the small and more completely professional decorator who has no stock, no employees and perhaps no office. It is true that many of the manufacturing decorators have not the same knowledge or ability as designers, but it is not inevitable that they should be lacking in these requirements; and more and more those who are growing up in the industry tend to possess them. Certainly on the practical side there can be no question but that the man who personally manages a large establishment and manufactures his own wares can speak with more authority regarding technical problems with relation to the interior than the man whose experience is limited to the ordering of his merchandise from other people.
Certain severe criticisms have been passed upon the large decorators by the small ones, and some of these have been justified as, for example, the contention that the decorator with a large stock of merchandise frequently insists upon selling something from his own
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