Word: middlemen
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Against his lack of program and lack of action, the Communists seemed more and more the one group that knew what it wanted to do. Palmiro Togliatti's Communists are rich (among other funds, the party gets millions a year from their commercial monopoly as middlemen for all Italian trade with Eastern Europe); they are minutely organized and cleverly led, even able to turn to advantage such anti-Communist events as financial aid from the U.S. Example: a U.S. contract recently allowed a closed-down factory in Milan to reopen; because they had been shouting for its reopening...
Stripes & Tops. In those days, everyone wanted striped bathing suits. Jantzen helped to develop a machine that cut the cost of knitting stripes from 60? to a penny a suit. To cut distribution costs, the company used no middlemen. And to conform with local mores, Jantzen's men's suits always came with detachable tops. President Zehntbauer established mills and licensed plants around the world to make his suits, smartly got his swim suits promoted far & wide by celebrities and in aquatic shows...
...answer often suggested is to eliminate the middlemen between factory and consumer, thus save the profits that wholesalers and jobbers exact along the route. Many makers of industrial goods have already done this: more than 75% of the goods industry itself buys (e.g., machine tools) goes direct from factory to user. In some lines, however, the trend is in the other direction. Makers of business machines, who used to sell direct, are now selling part of their line across retail counters...
...meat prices high because someone between the rancher and the retail counter is getting too much gravy? The answer is no, even though cattlemen are selling their grass-fed steers at a loss in today's markets. But middlemen are making no lush profits. The feeders, who buy steers to fatten up for market, are lucky to make a 10% profit-provided that they guess right on what the price will be when they sell. Meat packers' profits are smaller: last year they were six-tenths of a cent on each dollar of sales. The retailer, whose average...
Procter forthwith cut down on outside middlemen, and by setting up a network of P. & G.'s own distributors, flattened out the peaks and valleys. In 1923 P. & G. installed its guaranteed-employment plan, first of its kind in the U.S., and assured hourly workers 48 weeks' employment a year. In those days, such advanced management methods were nothing short of revolutionary. Today, they are considered a normal part of labor relations at P. & G. They have cut employee turnover from 133.7% to less than 1% a year, kept the company unhampered by outside unions and major strikes...