All business planning must deal with Time.
To the unenlightened business man, Time is a bugaboo--a gambler whose cards are stacked and against whom there is no defense. Such a man conducts his business from hand to mouth, in constant fear. He is a fatalist, taking his profits and losses as if they were gifts or blows of Fortune.
The enlightened man works with Time as an impartial, exacting, inevitable power for his own good or ill. He shapes his actions and enlists the services of Time to prevent catastrophe on the one hand, and to enforce prosperity and happiness on the other. Storms may come, but so far as his mind may control it, he is "the master of his fate."
That the element of TIME is important in the jobber's business no one will deny. He does not base his selling price on cost, but rather on the market price. Regardless of his cost, he must sell to meet competition. It is equally obvious that the larger his business, or the greater his distance from the source of supplies, the more important part TIME plays in both his cost and selling prices.
All jobbers, large or small, are obliged to assume greater risks (even proportionately) and exercise greater care, than, for instance, retailers buying in small quantities. A jobber's business may enlarge by a perfectly natural process of expansion, but his purchasing risks increase in greater ratio than his business expands.
Similarly, under abnormal conditions, jobbers located at points requiring several weeks in transit prior to delivery, must assume greater risks than those located at the source of supply. In the event of serious delays in deliveries or in shipments, even buyers located at shipping points are confronted with this problem, and the difficulties of those located at a distance are increased immeasurably.
These difficulties tend to accentuate the importance of TIME in modern business. As business grows, instead of decreasing--risks increase. Any machinery which might operate to eliminate or reduce this uncertainty or speculative element in a jobber's business, would, we believe, be welcomed. Exchanges provide just such machinery.
Other commodities, such as raw sugar, wheat, cotton, pork and coffee have had this machinery for years and it was provided for refined sugar on May 2, 1921, when trading in refined sugar futures was inaugurated on the floor of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Inc.