It used to be easy to shop local as it was a difficult proposition to get in and out of Princeton. From the west, you’d take the train to Spence’s Bridge and then hop on a stage for a two and half day journey – through Nicola and over to Granite Creek and then back down to Princeton. Or, you could walk or ride a horse from Hope over the Hope-Princeton Trail. Neither was all that convenient. Coming from the east, you’d either ride your horse or take a stage from Keremeos, stopping in Hedley overnight.
Then the trains arrived. The Great Northern arrived in Princeton with its first car of freight on December 17, 1909. Shortly after, on December 23, the first passenger train arrived in Princeton.
The earliest sign that Princeton businesses were starting to face stiffer competition was in 1911, when the A.L. White furniture store advertised that for the month of August they would be “offering greater bargains … than any Mail Order house even thought of offering…” The big mail order houses – primarily, at least in the beginning, the T. Eaton company – were starting to make inroads into the local Princeton market. After all, it was now easy and convenient for shoppers to peruse the pictures in the catalogue and send away for that “must have” item.
“Buy Local” became a recurring refrain. In May 1912, J.M. Wright, the manager of The Similkameen Star, wrote: “Many people do not realize the knock it gives a town to be sending away their cash for merchandise of any kind which can be purchased at home….Keep the money at home.” He repeated the message in September (1912): “Every dollar that I spend at home stays at home and works for the welfare of my community.” And then again, in December:
The Similkameen Star, Friday, December 13, 1912, page 1
The editorials, guest columns, and articles about the importance of buying local continued through the years, with a concerted push in 1918. F.J. Smyth, the manager of The Princeton Star, ran a series of six articles touting the benefits of shopping in your own community and not supporting the mail order companies. And, in December (1918) of that year, he ran an article from The Penticton Herald that included this blunt paragraph:
“Look —-You who buy out of town when you could buy in town. What would happen if everyone else in the place followed your example? They have just as much right to. You would mighty soon stop chuckling over the cents you think you saved in sending to Toronto, or Winnipeg, or Vancouver. You would find your district a poor place to live in. Your newspaper would quit, your stores would drop in size and number, many of them would close up altogether, and your town population would dwindle. Do you want that?”
While manager F.J. Smyth was an avid “Buy at Home” advocate, so were other editor/managers of the Princeton newspaper. L. Pilkington, in an editorial “Buy at Home” on April 8, 1921, asked “…What is a merchant worth to a community? … Figure the employment given, the taxes paid, the money put in circulation, the contributions made during the year, the accommodations to customers, by each store, and then balance it against the money circulated by the mail order house in the same community, the contributions it makes, and to whom it gives steady employment …” A few years later in 1925, then manager and editor, J.A. Brown wrote: “If a city or town is good enough to live in, and good enough to take a salary from, it should be good enough to buy in…” Later, in 1937, owner/editor/manager Dave Taylor organized a local campaign where “Similkameen merchants … united in one big effort to keep Similkameen’s prosperity in the vanguard – by keeping Similkameen’s payroll dollars rolling – in circulation – at home….”
The Similkameen Star, Thursday, December 9, 1937, page 4
Granted, it appears that at least some of the push to encourage consumers to purchase locally came from the needs of the newspaper itself. Local businesses needed to buy advertising space to keep the newspaper afloat. A newspaper is, after all, a business.
Fast forward to over one hundred years later. Local merchants are still encouraging residents to “Shop Local.” Gone are the mail order houses of Eaton’s, Sears, Woodward’s – only to be replaced by the giant on-line retailers, delivering packages through other giant, international companies. And it’s a lot easier to shop in Penticton/Vancouver/Kelowna (etc.) than it used to be.
The words of editor J.A. Brown, written in 1926, still ring true:
“The question of people sending their money out of town to these mail order houses is a serious one to the local merchants and although it has often been discussed I am afraid that it will be a long time before any cure will be found.”