What then, I repeat, must the pharmacist do to succeed, personally and professionally?  I welcome this opportunity to tell you what I think.  My advice comes from the outside—­often the most valuable source.  I have so little to do with pharmacy, either as a profession or as a business that I stand far enough away to get a bird’s-eye view.  And if you think that any advice, based on this view, is worthless, it will be a consolation to all of us to realize that no force on earth can compel you to take it.

It is doubtless too late to lament or try to resist the course of business that has gone far to turn the pharmacy into a department store.  But let me urge you not to let this tendency run wild.  There are side-lines that belong properly to pharmacy, such as all those pertaining to hygiene or sanitation; to the toilet, to bodily refreshment.  I do not see why one should not expect to find at his pharmacist’s, soap, or tooth-brushes, or sponges.  I do not see why the thirsty man should not go there for mineral water as well as the dyspeptic for pills.  But I fail to see the connection between pharmacy and magazines, or stationery or candy.  By selling these the druggist puts himself at once into competition with the department stores.  There can be no doubt about who will win out in any such competition as that.  But I believe there is still a place in the community for any special line of business if its proprietor sticks to his specialty and makes himself a recognized expert in it.  The department store spreads itself too thin—­there is no room for intensive development at any point of its vast expanse.  Its general success is due to this very fact.  I am not now speaking of the rural community where there is room only for one general store selling everything that the community needs.  But my statement holds good for the city and the large town.

Let me illustrate by an instance in which we librarians are professionally interested—­the book store.  Once every town had its book-store.  Now they are rare.  We have few such stores even in a city of the size of St. Louis.  Every department store has its book-section.  They are rarely satisfactory.  Everybody is lamenting the disappearance of the old book-store, with its old scholarly proprietor who knew books and the book-market; who loved books and the book-business.  Quarts of ink have been wasted in trying to account for his disappearance.  The Public Library, for one thing, has been blamed for it.  I have no time now to disprove this, though it is very clear to me that libraries help the book trade instead of hindering it.  I shall simply give you my version of the trouble.  The book-dealer disappeared, as soon as he entered into competition with the department store.  He put in side lines of toys, and art supplies, and cameras and candy.  He began to spread himself thin and had no time for expert concentration on his one specialty.  Thus he lost his one advantage over the department store—­his