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Of course, whenever an agency was lost, there was the possibility of replacing the company in some non-Conference office; but this was not so easy a matter. The non-Conference agents were principally lower grade, cut-rate concerns, and not of the standard either professionally or financially to which the Guardian was accustomed.
The Conference might even forbid its companies to be represented at all in mixed agencies where both Conference and non-Conference companies were located and then those agents would either have to throw us out or lose the bulk of their companies." "But couldn't they get other non-Conference companies to fill up their agencies and keep the Guardian?" "No hardly.
"That's another thing. As things are now, I don't see how he could do much to hurt us. It would be a bit awkward for us, I don't mind saying, if he went with some Conference company, for some of the insiders are none too scrupulous in their methods against non-Conference competitors. Of course, if the Conference should pass a separation rule but no, that's impossible."
But long before they came the heavens had grown dark with trouble in numerous other quarters. The general ruling of the Conference, providing that, except under almost impossible qualifications and with reduced compensation, no agent could continue to represent both Conference and non-Conference companies, was now in effect.
"What is a separation rule?" "Why, it's a kind of boycott. The Conference might pass a rule reducing the commission of any agent who also represented non-Conference companies. You see, most agents represent several companies a good, big agency may perhaps represent fifteen or twenty and the Conference companies are in the majority in most of the agencies where the Guardian is represented.
From the Guardian's own agents the letters of resignation were very much alike, for the company was popular in a modest way, and most of the writers had represented it for many years. "We are notified by the committee in charge of this district," they wrote, "that in order to secure the customary graded commission scale we must resign our non-Conference companies.
Certainly there was no hesitancy about the Conference campaign, and the results became at once apparent in the non-Conference offices. Hardly a day passed which failed to bring to the Guardian the resignation of one or more of its agents, with none to take their places except the vultures, many of whom Mr.
Gunterson confessed that he was considering a change in the Guardian's Boston representation; he had not gone so far as to commit himself, but he was looking around of course among the few agents with whom non-Conference companies predominated.
If the Osgood office, consisting largely of Conference companies, was obliged to resign the Guardian, there must be some other agency where non-Conference companies predominated and where he could place the Guardian upon the withdrawal of a Conference company. After all, the Osgood office was not the only good agency in Boston.
We've already lost about all the agents that could be shaken loose, and with this suit pending I fancy the Conference will go very slow before forcing the issue further for fear of civil actions for damages from all the non-Conference companies if we win our conspiracy case." "That sounds reasonable." "It is. So I really think we need not worry much about New England for a while.
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