Historic editorial shows how little — and how much — has changed for homegrown business
When The Dufferin Leader printed a short editorial on “Patronize Home Trade” in the early 1920s, the world looked very different. Main Street was powered by horse-drawn wagons and wood-stove heat, the average family earned less than $1,000 a year, and mail-order catalogues were the new disruptive technology sweeping across rural Canada.
Yet despite the passing of a century, the concerns in that editorial could have been written today.
The article opened with a familiar frustration local business owners still share: residents choosing to shop from a distance rather than at home.
“Some residents evidently do not realize to how great an extent they are hurting home trade by occasionally ordering goods from mail order houses,” The Dufferin Leader wrote, “judging from remarks one hears occasionally.”
The writer recounted a conversation with a woman who defended ordering a few small parcels from catalogue companies.
“What difference does it make,” the resident asked, “if I send a few dollars to mail-order houses every now and then?”
It’s a question that continues to echo today — only now, instead of catalogues and money orders, it’s online carts and overnight shipping. The purchases may still be small, but the collective impact is not.
The editorial warned that although one order might seem insignificant, “individual cases in the aggregate do make a great deal of difference,” noting that hundreds of small purchases multiplied into thousands of dollars a month leaving the local economy.
And then came the line that resonates as powerfully in 2025 as it did almost a century ago:
“The $2.98 you send away today is not much in itself, but when it is pooled with hundreds of other like amounts it makes a very substantial sum.”
In today’s terms, $2.98 may look more like $20 for a t-shirt online, $60 for a birthday gift ordered through an app, or even $7 for a coffee chain stop instead of a local café. One transaction isn’t the issue — the habit is.
A hundred people doing the same thing every week doesn’t just redirect convenience spending — it quietly removes money from the very places that rely on it most: the grocer who donates to minor sports, the shop that employs teens for their first part-time job, the café that hosts community fundraisers, the hardware store that still knows customers by name.
The old editorial made the case plainly.
“So spend your $2.98’s with local merchants. If you do that, you will not only be helping them and your town, but also be helping yourself by keeping more money in circulation here. If you spend your $2.98 here, you stand a chance of getting part of it back some day; spend it away and the entire sum is taken out of town.”
The language may be quaint today, but the wisdom behind it isn’t. Economists estimate that for every dollar spent locally, that dollar can circulate three to six times through wages, services, donations and sponsorships before leaving the community. In contrast, earnings from most national online purchases leave instantly — with only the delivery truck passing through town.
In other words, $2.98 still matters.
So does $20.
So does every choice to shop here instead of elsewhere.
As communities across Manitoba look for ways to strengthen their local economies, this century-old reminder from The Dufferin Leader feels less like history — and more like instruction.
Supporting local business isn’t just retail. It’s infrastructure. It’s sustainability. It’s community identity. It’s a future built here.
Because the question asked in 1923 — “What difference does it make?” — still has the same answer in 2025:
All the difference in the world.
