Of course, when it comes down to signing the contract, there is no mention that the purchaser is doing anything other than buying the items listed. The testimonial letter is not mentioned at all.

The purchaser must, however, sign a separate card. "I will cooperate with you in your program and express my opinion of Collier's Encyclopedia. You may use my name as a Registered Owner," the card says. It places absolutely no obligation on Collier's.

THE SUITE containing the Collier's classroom and offices, on the ninth floor of a downtown Louisville office building, seemed like a movie mockup. Footsteps of bosses shuttling through the outer office and past its permanently vacant secretary's desk echoed the through the vaguely uninhabited rooms.

But the classroom, used for training sessions and daily peptalks, was garishly adorned with morale-boosting sales paraphernalia. A huge football player charged at us novice salesmen from a sales poster. A sign reading "Carnaby Street," Union Jacks, and a map of London conspired to spur salesmen to that 110 per cent effort-and a trip to London for the nation's leading salesmen. Lucky supersalesmen who had earned trips in previous years smiled fixedly from the walls.

A bizarre job interview opens the wonderful world of Collier's to the outsider. "Your job is not to sell," the interviewer told me. "We want to give these to people who would buy a home library within a few years anyway."

"When it is released for sale next year," the interviewer went on, the encyclopedia would bear the endorsement of "many of the nation's leading educators-John Wayne, Ronnie Reagan, Mayor Daley, Dick Nixon, maybe even old Hubert." President Pusey suddenly seemed a benevolent educator.

The encyclopedia is already on sale now, of course, and the interviewer's little deception was only one minor incident in a major war Collier's wages against its own employees. Several complained to me that they had been cheated out of their wages; it didn't happen to me, but then I didn't stay around long enough to get paid-anyway, I didn't sell any encyclopedias.

Another training session. Every day, again and again, one salesman is selected to play the role of salesman and two others play Mr. and Mrs. Jones. And everybody has to act excited by the show although they have heard it dozens of times.

A blonde Mama Cass is supposed to give it today. She'll smear her smile all over the poster-encrusted room; that's how she sold five sets and earned $500 last week.

"Oh, I don't want to do it." she whines. "I'm no good."

"Get your ass up here," the boss barks, poking at her chair. And she goes.

Later, after the training session, a married girl in the class tells the spy "I'd never let anybody talk to me like that." She never comes back to the office again, so the spy couldn't go to the Moonwalk Party she had said she would invite him to. He was sorry to see her go.

But Collier's wasn't, particularly. The company desperately needs attractive, stylish, very aggressive kids, but luckily there is a never-ending stream of them climbing the ladder of success who need money and are willing to do almost anything to get it.

Almost all of them seem to end up at Collier's at one time or another-like the assistant city editor of the Louisville Times, who sent the spy after Collier's. The assistant city editor had peddled encyclopedias for two weeks once, and hadn't been able to sell a single set.

Collier's relies on a bastardized version of psychology to sell its goods. To most of the prospective salesmen who were in training with me, the sales pitch we were supposed to give seemed rude and obnoxious. We were naive enough to be amazed that it could sell anything. But a student who worked for Collier's in 1968 is convinced he has an explanation: