Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861




Those who thus rail at speculation are generally quite unaware that
their own inexorable demand for goods at low prices is one of the
principal efficient causes of that of which they complain. They do not
know that the capacious maw of the insatiable public is yearly filled
with millions on millions of shirtings and sheetings, and other articles
of prime necessity, without one farthing of profit to the jobber. The
outside world reason from the assumption, that the jobber might, but
will not, avoid taking considerable risks. They do not consider,
for they do not know, how entirely all is changed from the days and
circumstances in which a very small business would suffice to maintain
the merchant. They do not consider, that, an immense amount of goods
being of compulsion sold without profit, a yet other huge amount must
be so sold as to compensate for this. Nor do they consider that the
possibility of doing this is often contingent upon the buyer's carefully
calculated probability of a rise in the article he is purchasing. Many a
time is the jobber enabled and inclined to purchase largely only by the
assurance that from the time of his purchase the price will be advanced.

The _selling_ of dry-goods is another department in high art about which
the ignorance of outsiders is ineffable. I was once asked, in the way
of courtesy and good neighborhood, to call on a clergyman in our
vicinity,--which I did. Desirous of doing his part in the matter of good
fellowship and smooth conversation, he began thus:--

"Well, now, Mr. Smith, you know all about business: I suppose, if I were
to go into a store to buy goods, nineteen men out of twenty would cheat
me, if they could; wouldn't they?"

"No, Sir!" I answered, with a swelling of indignation at the injustice,
a mingling of pity for the ignorance, and a foreboding of small benefit
from the preaching of a minister of the gospel who knew so little of the
world he lived in. "No, Sir; nineteen men in twenty would not cheat you,
if they could; for the best of all reasons,--it would be dead against
their own interest."

Not a day passes but the question is asked by our youths who are being
initiated in the routine of selling goods,--"Is this honest? Is that
honest? Is it honest to mark your goods as costing more than they do
cost? Is it honest to ask one man more than you ask another? Ought not
the same price to be named to every buyer? Isn't it cheating to get
twenty-five per cent. profit? Can a man sell goods without lying? Are
men compelled to lie and cheat a little in order to earn an honest
living?" What is the reason that these questions will keep coming up?
That they can no more be laid than Banquo's ghost? Here are some of the
reasons. First, and foremost, multitudes of young men, whose parents
followed the plough, the loom, or the anvil, have taken it into their
heads, that they will neither dig, hammer, nor ply the shuttle. To soil
their hands with manual labor they cannot abide. The sphere of commerce
looks to their longing eyes a better thing than lying down in green
pastures, or than a peaceful life beside still waters, procured by
laborious farming, or by any mechanical pursuit. Clean linen and stylish
apparel are inseparably associated in their minds with an easy and
elegant life, and so they pour into our cities, and the ranks of the
merchants are filled, and over-filled, many times. Once, the merchant
had only to procure an inviting stock, and his goods sold themselves.
He did not go after customers; they came to him; and it was a matter of
favor to them to supply their wants. Now, all that is changed. There are
many more merchants than are needed; buyers are in request; and buyers
whose credit is the best, to a very great extent, dictate the prices at
which they will buy. The question is no longer, How large a profit can
I get? but, How small a profit shall I accept? The competition for
customers is so fierce that the seller hardly dares ask any profit, for
fear his more anxious neighbor will undersell him. In order to attract
customers, one thing after another has been made "a leading article,"
a bait to be offered at cost or even less than cost,--that being
oftentimes the condition on which alone the purchaser will make a
beginning of buying.

"Jenkins," cried an anxious seller, "you don't buy anything of me, and I
can sell you as cheap as any. Here's a bale of sheetings now, at eight
cents, will do you good."

"How many have you got?"

"Oh, plenty."

"Well, how many?"

"Fifteen bales."

"Well, I'll take them."

"Come in and buy something more."

"No, nothing more to-day."

There was a loss of seventy-five dollars, and he did not dare buy more.

It will be obvious that the selling a part of one's goods at less than
cost enhances the necessity of getting a profit on the rest. But how
to do this, under the sharp scrutiny of a buyer who knows that his own
success, not to say his very existence, depends upon his paying no
profit possible to be avoided,--no profit, at all events, not certainly
paid by some sharp neighbor who is competing with him for the same
trade?

"But is there anything in all this," you are asking, "to preclude the
jobber's telling the truth?" Nothing. "Anything to preclude strict
honesty?" Nothing. "Why, then, do the questions you have quoted
continually recur?"

I answer: In order to get his share of the best custom in his line, the
dry-goods jobber has taken a store in the best position in town, at a
rent of from three to fifty thousand dollars a year; has hired men and
boys at all prices, from fifty dollars to five thousand,--and enough of
these to result in an aggregate of from five to fifty thousand dollars
a year for help, without which his business cannot be done. Add to
this the usual average for store-expenses of every name, and for
the family-expenses of two, five, or seven partners, and you find a
dry-goods firm under the necessity of getting out of their year's sales
somewhere from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars profit,
before they shall have saved one cent to meet the losses of an
unfavorable season.

Now, though there is nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a
single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the
sale of his goods,--much to educate him in all manner of expedients to
baffle the inquiries of customers who would be offended, if they could
discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could
never meet his expenses. And the jobber's problem is complicated by the
folly, universally prevalent among buyers, of expecting some partiality
or peculiarity of favor over their neighbors who are just as good as
themselves. Every dry-goods jobber knows that his customer's foolish
hope and expectation often demand three absurdities of him: first, the
assurance that he has the advantage over all other jobbers in a better
stock of goods, better bought; secondly, that he has a peculiar
friendship for himself; and thirdly, that, though of other men he must
needs get a profit, in his special instance he shall ask little or
none; and that, such is his regard for him, it is a matter of no moment
whether he live in Lowell or Louisiana, in New Bedford or Nebraska, or
whether he pay New England bank-notes within thirty days, or wild-cat
money and wild lands, which may be converted into cash, with more or
less expense and loss, somewhere between nine months and nine-and-twenty
years.

And yet the uninitiated "can't understand how an honest merchant can
have two prices for the same goods." An honest man has but one price
for the same goods, and that is the cash price. All outside of that is
barter,--goods for notes. His first inquiry is, What is the market-value
of the note offered? True, he knows that many of the notes he takes
cannot be sold at all; but he also knows that the notes he is willing to
take will in the aggregate be guarantied by a reservation of one, two,
or three per cent., and that the note of the particular applicant for
credit will tend to swell or to diminish the rate; and he cannot afford
to exchange his goods for any note, except at a profit which will
guaranty its payment when due,--which, in other words, will make the
note equal in value to cash.

Now it is just because all business-contingencies cannot be worked into
an unvarying form, as regular as the multiplication-table, and as plain
to the apprehension of all men, that a vast amount of lying and of
dishonesty is imputed, where it does not exist. Merchants are much like
other men,--wise and unwise, far-sighted and short-sighted, selfish
and unselfish, honest and dishonest. But that they are as a class more
dishonest than other men is so far from being true, that I much doubt if
we should overstrain the matter, if we should affirm that they are
the most honest class of men in the community. There is much in their
training which contributes directly, and most efficiently, to this
result. Their very first lessons are in feet and inches, in pounds and
ounces, in exact calculations, in accounts and balances. Carelessness,
mistakes, inaccuracies, they are made to understand, are unpardonable
sins. The boy who goes into a store learns, for the first time, that
half a cent, a quarter of a cent, an eighth of a cent, may be a matter
of the gravest import. He finds a thorough book-keeper absolutely
refusing himself rest till he has detected an error of ten cents in a
business of six months. And every day's experience enforces the lesson.
It is giving what is due, and claiming what is due, from year's end to
year's end. Among merchants it is matter of common notoriety, that the
prompt and exact adherence to orders insisted on by merchants, and
prompt advice of receipt of business and of progress, cannot be expected
from our worthy brethren at the bar. (The few honorable exceptions are
respectfully informed that they are not referred to.) We do not expect
them to weigh or measure the needless annoyance to which they often
subject us, because they have never been, like ourselves, trained to
the use of weights and measures; and therefore we are not willing to
stigmatize them as dishonest, though they do, in fact, often steal
our time and strength and patience, by withholding an answer to a
business-letter.

None but those who are in the business know the assiduous attention with
which the dry-goods jobber follows up his customers. None but they know
the urgent necessity of doing this. The jobber may have travelled a
thousand miles to make his customer's acquaintance, and to prevail upon
him to come to Boston to make his purchases; and some neighbor, who
boards at the hotel he happens to make his resting-place, lights upon
him, shows him attention, tempts him with bargains not to be refused,
prevails upon him to make the bulk of his purchases of him, before
his first acquaintance even hears of his arrival. To guard against
disappointments such as this, the jobber sends his salesmen to live at
hotels, haunts the hotels himself, studies the hotel-register far more
assiduously than he can study his own comfort, or the comfort of his
wife and children. Of one such jobber it was said, facetiously,--"He
goes the round of all the hotels every morning with a lantern, to wake
up his customers." I had an errand one day at noon to such a devotee.
Inquiring for him in the counting-room, I was told by his book-keeper
to follow the stairs to the top of the store, and I should find him. I
mounted flight after flight to the attic, and there I found, not only
the man, but also one or two of his customers, surrounding a huge
packing-case, upon which they had extemporized a dinner, cold turkey
and tongue, and other edibles, taken standing, with plenty of fun for a
dessert. The next time we happened to meet, I said,--"So you take not
only time, but also customers, by the forelock!"

"Yes, to be sure," was his answer; "let 'em go to their hotel to dinner
in the middle of a bill, and somebody lights upon 'em, and carries 'em
off to buy elsewhere; or they begin to remember that it is a long way
home, feel homesick, slip off to New York as being so far on the way,
and that's the last you see of 'em. No, we're bound to see 'em through,
and no let-up till they've bought all they've got on their memorandum."

We have not yet touched the question of credit. To whom shall the jobber
sell his goods? It is the question of questions. Many a man who has
bought well, who in other respects has sold well, who possessed all
the characteristics which recommend a man to the confidence and to the
good-will of his fellows, has made shipwreck of his fortunes because of
his inability to meet this question. He sold his goods to men who never
paid him. To say that in this the most successful jobbers are governed
by an instinct, by an intuitive conviction which is superior to all
rules of judgment, would be to allege what it would be difficult to
prove. It would be less difficult to maintain that every competent
merchant, however unconscious of the fact, has a standard of judgment by
which he tries each applicant for credit. There are characteristics of
men who can safely be credited, entirely familiar to his thoughts. He
looks upon the man and instantly feels that he is or is not the man
for him. He thinks his decision an instinct, or an intuition, because,
through much practice, these mental operations have become so rapid as
to defy analysis. Not being infallible, he sometimes mistakes; and when
he so mistakes, he will be sure to say,--I made that loss because I
relied too much upon this characteristic, or because I did not allow
its proper weight to the absence of some other,--because I thought his
shrewdness or his honesty, his enterprise or his economy, would save
him: implying that he had observed some non-conformity to his standard,
but had relied upon some excellency in excess to make up for it.

What are the perplexities which beset the question, To whom shall the
jobber sell his goods? They are manifold; and some of them are peculiar
to our country. Our territory is very extensive; our population very
heterogeneous; the economy and close calculation which recommend a man
in Massachusetts may discredit him in Louisiana. The very countenance is
often a sure indication of character and of capacity, when it is one of
a class and a region whose peculiarities we thoroughly understand;
but coming to us from other classes and regions, we are often at
fault,--more especially in these latter days, when all strong-mindedness
is presumed to be foreshadowed in a stiff beard. Time was when something
could be inferred from a lip, a mouth, a chin,--when character could be
found in the contour and color of a cheek; but that time has passed.
The time was, when, among a homogeneous people, a few time-honored
characteristics were both relied on and insisted on: for example, good
parentage, good moral character, a thorough training, and superior
capacity, joined to industry, economy, sound judgment, and good manners.
But Young America has learned to make light of some of these, and to
dispense altogether with others of them.

Once the buyer was required to prove himself an honest, worthy, and
capable man. If he wanted credit, he must humbly sue for it, and prove
himself deserving of it; and no man thought of applying for it who was
not prepared to furnish irrefragable evidence. Once, a reference to some
respectable acquaintance would serve the purpose; and neighbors held
themselves bound to tell all they knew. The increase of merchants, and
fierce competition for customers, have changed this. Men now
regard their knowledge of other men as a part of their capital or
stock-in-trade. Their knowledge has been acquired at much cost of labor
and money; and they hold themselves absolved from all obligation to
give away what they have thus expensively acquired. Moreover, their
confidence has sometimes been betrayed, and their free communications
have been remorselessly used to their disadvantage. Alas, it cannot
be denied that even dry-goods jobbers, with all their extraordinary
endowments, are not quite perfect! for some of them will "state the
thing that is not," and others "convey" their neighbor's property into
their own coffers: men who prefer gain to godliness, and mistake much
money for respectability.

There are very few men, in certain sections of the country, who will
absolutely refuse to give a letter of introduction to a neighbor on the
simple ground of ill-desert. Men dread the ill-will of their neighbor,
and particularly the ill-will of an unscrupulous neighbor; so, when such
a neighbor asks a letter, they give it. I remember such a one bringing a
dozen or more letters, some of which contained the highest commendation.
The writer of one of these letters sent a private note, through the
mail, warning one of the persons addressed against the bearer of his own
commendatory letter. Those who had no warning sold, and lost. It would
be difficult to find a man, however unworthy, who could not, from some
quarter, obtain a very respectable letter of introduction. One of the
greatest rogues that ever came to Boston brought letters from two of
the foremost houses in New York to two firms second to none in Boston.
Neither of these gentlemen was in fault in the matter; the train had
been laid by some obliging cousin in a banking-house in London.

In making up our account of the difficulties with which a dry-goods
jobber has to deal, in conducting a successful business, it must be
distinctly stated, that on no man can he count for information which
will, however remotely or slightly, compromise the interest of the one
inquired of. Never, perhaps, was it so true as now, that "the seller has
need of a hundred eyes." The competent jobber uses his eyes first of all
upon the person of the man who desires to buy of him. He questions him
about himself, with such directness or indirectness as instinct and
experience dictate. He learns to discriminate between the sensitiveness
of the high-toned honest man and the sensitiveness of the rogue. Many
men of each class are inclined to resent and resist the catechism.
Strange as it may seem, the very men who would inexorably refuse a
credit to those who should decline to answer their inquiries are the men
most inclined to resent any inquiry about themselves. While they demand
the fullest and most particular information from their customers,
they wonder that others will not take them on their own estimate of
themselves.

The jobber next directs his attention to the buyer's knowledge of goods:
of their quality, their style, their worth in market, and their fitness
for his own market; all of which will come to light, as he offers to
his notice the various articles he has for sale. He will improve the
opportunity to draw him out in general conversation, so guiding it as to
touch many points of importance, and yet not so as to betray a want of
confidence. He sounds him as to his knowledge of other merchants at home
and in the city; takes the names of his references,--of several, if he
can get them; puts himself in communication with men who know him, both
at his home and in the city. If he can harmonize the information derived
from all these sources into a consistent and satisfactory whole, he will
then do his utmost to secure his customer, both by selling him his goods
at a profit so small that he need have little fear of any neighbor's
underselling him, and also by granting every possible accommodation as
to the time and manner of payment.

A moderately thoughtful man will by this time begin to think the
elements of toil and of perplexity already suggested sufficient for the
time and strength of any man, and more than he would wish to undertake.
But experience alone could teach him in how many ways indulged customers
can and do manage to make the profit they pay so small, and the toil
and vexation they occasion so great, that the jobber is often put upon
weighing the question, Should I not be richer without them? Thus, for
example, some of them will affect to doubt that the jobber wishes to
sell to them, and propose, as a test, that he shall let them have
some choice article at the cost, or at less than the cost, now on one
pretext, and now on another,--intimating an indisposition to buy, if
they cannot be indulged in that one thing. If they carry their point,
that exceptional price is thenceforth claimed as the rule. Another day
the concession will be asked on something else; and by extending this
game so as to include a number of jobbers, these shrewd buyers will
manage to lay in an assorted stock on which there will have been little
or no profit to the sellers. To cap the climax of vexation, these
persons will very probably come in, after not many days, and propose
to cash their notes at double interest off. Only an official of
the Inquisition could turn the thumb-screw so many times, and so
remorselessly.

But we have yet to consider the collection of debts. The jobber who has
not capital so ample as to buy only for cash is expected invariably to
settle his purchases by giving his note, payable at bank on a fixed day.
He pays it when due, or fails. Not so with his customers: multitudes
of them shrink from giving a note payable at bank, and some altogether
refuse to do so. They wish to buy on open account; or to give a note to
be paid at maturity, if convenient,--otherwise not. The number of really
prompt and punctual men, as compared with those who are otherwise, is
very small. The number of those who never fail is smaller still. The
collection-laws are completely alike, probably, in no two States. Some
of them appear to have been constructed for the accommodation, not of
honest creditors, but of dishonest debtors. In others, they are such as
to put each jobber in fear of every other,--a first attachment taking
all the property, if the debt be large enough, leaving little or
nothing, usually, for those who have been willing to give the debtor
such indulgence as might enable him to pay in full, were it granted by
all his creditors.

No jobber can open his letters in the morning in the certainty of
finding no tidings of a failure. No jobber, leaving his breakfast-table,
can assure his wife and children, sick or well, that he will dine or sup
with them; any one of a dozen railroad-trains may, for aught he knows,
be sweeping him away to some remote point, to battle with the mischances
of trade, the misfortunes of honest men, or the knavery of rogues and
the meshes of the law. Once in the cars, he casts his eye around in
uneasy expectation of finding some one or more of his neighbors bound on
the same errand. While yet peering over the seats in front of him, he is
unpleasantly startled by a slap on the shoulder, and, "Ah, John!
bound East? What's in the wind? Any ducks in these days?"
"Why,--yes,--no,--that is, I'm going down along,--little uncertain how
far,--depends on circumstances." "So, so,--I see,--mum's the word."
Well, neither is quite ready to trust the other,--neither quite ready to
know the worst; so long as a blow is suspended, it may not fall; and so,
with desperate exertions, they change the subject, converse on things
indifferent,--or subside into more or less moody meditations upon their
respective chances and prospects.

Any jobber who has seen service will tell you stories without number of
these vexatious experiences, sometimes dashed with the comical in no
common measure. He will tell you of how they arrived at the last town
on the railroad, some six or seven of them; of how not a word had been
lisped of their destination; of the stampede from the railroad-station
to the tavern; of the spirited bids for horses and wagons; of the
chop-fallen disappointment of the man for whom no vehicle remained; of
his steeple-chase a-bareback; and of their various successes with writs
and officers, in their rush for the store of the delinquent debtor. Of
three such Jehus, the story goes, that, two of them having bought the
monopoly of the inside of the only vehicle, and, in so doing, as they
thought, having utterly precluded any chance for the third, their
dauntless competitor instantly mounted with the driver, commenced
negotiations for the horse, which speedily resulted in a purchase, and
thereupon detached the horse from the vehicle, drove on, and effected a
first attachment, which secured his debt.

The occurrence of "a bad year" compels many a jobber to abandon his
store and home for one, two, or three months together, and visit his
customers scattered all over the land, to make collections. Then it is
that the power of persuasion, if possessed, is brought into efficient
use; discrimination, too, is demanded; good judgment, and power of
combination. For a debt that cannot be paid in money may possibly be
paid partly in money, or in merchandise of some sort, and in part
secured; and, among the securities offered, to choose those which will
involve the least delay is generally no easy matter.

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