The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) by Daniel Defoe

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I cannot but mention one thing here (though I purpose to give you one
discourse on that subject by itself), namely, the great and
indispensable obligation there is upon a tradesman always to acquaint
his wife with the truth of his circumstances, and not to let her run on
in ignorance, till she falls with him down the precipice of an
unavoidable ruin--a thing no prudent woman would do, and therefore will
never take amiss a husband's plainness in that particular case. But I
reserve this to another place, because I am rather directing my
discourse at this time to the tradesman at his beginning, and, as it may
be supposed, unmarried.

Next to the expensive dressing, I place the expensive keeping company,
as one thing fatal to a tradesman, and which, if he would be a complete
tradesman, he should avoid with the utmost diligence. It is an agreeable
thing to be seen in good company; for a man to see himself courted and
valued, and his company desired by men of fashion and distinction, is
very pleasing to any young tradesman, and it is really a snare which a
young tradesman, if he be a man of sense, can very hardly resist. There
is in itself indeed nothing that can be objected against, or is not very
agreeable to the nature of man, and that not to his vicious part merely,
but even to his best faculties; for who would not value himself upon
being, as above, rendered acceptable to men both in station and figure
above themselves? and it is really a piece of excellent advice which a
learned man gave to his son, always to keep company with men above
himself, not with men below himself.

But take me now to be talking, as I really am, not to the man merely,
but to his circumstances, if he were a man of fortune, and had the view
of great things before him, it would hold good; but if he is a young
tradesman, such as I am now speaking of, who is newly entered into
business, and must depend upon his said business for his subsistence and
support, and hopes to raise himself by it--I say, if I am talking to
such a one, I must say to him, that keeping company as above, with men
superior to himself in knowledge, in figure, and estate, is not his
business; for, first, as such conversation must necessarily take up a
great deal of his time, so it ordinarily must occasion a great expense
of money, and both destructive of his prosperity; nay, sometimes the
first may be as fatal to him as the last, and it is oftentimes true in
that sense of trade, that while by keeping company he is drawn out of
his business, his absence from his shop or warehouse is the most fatal
to him; and while he spends one crown in the tavern, he spends forty
crowns' worth of his time; and with this difference, too, which renders
it the worse to the tradesman, namely, that the money may be recovered,
and gotten up again, but the time cannot. For example--

1. Perhaps in that very juncture a person comes to his warehouse.
Suppose the tradesman to be a warehouse-keeper, who trades by
commission, and this person, being a clothier in the country, comes to
offer him his business, the commission of which might have been worth to
him thirty to forty or fifty pounds per annum; but finding him abroad,
or rather, not finding him at home and in his business, goes to another,
and fixes with him at once. I once knew a dealer lose such an occasion
as this, for an afternoon's pleasure, he being gone a-fishing into
Hackney-marsh. This loss can never be restored, this expense of time was
a fatal expense of money; and no tradesman will deny but they find many
such things as this happen in the course of trade, either to themselves
or others.

2. Another tradesman is invited to dinner by his great friend; for I am
now speaking chiefly upon the subject of keeping high company, and what
the tradesman sometimes suffers by it; it is true, that there he finds a
most noble entertainment, the person of quality, and that professes a
friendship for him, treats him with infinite respect, is fond of him,
makes him welcome as a prince--for I am speaking of the acquaintance as
really valuable and good in itself--but then, see it in its
consequences. The tradesman on this occasion misses his 'Change, that
is, omits going to the Exchange for that one day only, and not being
found there, a merchant with whom he was in treaty for a large parcel of
foreign goods, which would have been to his advantage to have bought,
sells them to another more diligent man in the same way; and when he
comes home, he finds, to his great mortification, that he has lost a
bargain that would have been worth a hundred pounds buying; and now
being in want of the goods, he is forced to entreat his neighbour who
bought them to part with some of them at a considerable advance of
price, and esteem it a favour too. Who now paid dearest for the visit to
a person of figure?--the gentleman, who perhaps spent twenty shillings
extraordinary to give him a handsome dinner, or the tradesman who lost a
bargain worth a hundred pounds buying to go to eat it?

3. Another tradesman goes to 'Change in the ordinary course of his
business, intending to speak with some of the merchants, his customers,
as is usual, and get orders for goods, or perhaps an appointment to come
to his warehouse to buy; but a snare of the like kind falls in his way,
and a couple of friends, who perhaps have little or no business, at
least with him, lay hold of him, and they agree to go off Change to the
tavern together. By complying with this invitation, he omits speaking to
some of those merchants, as above, who, though he knew nothing of their
minds, yet it had been his business to have shown himself to them, and
have put himself in the way of their call; but omitting this, he goes
and drinks a bottle of wine, as above, and though he stays but an hour,
or, as we say, but a little while, yet unluckily, in that interim, the
merchant, not seeing him on the Exchange, calls at his warehouse as he
goes from the Exchange, but not finding him there either, he goes to
another warehouse, and gives his orders to the value of L300 or L400, to
a more diligent neighbour of the same business; by which he (the
warehouse-keeper) not only loses the profit of selling that parcel, or
serving that order, but the merchant is shown the way to his neighbour's
warehouse, who, being more diligent than himself, fails not to cultivate
his interest, obliges him with selling low, even to little or no gain,
for the first parcel; and so the unhappy tradesman loses not his selling
that parcel only, but loses the very customer, which was, as it were,
his peculiar property before.

All these things, and many more such, are the consequences of a
tradesman's absence from his business; and I therefore say, the expense
of time on such light occasions as these, is one of the worst sorts of
extravagance, and the most fatal to the tradesman, because really he
knows not what he loses.

Above all things, the tradesman should take care not to be absent in the
season of business, as I have mentioned above; for the warehouse-keeper
to be absent from 'Change, which is his market, or from his warehouse,
at the times when the merchants generally go about to buy, he had better
be absent all the rest of the day.

I know nothing is more frequent, than for the tradesman, when company
invites, or an excursion from business presses, to say, 'Well, come, I
have nothing to do; there is no business to hinder, there is nothing
neglected, I have no letters to write;' and the like; and away he goes
to take the air for the afternoon, or to sit and enjoy himself with a
friend--all of them things innocent and lawful in themselves; but here
is the crisis of a tradesman's prosperity. In that very moment business
presents, a valuable customer comes to buy, an unexpected bargain offers
to be sold; another calls to pay money; and the like: nay, I would
almost say, but that I am loth to concern the devil in more evils than
he is guilty of--that the devil frequently draws a man out of his
business when something extraordinary is just at hand for his advantage.

But not, as I have said, to charge the devil with what he is not guilty
of, the tradesman is generally his own tempter; his head runs off from
his business by a secret indolence; company, and the pleasure of being
well received among gentlemen, is a cursed snare to a young tradesman,
and carries him away from his business, for the mere vanity of being
caressed and complimented by men who mean no ill, and perhaps know not
the mischief they do to the man they show respect to; and this the young
tradesman cannot resist, and that is in time his undoing.

The tradesman's pleasure should be in his business, his companions
should be his books; and if he has a family, he makes his excursions up
stairs, and no farther; when he is there, a bell or a call brings him
down; and while he is in his parlour, his shop or his warehouse never
misses him; his customers never go away unserved, his letters never come
in and are unanswered. None of my cautions aim at restraining a
tradesman from diverting himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or
keeping company with his wife and children: there are so few tradesmen
ruin themselves that way, and so few ill consequences happen upon an
uxorious temper, that I will not so much as rank it with the rest; nor
can it be justly called one of the occasions of a tradesman's disasters;
on the contrary, it is too often that the want of a due complacency
there, the want of taking delight there, estranges the man from not his
parlour only, but his warehouse and shop, and every part of business
that ought to engross both his mind and his time. That tradesman who
does not delight in his family, will never long delight in his business;
for, as one great end of an honest tradesman's diligence is the support
of his family, and the providing for the comfortable subsistence of his
wife and children, so the very sight of, and above all, his tender and
affectionate care for his wife and children, is the spur of his
diligence; that is, it puts an edge upon his mind, and makes him hunt
the world for business, as hounds hunt the woods for their game. When he
is dispirited, or discouraged by crosses and disappointments, and ready
to lie down and despair, the very sight of his family rouses him again,
and he flies to his business with a new vigour; 'I must follow my
business,' says he, 'or we must all starve, my poor children must
perish;' in a word, he that is not animated to diligence by the very
sight and thought of his wife and children being brought to misery and
distress, is a kind of a deaf adder that no music will charm, or a
Turkish mute that no pity can move: in a word, he is a creature not to
be called human, a wretch hardened against all the passions and
affections that nature has furnished to other animals; and as there is
no rhetoric of use to such a kind of man as that, so I am not talking to
such a one, he must go among the incurables; for, where nature cannot
work, what can argument assist?

FOOTNOTES:

[19] [Now, as in Defoe's time, a common observer is apt to be impressed
with the idea, that expenses, with a large part of the community, exceed
gains. Certainly, this is true at all times with a certain portion of
society, but probably at no time with a large portion. There is a
tendency to great self-deception in all such speculations; and no one
ever thinks of bringing them to the only true test--statistical facts.
The reader ought, therefore, to pay little attention to the complaints
in the text, as to an increased extravagance in the expenses of
tradesmen, and only regard the general recommendation, and the reasons
by which that recommendation is enforced, to live within income.]

[20] [There can be little doubt, that the calculation of this
experienced gentleman is grossly inconsistent with the truth.
Nevertheless, this part of Defoe's work contains some curious traits of
manners, which are probably not exaggerated]

[21] [Defoe, from his having been employed for several years in Scotland
at the time of the Union, must have well known how rare was then the use
of white or wheaten bread in that country.]

CHAPTER XI

OF THE TRADESMAN'S MARRYING TOO SOON

It was a prudent provision which our ancestors made in the indenture of
tradesmen's apprentices, that they should not contract matrimony during
their apprenticeship; and they bound it with a penalty that was then
thought sufficient. However, custom has taken off the edge of it since;
namely, that they who did thus contract matrimony should forfeit their
indentures, that is to say, should lose the benefit of their whole
service, and not be made free.

Doubtless our forefathers were better acquainted with the advantages of
frugality than we are, and saw farther into the desperate consequences
of expensive living in the beginning of a tradesman's setting out into
the world than we do; at least, it is evident they studied more and
practised more of the prudential part in those cases, than we do.

Hence we find them very careful to bind their youth under the strongest
obligations they could, to temperance, modesty, and good husbandry, as
the grand foundations of their prosperity in trade, and to prescribe to
them such rules and methods of frugality and good husbandry, as they
thought would best conduce to their prosperity.

Among these rules this was one of the chief--namely, 'that they should
not wed before they had sped?' It is an old homely rule, and coarsely
expressed, but the meaning is evident, that a young beginner should
never marry too soon. While he was a servant, he was bound from it as
above; and when he had his liberty, he was persuaded against it by all
the arguments which indeed ought to prevail with a considering
man--namely, the expenses that a family necessarily would bring with it,
and the care he ought to take to be able to support the expense before
he brought it upon himself.

On this account it is, I say, our ancestors took more of their youth
than we now do; at least, I think, they studied well the best methods of
thriving, and were better acquainted with the steps by which a young
tradesman ought to be introduced into the world than we are, and of the
difficulties which those people would necessarily involve themselves in,
who, despising those rules and methods of frugality, involved themselves
in the expense of a family before they were in a way of gaining
sufficient to support it.

A married apprentice will always make a repenting tradesman; and those
stolen matches, a very few excepted, are generally attended with
infinite broils and troubles, difficulties, and cross events, to carry
them on at first by way of intrigue, to conceal them afterwards under
fear of superiors, to manage after that to keep off scandal, and
preserve the character as well of the wife as of the husband; and all
this necessarily attended with a heavy expense, even before the young
man is out of his time; before he has set a foot forward, or gotten a
shilling in the world; so that all this expense is out of his original
stock, even before he gets it, and is a sad drawback upon him when it
comes.

Nay, this unhappy and dirty part is often attended with worse
consequences still; for this expense coming upon him while he is but a
servant, and while his portion, or whatever it is to be called, is not
yet come into his hand, he is driven to terrible exigencies to supply
this expense. If his circumstances are mean, and his trade mean, he is
frequently driven to wrong his master, and rob his shop or his till for
money, if he can come at it: and this, as it begins in madness,
generally ends in destruction; for often he is discovered, exposed, and
perhaps punished, and so the man is undone before he begins. If his
circumstances are good, and he has friends that are able, and
expectations that are considerable, then his expense is still the
greater, and ways and means are found out, or at least looked for, to
supply the expense, and conceal the fact, that his friends may not know
it, till he has gotten the blessing he expects into his hands, and is
put in a way to stand upon his own legs; and then it comes out, with a
great many grieving aggravations to a parent to find himself tricked and
defeated in the expectations of his son's marrying handsomely, and to
his advantage; instead of which, he is obliged to receive a dish-clout
for a daughter-in-law, and see his family propagated by a race of
beggars, and yet perhaps as haughty, as insolent, and as expensive, as
if she had blessed the family with a lady of fortune, and brought a fund
with her to have supported the charge of her posterity.

When this happens, the poor young man's case is really deplorable.
Before he is out of his time, he is obliged to borrow of friends, if he
has any, on pretence his father does not make him a sufficient
allowance, or he trenches upon his master's cash, which perhaps, he
being the eldest apprentice, is in his hands; and this he does,
depending, that when he is out of his time, and his father gives him
wherewith to set up, he will make good the deficiency; and all this
happens accordingly so that his reputation as to his master is
preserved, and he comes off clear as to dishonesty in his trust.

But what a sad chasm does it make in his fortune! I knew a certain young
tradesman, whose father, knowing nothing of his son's measures, gave him
L2000 to set up with, straining himself to the utmost for the well
introducing his son into the world; but who, when he came to set up,
having near a year before married the servant-maid of the house where he
lodged, and kept her privately at a great expense, had above L600 of his
stock already wasted and sunk, before he began for himself; the
consequence of which was, that going in partner with another young man,
who had likewise L2000 to begin with, he was, instead of half of the
profits, obliged to make a private article to accept of a third of the
trade; and the beggar-wife proving more expensive, by far, than the
partner's wife (who married afterwards, and doubled his fortune), the
first young man was obliged to quit the trade, and with his remaining
stock set up by himself; in which case his expenses continuing, and his
stock being insufficient, he sank gradually, and then broke, and died
poor. In a word, he broke the heart of his father, wasted what he had,
and could never recover it, and at last it broke his own heart too.

But I shall bring it a little farther. Suppose the youth not to act so
grossly neither; not to marry in his apprenticeship, not to be forced to
keep a wife privately, and eat the bread he never got; but suppose him
to be entered upon the world, that he has set up, opened shop, or fitted
up his warehouse, and is ready to trade, the next thing, in the ordinary
course of the world, at this time is _a wife_; nay, I have met with some
parents, who have been indiscreet enough themselves to prompt their sons
to marry as soon as they are set up; and the reason they give for it is,
the wickedness of the age, that youth are drawn in a hundred ways to
ruinous matches or debaucheries, and are so easily ruined by the mere
looseness of their circumstances, that it is needful to marry them to
keep them at home, and to preserve them diligent, and bind them close to
their business.

This, be it just or not, is a bad cure of an ill disease; it is ruining
the young man to make him sober, and making him a slave for life to make
him diligent. Be it that the wife he shall marry is a sober, frugal,
housewifely woman, and that nothing is to be laid to her charge but the
mere necessary addition of a family expense, and that with the utmost
moderation, yet, at the best, he cripples his fortune, stock-starves his
business, and brings a great expense upon himself at first, before, by
his success in trade, he had laid up stock enough to support the charge.

First, it is reasonable to suppose, that at his beginning in the world
he cannot expect to get so good a portion with a wife, as he might after
he had been set up a few years, and by his diligence and frugality,
joined to a small expense in house-keeping, had increased both his stock
in trade and the trade itself; then he would be able to look forward
boldly, and would have some pretence for insisting on a fortune, when he
could make out his improvements in trade, and show that he was both
able to maintain a wife, and able to live without her. When a young
tradesman in Holland or Germany goes a-courting, I am told the first
question the young woman asks of him, or perhaps her friends for her,
is, 'Are you able to pay the charges?' that is to say, in English, 'Are
you able to keep a wife when you have got her?' The question is a little
Gothic indeed, and would be but a kind of gross way of receiving a lover
here, according to our English good breeding; but there is a great deal
of reason in the inquiry, that must be confessed; and he that is not
able to _pay the charges_, should never begin the journey; for, be the
wife what she will, the very state of life that naturally attends the
marrying a woman, brings with it an expense so very considerable, that a
tradesman ought to consider very well of it before he engages.

But it is to be observed, too, that abundance of young tradesmen,
especially in England, not only marry early, but by the so marrying they
are obliged to take up with much less fortunes in their haste, than when
they allow themselves longer time of consideration. As it stands now,
generally speaking, the wife and the shop make their first show
together; but how few of these early marriages succeed--how hard such a
tradesman finds it to stand, and support the weight that attends it--I
appeal to the experience of those, who having taken this wrong step, and
being with difficulty got over it, are yet good judges of that
particular circumstance in others that come after them.[22]

I know it is a common cry that is raised against the woman, when her
husband fails in business, namely, that it is the wife has ruined him;
it is true, in some particular cases it may be so, but in general it is
wrong placed--they may say marrying has ruined the man, when they cannot
say his wife has done it, for the woman was not in fault, but her
husband.

When a tradesman marries, there are necessary consequences, I mean of
expenses, which the wife ought not be charged with, and cannot be made
accountable for--such as, first, furnishing the house; and let this be
done with the utmost plainness, so as to be decent; yet it must be done,
and this calls for ready money, and that ready money by so much
diminishes his stock in trade; nor is the wife at all to be charged in
this case, unless she either put him to more charge than was needful, or
showed herself dissatisfied with things needful, and required
extravagant gaiety and expense. Secondly, servants, if the man was
frugal before, it may be he shifted with a shop, and a servant in it, an
apprentice, or journeyman, or perhaps without one at first, and a
lodging for himself, where he kept no other servant, and so his expenses
went on small and easy; or if he was obliged to take a house because of
his business and the situation of his shop, he then either let part of
the house out to lodgers, keeping himself a chamber in it, or at the
worst left it unfurnished, and without any one but a maid-servant to
dress his victuals, and keep the house clean; and thus he goes on when a
bachelor, with a middling expense at most.

But when he brings home a wife, besides the furnishing his house, he
must have a formal house-keeping, even at the very first; and as
children come on, more servants, that is, maids, or nurses, that are as
necessary as the bread he eats--especially if he multiplies apace, as he
ought to suppose he may--in this case let the wife be frugal and
managing, let her be unexceptionable in her expense, yet the man finds
his charge mount high, and perhaps too high for his gettings,
notwithstanding the additional stock obtained by her portion. And what
is the end of this but inevitable decay, and at last poverty and ruin?

Nay, the more the woman is blameless, the more certain is his overthrow,
for if it was an expense that was extravagant and unnecessary, and that
his wife ran him out by her high living and gaiety, he might find ways
to retrench, to take up in time, and prevent the mischief that is in
view. A woman may, with kindness and just reasoning, be easily
convinced, that her husband cannot maintain such an expense as she now
lives at; and let tradesmen say what they will, and endeavour to excuse
themselves as much as they will, by loading their wives with the blame
of their miscarriage, as I have known some do, and as old father Adam,
though in another case, did before them, I must say so much in the
woman's behalf at a venture. It will be very hard to make me believe
that any woman, that was not fit for Bedlam, if her husband truly and
timely represented his case to her, and how far he was or was not able
to maintain the expense of their way of living, would not comply with
her husband's circumstances, and retrench her expenses, rather than go
on for a while, and come to poverty and misery. Let, then, the tradesman
lay it early and seriously before his wife, and with kindness and
plainness tell her his circumstances, or never let him pretend to charge
her with being the cause of his ruin. Let him tell her how great his
annual expense is; for a woman who receives what she wants as she wants
it, that only takes it with one hand, and lays it out with another, does
not, and perhaps cannot, always keep an account, or cast up how much it
comes to by the year. Let her husband, therefore, I say, tell her
honestly how much his expense for her and himself amounts to yearly; and
tell her as honestly, that it is too much for him, that his income in
trade will not answer it; that he goes backward, and the last year his
family expenses amounted to so much, say L400--for that is but an
ordinary sum now for a tradesman to spend, whatever it has been esteemed
formerly--and that his whole trade, though he made no bad debts, and had
no losses, brought him in but L320 the whole year, so that he was L80
that year a worse man than he was before, that this coming year he had
met with a heavy loss already, having had a shopkeeper in the country
broke in his debt L200, and that he offered but eight shillings in the
pound, so that he should lose L120 by him, and that this, added to the
L80 run out last year, came to L200, and that if they went on thus, they
should be soon reduced.

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