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

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He used a great many more words with him to convince him that he did not
mean any discredit to his neighbour tradesman; but it was all one; he
would have it be, that his declining to give his said neighbour a good
character was giving him an ill character, which the other told him was
a wrong inference. However, he found that the man stood by his own
notion of it, and declined trusting the tradesman with the goods, though
he was satisfied he (the tradesman) was a sufficient man.

Upon this, he was a little uneasy, imagining that he had been the cause
of it, as indeed he had, next to the positive humour of the inquirer,
though it was not really his fault; neither was the construction the
other made of it just to his intention, for he aimed at freeing himself
from all inquiries of that nature, but found there was no prevailing
with him to understand it any other way than he did; so, to requite the
man a little in his own way, he contrived the following method: he met
with him two or three days after, and asked him if he had sold his goods
to the person his neighbour?

'No,' says he; 'you know I would not.'

'Nay,' says the other, 'I only knew you said so; I did not think you
would have acted so from what I said, nor do I think I gave you any
reason.'

'Why,' says he, 'I knew you would have given him a good character if you
could, and I knew you were too honest to do it, if you were not sure it
was just.'

'The last part I hope is true, but you might have believed me honest
too, in what I did say, that I had resolved to give no characters of any
body.'

'As to that, I took it, as any body would, to be the best and modestest
way of covering what you would not have be disclosed, namely, that you
could not speak as you would; and I also judged that you therefore chose
to say nothing.'

'Well, I can say no more but this; you are not just to me in it, and I
think you are not just to yourself neither.'

They parted again upon this, and the next day the first tradesman, who
had been so pressed to give a character of his neighbour, sent a man to
buy the parcel of goods of the other tradesman, and offering him ready
money, bought them considerably cheaper than the neighbour-tradesman was
to have given for them, besides reckoning a reasonable discount for the
time, which was four months, that the first tradesman was to have given
to his neighbour.

As soon as he had done, he went and told the neighbour-tradesman what he
had done, and the reason of it, and sold the whole parcel to him again,
giving the same four months' credit for them as the first man was to
have given, and taking the discount for time only to himself, gave him
all the advantage of the buying, and gave the first man the
mortification of knowing it all, and that the goods were not only for
the same man, but that the very tradesman, whom he would not believe
when he declined giving a character of any man in general, had trusted
him with them.

He pretended to be very angry, and to take it very ill; but the other
told him, that when he came to him for a character of the man, and he
told him honestly, that he would give no characters at all, that it was
not for any ill to his neighbour that he declined it, he ought to have
believed him; and that he hoped, when he wanted a character of any of
his neighbours again, he would not come to him for it.

This story is to my purpose in this particular, which is indeed very
significant; that it is the most difficult thing of its kind in the
world to avoid giving characters of our neighbouring tradesmen; and
that, let your reasons for it be what they will, to refuse giving a
character is giving a bad character, and is generally so taken, whatever
caution or arguments you use to the contrary.

In the next place, it is hard indeed, if an honest neighbour be in
danger of selling a large parcel of goods to a fellow, who I may know it
is not likely should be able to pay for them, though his credit may in
the common appearance be pretty good at that time; and what must I do?
If I discover the man's circumstances, which perhaps I am let into by
some accident, I say, if I discover them, the man is undone; and if I do
not, the tradesman, who is in danger of trusting him, is undone.

I confess the way is clear, if I am obliged to speak at all in the case:
the man unsound is already a bankrupt at bottom, and must fail, but the
other man is sound and firm, if this disaster does not befall him: the
first has no wound given him, but negatively; he stands where he stood
before; whereas the other is drawn in perhaps to his own ruin. In the
next place, the first is a knave, or rather thief, for he offers to buy,
and knows he cannot pay; in a word, he offers to cheat his neighbour;
and if I know it, I am so far confederate with him in the cheat.

In this case I think I am obliged to give the honest man a due caution
for his safety, if he desires my advice; I cannot say I am obliged
officiously to go out of my way to do it, unless I am any way interested
in the person--for that would be to dip into other men's affairs, which
is not my proper work; and if I should any way be misinformed of the
circumstances of the tradesman I am to speak of, and wrong him, I may be
instrumental to bring ruin causelessly upon him.

In a word, it is a very nice and critical case, and a tradesman ought to
be very sure of what he says or does in such a case, the good or evil
fate of his neighbour lying much at stake, and depending too much on the
breath of his mouth. Every part of this discourse shows how much a
tradesman's welfare depends upon the justice and courtesy of his
neighbours, and how nice and critical a thing his reputation is.

This, well considered, would always keep a tradesman humble, and show
him what need he has to behave courteously and obligingly among his
neighbours; for one malicious word from a man much meaner than himself,
may overthrow him in such a manner, as all the friends he has may not be
able to recover him; a tradesman, if possible, should never make himself
any enemies.

But if it is so fatal a thing to tradesmen to give characters of one
another, and that a tradesman should be so backward in it for fear of
hurting his neighbour, and that, notwithstanding the character given
should be just, and the particular reported of him should be true, with
how much greater caution should we act in like cases where what is
suggested is really false in fact, and the tradesman is innocent, as was
the case in the tradesman mentioned before about courting the lady. If a
tradesman may be ruined and undone by a true report, much more may he be
so by a false report, by a malicious, slandering, defaming tongue. There
is an artful way of talking of other people's reputation, which really,
however some people salve the matter, is equal, if not superior, in
malice to the worst thing they can say; this is, by rendering them
suspected, talking doubtfully of their characters, and of their conduct,
and rendering them first doubtful, and then strongly suspected. I don't
know what to say to such a man. A gentleman came to me the other day,
but I knew not what to say; I dare not say he is a good man, or that I
would trust him with five hundred pounds myself; if I should say so, I
should belie my own opinion. I do not know, indeed, he may be a good man
at bottom, but I cannot say he minds his business; if I should, I must
lie; I think he keeps a great deal of company, and the like.

Another, he is asked of the currency of his payments, and he answers
suspiciously on that side too; I know not what to say, he may pay them
at last, but he does not pay them the most currently of any man in the
street, and I have heard saucy boys huff him at his door for bills, on
his endeavouring to put them off; indeed, I must needs say I had a bill
on him a few weeks ago for a hundred pounds, and he paid me very
currently, and without any dunning, or often calling upon, but it was I
believe because I offered him a bargain at that time, and I supposed he
was resolved to put a good face upon his credit.

A tradesman, that would do as he would be done by, should carefully
avoid these people who come always about, inquiring after other
tradesman's characters. There are men who make it their business to do
thus; and as they are thereby as ready to ruin and blow up good
fair-dealing tradesmen as others, so they do actually surprise many, and
come at their characters earlier and nearer than they expect they would.

Tradesmen, I say, that will thus behave to one another, cannot be
supposed to be men of much principle, but will be apt to lay hold of any
other advantage, how unjust soever, and, indeed, will wait for an
occasion of such advantages; and where is there a tradesman, but who, if
he be never so circumspect, may some time or other give his neighbour,
who watches for his halting, advantage enough against him. When such a
malicious tradesman appears in any place, all the honest tradesmen about
him ought to join to expose him, whether they are afraid of him or no:
they should blow him among the neighbourhood, as a public nuisance, as a
common _barrettor_, or raiser of scandal; by such a general aversion to
him they would depreciate him, and bring him into so just a contempt,
that no body would keep him company, much less credit any thing he said;
and then his tongue would be no slander, and his breath would be no
blast, and nobody would either tell him any thing, or hear any thing
from him: and this kind of usage, I think, is the only way to put a stop
to a defamer; for when he has no credit of his own left, he would be
unable to hurt any of his neighbour's.

CHAPTER XVI

OF THE TRADESMAN'S ENTERING INTO PARTNERSHIP IN TRADE, AND THE MANY
DANGERS ATTENDING IT

There are some businesses which are more particularly accustomed to
partnerships than others, and some that are very seldom managed without
two, three, or four partners, and others that cannot be at all carried
on without partnership; and there are those again, in which they seldom
join partners together.

Mercers, linen-drapers, banking goldsmiths, and such considerable
trades, are often, and indeed generally, carried on in partnership; but
other meaner trades, and of less business, are carried on, generally
speaking, single-handed.

Some merchants, who carry on great business in foreign ports, have what
they call houses in those ports, where they plant and breed up their
sons and apprentices; and these are such as I hinted could not carry on
their business without partnership.

The trading in partnership is not only liable to more hazards and
difficulties, but it exposes the tradesman to more snares and
disadvantages by a great deal, than the trading with a single hand does;
and some of those snares are these:--

1. If the partner is a stirring, diligent, capable man, there is danger
of his slipping into the whole trade, and, getting in between you and
home, by his application, thrusting you at last quite out; so that you
bring in a snake into your chimney corner, which, when it is warmed and
grown vigorous, turns about at you, and hisses you out of the house. It
is with the tradesman, in the case of a diligent and active partner, as
I have already observed it was in the case of a trusty and diligent
apprentice, namely, that if the master does not appear constantly at the
head of the business, and make himself be known by his own application
and diligence to be what he is, he shall soon look to be what he is not,
that is to say, one not concerned in the business.

He will never fail to be esteemed the principal person concerned in the
shop, and in the trade, who is principally and most constantly found
there, acting at the head of every business; and be it a servant or a
partner, the master or chief loses himself extremely by the advances the
other makes of that kind; for, whenever they part again, either the
apprentice by being out of his time, or the partner by the expiration of
the articles of partnership, or by any other determination of their
agreement, the customers most certainly desire to deal with the man whom
they have so often been obliged by; and if they miss him, inquire after
and follow him.

It is true, the apprentice is the more dangerous of the two, because his
separation is supposed to be more certain, and generally sooner than the
partner; the apprentice is not known, and cannot have made his interest
among the buyers, but for perhaps a year, or a year and a half, before
his time expired: sooner than that he could not put himself in the way
of being known and observed; and then, when his time is out, he
certainly removes, unless he is taken into the shop as a partner, and
that, indeed, prolongs the time, and places the injury at a greater
distance, but still it makes it the more influencing when it comes; and
unless he is brought some how or other into the family, and becomes one
of the house, perhaps by marriage, or some other settled union with the
master, he never goes off without making a great chasm in the master's
affairs, and the more, by how much he has been more diligent and useful
in the trade, the wounds of which the master seldom if ever recovers.

If the partner were not an apprentice, but that they either came out of
their times together, or near it, or had a shop and business before, but
quitted it to come in, it may then be said that he brought part of the
trade with him, and so increased the trade when he joined with the other
in proportion to what he may be said to carry away when he went off;
this is the best thing that can be said of a partnership; and then I
have this to add, first, that the tradesman who took the partner in has
a fair field, indeed, to act in with his partner, and must take care, by
his constant attendance, due acquaintance with the customers, and
appearing in every part of the business, to maintain not his interest
only, but the appearance of his interest, in the shop or warehouse, that
he may, on every occasion, and to every customer, not only be, but be
known to be, the master and head of the business; and that the other is
at best but a partner, and not a chief partner, as, in case of his
absence and negligence, will presently be suggested; for he that chiefly
appears will be always chief partner in the eye of the customers,
whatever he is in the substance of the thing.

This, indeed, is much the same case with what is said before of a
diligent servant, and a negligent master, and therefore I forbear to
enlarge upon it; but it is so important in both cases, that indeed it
cannot well be mentioned too often: the master's full application, in
his own person, is the only answer to both. He that takes a partner only
to ease him of the toil of his business, that he may take his pleasure,
and leave the drudgery, as they call it, to the partner, should take
care not to do it till about seven years before he resolves to leave
off trade, that, at the end of the partnership, he may be satisfied to
give up the trade to his partner, or see him run away with it, and not
trouble himself about it.

But if he takes a partner at his beginning, with an intent, by their
joint enlarged stock, to enlarge their business, and so carry on a
capital trade, which perhaps neither of them were able to do by
themselves, and which is the only justifiable reason for taking a
partner at all, he must resolve then to join with his partner, not only
in stock, but in mutual diligence and application, that the trade may
flourish by their joint assistance and constant labour, as two oxen
yoked together in the same draught, by their joint assistance, draw much
more than double what they could either of them draw by their single
strength; and this, indeed, is the only safe circumstance of a
partnership: then, indeed, they are properly partners when they are
assistants to one another, whereas otherwise they are like two gamesters
striving to worm one another out, and to get the mastery in the play
they are engaged in.

The very word _partner_ imports the substance of the thing, and they
are, as such, engaged to a mutual application, or they are no more
partners, but rather one is the trading gentleman, and the other is the
trading drudge; but even then, let them depend, the drudge will carry
away the trade, and the profit too, at last. And this is the way how one
partner may honestly ruin another, and for ought I know it is the only
one: for it cannot be said but that the diligent partner acts honestly
in acting diligently, and if the other did the same, they would both
thrive alike; but if one is negligent and the other diligent, one
extravagant and expensive, the other frugal and prudent, it cannot be
said to be his fault that one is rich and the other poor--that one
increases in the stock, and the other is lessened, and at last worked
quite out of it.

As a partner, then, is taken in only for ease, to abate the first
tradesman's diligence, and take off the edge of his application, so far
a partner, let him be as honest and diligent as he will, is dangerous to
the tradesman--nay, the more honest and the more diligent he is, the
more dangerous he is, and the more a snare to the tradesman that takes
him in; and a tradesman ought to be very cautious in the adventure, for,
indeed, it is an adventure--that he be not brought in time to relax his
diligence, by having a partner, even contrary to his first intention;
for laziness is a subtle insinuating thing, and it is a sore temptation
to a man of ease and indolence to see his work done for him, and less
need of him in the business than used to be, and yet the business to go
on well too; and this danger is dormant, and lies unseen, till after
several years it rises, as it were, out of its ambuscade, and surprises
the tradesman, letting him see by his loss what his neglect has cost
him.

2. But there are other dangers in partnership, and those not a few; for
you may not only be remiss and negligent, remitting the weight of the
business upon him, and depending upon him for its being carried on, by
which he makes himself master, and brings you to be forgot in the
business; but he may be crafty too, and designing in all this, and when
he has thus brought you to be as it were _nobody_, he shall make himself
be all _somebody_ in the trade, and in that particular he by degrees
gets the capital interest, as well as stock in the trade, while the true
original of the shop, who laid the foundation of the whole business,
brought a trade to the shop, or brought commissions to the house, and
whose the business more particularly is, is secretly supplanted, and
with the concurrence of his own negligence--for without that it cannot
be--is, as it were, laid aside, and at last quite thrust out.

Thus, whether honest or dishonest, the tradesman is circumvented, and
the partnership is made fatal to him; for it was all owing to the
partnership the tradesman was diligent before, understood his business,
and kept close to it, gave up his time to it, and by employing himself,
prevented the indolence which he finds breaking insensibly upon him
afterwards, by being made easy, as they call it, in the assistance of a
partner.

3. But there are abundance of other cases which make a partnership
dangerous; for if it be so where the partner is honest and diligent, and
where he works into the heart of the business by his industry and
application, or by his craft and insinuation, what may it not be if he
proves idle and extravagant; and if, instead of working him out, he may
be said to play him out of the business, that is to say, prove wild,
expensive, and run himself and his partner out by his extravagance?

There are but too many examples of this kind; and here the honest
tradesman has the labouring oar indeed; for instead of being assisted by
a diligent industrious partner, whom on that account he took into the
trade, he proves a loose, extravagant, wild fellow, runs abroad into
company, and leaves him (for whose relief he was taken in) to bear the
burden of the whole trade, which, perhaps, was too heavy for him before,
and if it had not been so, he had not been prevailed with to have taken
in a partner at all.

This is, indeed, a terrible disappointment, and is very discouraging,
and the more so, because it cannot be recalled; for a partnership is
like matrimony, it is almost engaged in for better or for worse, till
the years expire; there is no breaking it off, at least, not easily nor
fairly, but all the inconveniences which are to be feared will follow
and stare in your face: as, first, the partner in the first place draws
out all his stock; and this sometimes is a blow fatal enough, for
perhaps the partner cannot take the whole trade upon himself, and cannot
carry on the trade upon his own stock: if he could, he would not have
taken in a partner at all. This withdrawing the stock has sometimes been
very dangerous to a partner; nay, has many times been the overthrow and
undoing of him and of the family that is left.

He that takes a partner into his trade on this account--namely, for the
support of his stock, to enjoy the assistance of so much cash to carry
on the trade, ought seriously to consider what he shall be able to do
when the partner, breaking off the partnership, shall carry all his
stock, and the improvement of it too, with him: perhaps the tradesman's
stock is not much increased, perhaps not at all; nay, perhaps the stock
is lessened, instead of being increased, and they have rather gone
backward than forward. What shall the tradesman do in such a case? And
how shall he bear the breach in his stock which that separation would
make?

Thus he is either tied down to the partner, or the partner is pinned
down to him, for he cannot separate without a breach. It is a sad truth
to many a partner, that when the partnership comes to be finished and
expired, the man would let his partner go, but the other cannot go
without tearing him all to pieces whom he leaves behind him; and yet the
partner being loose, idle, and extravagant, in a word, will ruin both if
he stays.

This is the danger of partnership in some of the best circumstances of
it; but how hazardous and how fatal is it in other cases! And how many
an honest and industrious tradesman has been prevailed with to take in a
partner to ease himself in the weight of the business, or on several
other accounts, some perhaps reasonable and prudent enough, but has
found himself immediately involved in a sea of trouble, is brought into
innumerable difficulties, concealed debts, and unknown incumbrances,
such as he could no ways extricate himself out of, and so both have been
unavoidably ruined together!

These cases are so various and so uncertain, that it is not easy to
enumerate them: but we may include the particulars in a general or two.

1. One partner may contract debts, even in the partnership itself, so
far unknown to the other, as that the other may be involved in the
danger of them, though he was not at all concerned in, or acquainted
with, them at the same time they were contracted.

2. One partner may discharge debts for both partners; and so, having a
design to be knavish, may go and receive money, and give receipts for
it, and not bringing it to account, or not bringing the money into cash,
may wrong the stock to so considerable a sum as may be to the ruin of
the other partner.

3. One partner may confess judgment, or give bonds, or current notes in
the name, and as for the account of the company, and yet convert the
effects to his own private use, leaving the stock to be answerable for
the value.

4. One partner may sell and give credit, and deliver parcels of goods to
what sum, or what quantity, he thinks fit, and to whom, and so, by his
indiscretion, or perhaps by connivance and knavery, lose to the stock
what parcel of goods he pleases, to the ruin of the other partner, and
bring themselves to be both bankrupt together.

5. Nay, to sum up all, one partner may commit acts of bankruptcy without
the knowledge of the other, and thereby subject the united stock, and
both or all the partners, to the danger of a commission, when they may
themselves know nothing of it till the blow is given, and given so as to
be too late to be retrieved.

All these, and many more, being the ill consequences and dangers of
partnership in trade, I cannot but seriously warn the honest industrious
tradesman, if possible, to stand upon his own legs, and go on upon his
own bottom; to pursue his business diligently, but cautiously, and what
we call fair and softly; not eagerly pushing to drive a vast trade, and
enjoy but half of it, rather carry on a middling business, and let it be
his own.

There may be cases, indeed, which may have their exceptions to this
general head of advice; partnerships may sometimes prove successful, and
in some particular business they are more necessary than in others, and
in some they tell us that they are absolutely necessary, though the last
I can by no means grant; but be that as it will, there are so many cases
more in number, and of great consequence too, which miscarry by the
several perplexed circumstances, differing tempers, and open knavery of
partners, that I cannot but give it as a friendly advice to all
tradesmen--if possible, to avoid partnerships of all kinds.

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