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

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And yet there is much to be said for setting goods out to the best
advantage too; for in some goods, if they are not well dressed, well
pressed, and packed, the goods are not really shown in a true light;
many of our woollen manufactures, if brought to market rough and
undressed, like a piece of cloth not carried to the fulling or thicking
mill, it does not show itself to a just advantage, nay, it does not show
what it really is; and therefore such works as may be proper for so far
setting it forth to the eye may be necessary. For example:

The cloths, stuffs, serges, druggets, &c, which are brought to market in
the west and northern parts of England, and in Norfolk, as they are
bought without the dressing and making up, it may be said of them that
they are brought to market unfinished, and they are bought there again
by the wholesale dealers, or cloth-workers, tuckers, and merchants, and
they carry them to their warehouses and workhouses, and there they go
through divers operations again, and are finished for the market; nor,
indeed, are they fit to be shown till they are so; the stuffs are in the
grease, the cloth is in the oil, they are rough and foul, and are not
dressed, and consequently not finished; and as our buyers do not
understand them till they are so dressed, it is no proper finishing the
goods to bring them to market before--they are not, indeed, properly
said to be made till that part is done.

Therefore I cannot call all those setting-out of goods to be knavish and
false; but when the goods, like a false shilling, are to be set out with
fraud and false colours, and made smooth and shining to delude the eye,
there, where they are so, it is really a fraud; and though in some cases
it extremely differs, yet that does not excuse the rest by any means.

The packers and hot-pressers, tuckers, and cloth-workers, are very
necessary people in their trades, and their business is to set goods off
to the best advantage; but it may be said, too, that their true and
proper business is to make the goods show what really they are, and
nothing else. It is true, as above, that in the original dress, as a
piece of cloth or drugget, or stuff, comes out of the hand of the maker,
it does not show itself as it really is, nor what it should and ought to
show: thus far these people are properly called finishers of the
manufactures, and their work is not lawful only, but it is a doing
justice to the manufacture.

But if, by the exuberances of their art, they set the goods in a false
light, give them a false gloss, a finer and smoother surface than really
they have: this is like a painted jade, who puts on a false colour upon
her tawny skin to deceive and delude her customers, and make her seem
the beauty which she has no just claim to the name of.

So far as art is thus used to show these goods to be what they really
are not, and deceive the buyer, so far it is a trading fraud, which is
an unjustifiable practice in business, and which, like coining of
counterfeit money, is making goods to pass for what they really are not;
and is done for the advantage of the person who puts them off, and to
the loss of the buyer, who is cheated and deceived by the fraud.

The making false lights, sky-lights, trunks, and other contrivances, to
make goods look to be what they are not, and to deceive the eye of the
buyer, these are all so many brass shillings washed over, in order to
deceive the person who is to take them, and cheat him of his money; and
so far these false lights are really criminal, they are cheats in trade,
and made to deceive the world; to make deformity look like beauty, and
to varnish over deficiencies; to make goods which are ordinary in
themselves appear fine; to make things which are ill made look well; in
a word, they are cheats in themselves, but being legitimated by custom,
are become a general practice; the honestest tradesmen have them, and
make use of them; the buyer knows of it, and suffers himself to be so
imposed upon; and, in a word, if it be a cheat, as no doubt it is, they
tell us that yet it is a universal cheat, and nobody trades without it;
so custom and usage make it lawful, and there is little to be said but
this, _Si populus vult decepi, decipiatur_--if the people will be
cheated, let them be cheated, or they shall be cheated.

I come next to the setting out their goods to the buyer by the help of
their tongue; and here I must confess our _shop rhetoric_ is a strange
kind of speech; it is to be understood in a manner by itself; it is to
be taken, not in a latitude only, but in such a latitude as indeed
requires as many flourishes to excuse it, as it contains flourishes in
itself.

The end of it, indeed, is corrupt, and it is also made up of a corrupt
composition; it is composed of a mass of rattling flattery to the buyer,
and that filled with hypocrisy, compliment, self-praises, falsehood,
and, in short, a complication of wickedness; it is a corrupt means to a
vicious end: and I cannot see any thing in it but what a wise man laughs
at, a good man abhors, and any man of honesty avoids as much as
possible.

The shopkeeper ought, indeed, to have a good tongue, but he should not
make a common prostitute of his tongue, and employ it to the wicked
purpose of abusing and imposing upon all that come to deal with him.
There is a modest liberty, which trading licence, like the poetic
licence, allows to all the tradesmen of every kind: but tradesmen ought
no more to lie behind the counter, than the parsons ought to talk
treason in the pulpit.

Let them confine themselves to truth, and say what they will. But it
cannot be done; a talking rattling mercer, or draper, or milliner,
behind his counter, would be worth nothing if he should confine himself
to that mean silly thing called _truth_--they must lie; it is in support
of their business, and some think they cannot live without it; but I
deny that part, and recommend it, I mean to the tradesmen I am speaking
of, to consider what a scandal it is upon trade, to pretend to say that
a tradesman cannot live without lying, the contrary to which may be made
appear in almost every article.

On the other hand, I must do justice to the tradesmen, and must say,
that much of it is owing to the buyers--they begin the work, and give
the occasion. It was the saying of a very good shopman once upon this
occasion, 'That their customers would not be pleased without lying; and
why,' said he, 'did Solomon reprove the buyer?--he said nothing to the
shopkeeper--"It is naught, it is naught," says the buyer; "but when he
goes away, then he boasteth" (Prov. xx. 14.) The buyer telling us,' adds
he, 'that every thing is worse than it is, forces us, in justifying its
true value, to tell them it is better than it is.'

It must be confessed, this verbose way of trading is most ridiculous, as
well as offensive, both in buyer and seller; and as it adds nothing to
the goodness or value of the goods, so, I am sure, it adds nothing to
the honesty or good morals of the tradesman, on one side or other, but
multiplies trading-lies on every side, and brings a just reproach on the
integrity of the dealer, whether he be the buyer or seller.

It was a kind of a step to the cure of this vice in trade, for such it
is, that there was an old office erected in the city of London, for
searching and viewing all the goods which were sold in bulk, and could
not be searched into by the buyer--this was called _garbling_; and the
garbler having viewed the goods, and caused all damaged or unsound goods
to be taken out, set his seal upon the case or bags which held the rest,
and then they were vouched to be marketable, so that when the merchant
and the shopkeeper met to deal, there was no room for any words about
the goodness of the wares; there was the garbler's seal to vouch that
they were marketable and good, and if they were otherwise, the garbler
was answerable.

This respected some particular sorts of goods only, and chiefly spices
and drugs, and dye-stuffs, and the like. It were well if some other
method than that of a rattling tongue could be found out, to ascertain
the goodness and value of goods between the shopkeeper and the retail
buyer, that such a flux of falsehoods and untruths might be avoided, as
we see every day made use of to run up and run down every thing that is
bought or sold, and that without any effect too; for, take it one time
with another, all the shopkeeper's lying does not make the buyer like
the goods at all the better, nor does the buyer's lying make the
shopkeeper sell the cheaper.

It would be worth while to consider a little the language that passes
between the tradesman and his customer over the counter, and put it
into plain homespun English, as the meaning of it really imports. We
would not take that usage if it were put into plain words--it would set
all the shopkeepers and their customers together by the ears, and we
should have fighting and quarrelling, instead of bowing and curtseying,
in every shop. Let us hark a little, and hear how it would sound between
them. A lady comes into a mercer's shop to buy some silks, or to the
laceman's to buy silver laces, or the like; and when she pitches upon a
piece which she likes, she begins thus:

_Lady_.--I like that colour and that figure well enough, but I don't
like the silk--there is no substance in it.

_Mer._--Indeed, Madam, your ladyship lies--it is a very substantial
silk.

_Lady_.-No, no! you lie indeed, Sir; it is good for nothing; it will do
no service.

_Mer._--Pray, Madam, feel how heavy it is; you will find it is a lie;
the very weight of it may satisfy you that you lie, indeed, Madam.

_Lady_.--Come, come, show me a better piece; I am sure you have better.

_Mer._--Indeed, Madam, your ladyship lies; I may show you more pieces,
but I cannot show you a better; there is not a better piece of silk of
that sort in London, Madam.

_Lady_.--Let me see that piece of crimson there.

_Mer._--Here it is, Madam.

_Lady_.--No, that won't do neither; it is not a good colour.

_Mer_.--Indeed, Madam, you lie; it is as fine a colour as can be dyed.

_Lady_.--Oh fy! you lie, indeed, Sir; why, it is not in grain.

_Mer_.--Your ladyship lies, upon my word, Madam; it is in grain, indeed,
and as fine as can be dyed.

I might make this dialogue much longer, but here is enough to set the
mercer and the lady both in a flame, and to set the shop in an uproar,
if it were but spoken out in plain language, as above; and yet what is
all the shop-dialect less or more than this? The meaning is plain--it is
nothing but _you lie_, and _you lie_--downright Billingsgate, wrapped
up in silk and satin, and delivered dressed finely up in better clothes
than perhaps it might come dressed in between a carman and a porter.

How ridiculous is all the tongue-padding flutter between Miss Tawdry,
the sempstress, and Tattle, my lady's woman, at the change-shop, when
the latter comes to buy any trifle! and how many lies, indeed, creep
into every part of trade, especially of retail trade, from the meanest
to the uppermost part of business!--till, in short, it is grown so
scandalous, that I much wonder the shopkeepers themselves do not leave
it off, for the mere shame of its simplicity and uselessness.

But habits once got into use are very rarely abated, however ridiculous
they are; and the age is come to such a degree of obstinate folly, that
nothing is too ridiculous for them, if they please but to make a custom
of it.

I am not for making my discourse a satire upon the shopkeepers, or upon
their customers: if I were, I could give a long detail of the arts and
tricks made use of behind the counter to wheedle and persuade the buyer,
and manage the selling part among shopkeepers, and how easily and
dexterously they draw in their customers; but this is rather work for a
ballad and a song: my business is to tell the complete tradesman how to
act a wiser part, to talk to his customers like a man of sense and
business, and not like a mountebank and his merry-andrew; to let him see
that there is a way of managing behind a counter, that, let the customer
be what or how it will, man or woman, impertinent or not
impertinent--for sometimes, I must say, the men customers are every jot
as impertinent as the women; but, I say, let them be what they will, and
how they will, let them make as many words as they will, and urge the
shopkeeper how they will, he may behave himself so as to avoid all those
impertinences, falsehoods, follish and wicked excursions which I
complain of, if he pleases.

It by no means follows, that because the buyer is foolish, the seller
must be so too; that because the buyer has a never-ceasing tongue, the
seller must rattle as fast as she; that because she tells a hundred lies
to run down his goods, he must tell another hundred to run them up; and
that because she belies the goods one way, he must do the same the other
way.

There is a happy medium in these things. The shopkeeper, far from being
rude to his customers on one hand, or sullen and silent on the other,
may speak handsomely and modestly, of his goods; what they deserve, and
no other; may with truth, and good manners too, set forth his goods as
they ought to be set forth; and neither be wanting to the commodity he
sells, nor run out into a ridiculous extravagance of words, which have
neither truth of fact nor honesty of design in them.

Nor is this middle way of management at all less likely to succeed, if
the customers have any share of sense in them, or the goods he shows any
merit to recommend them; and I must say, I believe this grave middle way
of discoursing to a customer, is generally more effectual, and more to
the purpose, and more to the reputation of the shopkeeper, than a storm
of words, and a mouthful of common, shop-language, which makes a noise,
but has little in it to plead, except to here and there a fool that can
no otherwise be prevailed with.

It would be a terrible satire upon the ladies, to say that they will not
be pleased or engaged either with good wares or good pennyworths, with
reasonable good language, or good manners, but they must have the
addition of long harangues, simple, fawning, and flattering language,
and a flux of false and foolish words, to set off the goods, and wheedle
them in to lay out their money; and that without these they are not to
be pleased.

But let the tradesman try the honest part, and stand by that, keeping a
stock of fashionable and valuable goods in his shop to show, and I dare
say he will run no venture, nor need he fear customers; if any thing
calls for the help of noise, and rattling words, it must be mean and
sorry, unfashionable, and ordinary goods, together with weak and silly
buyers; and let the buyers that chance to read this remember, that
whenever they find the shopkeeper begins his noise, and makes his fine
speeches, they ought to suppose he (the shopkeeper) has trash to bring
out, and believes he has fools to show it to.

CHAPTER XIX

OF FINE SHOPS, AND FINE SHOWS

It is a modern custom, and wholly unknown to our ancestors, who yet
understood trade, in proportion to the trade they carried on, as well as
we do, to have tradesmen lay out two-thirds of their fortune in fitting
up their shops.

By fitting up, I do not mean furnishing their shops with wares and goods
to sell--for in that they came up to us in every particular, and perhaps
went beyond us too--but in painting and gilding, fine shelves, shutters,
boxes, glass-doors, sashes, and the like, in which, they tell us now, it
is a small matter to lay out two or three hundred pounds, nay, five
hundred pounds, to fit up a pastry-cook's, or a toy-shop.

The first inference to be drawn from this must necessarily be, that this
age must have more fools than the last: for certainly fools only are
most taken with shows and outsides.

It is true, that a fine show of goods will bring customers; and it is
not a new custom, but a very old one, that a new shop, very well
furnished, goes a great way to bringing a trade; for the proverb was,
and still is, very true, that every body has a penny for a new shop; but
that a fine show of shelves and glass-windows should bring customers,
that was never made a rule in trade till now.

And yet, even now, I should not except so much against it, if it were
not carried on to such an excess, as is too much for a middling
tradesman to bear the expense of. In this, therefore, it is made not a
grievance only, but really scandalous to trade; for now, a young
beginner has such a tax upon him before he begins, that he must sink
perhaps a third part, nay, a half part, of his stock, in painting and
gilding, wainscoting and glazing, before he begins to trade, nay, before
he can open his shop. As they say of building a watermill, two-thirds of
the expense lies under the water; and when the poor tradesman comes to
furnish his shop, and lay in his stock of goods, he finds a great hole
made in his cash to the workmen, and his show of goods, on which the
life of his trade depends, is fain to be lessened to make up his show of
boards, and glass to lay them in.

Nor is this heavy article to be abated upon any account; for if he does
not make a good show, he comes abroad like a mean ordinary fellow, and
nobody of fashion comes to his shop; the customers are drawn away by the
pictures and painted shelves, though, when they come there, they are not
half so well filled as in other places, with goods fit for a trade; and
how, indeed, should it be otherwise? the joiners and painters, glaziers
and carvers, must have all ready money; the weavers and merchants may
give credit; their goods are of so much less moment to the shopkeeper,
that they must trust; but the more important show must be finished
first, and paid first; and when that has made a deep hole in the
tradesman's stock, then the remainder may be spared to furnish the shop
with goods, and the merchant must trust for the rest.

It will hardly be believed in ages to come, when our posterity shall be
grown wiser by our loss, and, as I may truly say, at our expense, that a
pastry-cook's shop, which twenty pounds would effectually furnish at a
time, with all needful things for sale, nay, except on an extraordinary
show, as on twelfth-day at night for cakes, or upon some great feast,
twenty pounds can hardly be laid out at one time in goods for sale, yet
that fitting up one of these shops should cost upwards of L300 in the
year 1710--let the year be recorded--the fitting up to consist of the
following particulars:--

1. Sash windows, all of looking-glass plates, 12 inches by 16 inches in
measure.

2. All the walls of the shop lined up with galley-tiles, and the back
shop with galley-tiles in panels, finely painted in forest-work and
figures.

3. Two large pier looking-glasses and one chimney glass in the shop, and
one very large pier-glass seven feet high in the back shop.

4. Two large branches of candlesticks, one in the shop, and one in the
back room.

5. Three great glass lanterns in the shop, and eight small ones.

6. Twenty-five sconces against the wall, with a large pair of silver
standing candlesticks in the back room, value L25.

7. Six fine large silver salvers to serve sweetmeats.

8. Twelve large high stands of rings, whereof three silver, to place
small dishes for tarts, jellies, &c., at a feast.

9. Painting the ceiling, and gilding the lanterns, the sashes, and the
carved work, L55.

These, with some odd things to set forth the shop, and make a show,
besides small plate, and besides china basins and cups, amounted to, as
I am well informed, above L300.

Add to this the more necessary part, which was:--

1. Building two ovens, about L25.

2. Twenty pounds in stock for pies, cheese-cakes, &c.

So that, in short, here was a trade which might be carried on for about
L30 or L40 stock, required L300 expenses to fit up the shop, and make a
show to invite customers.

I might give something of a like example of extravagance in fitting up
a cutler's shop, _Anglice_ a toyman, which are now come up to such a
ridiculous expense, as is hardly to be thought of without the utmost
contempt: let any one stop at the Temple, or at Paul's corner, or in
many other places.

As to the shops of the more considerable trades, they all bear a
proportion of the humour of the times, but do not call for so loud a
remark. Leaving, therefore, the just reflection which such things call
for, let me bring it home to the young tradesman, to whom I am directing
this discourse, and to whom I am desirous to give solid and useful hints
for his instruction, I would recommend it to him to avoid all such
needless expenses, and rather endeavour to furnish his shop with goods,
than to paint and gild it over, to make it fine and gay; let it invite
customers rather by the well-filled presses and shelves, and the great
choice of rich and fashionable goods, that one customer being
well-served may bring another; and let him study to bring his shop into
reputation for good choice of wares, and good attendance on his
customers; and this shall bring a throng to him much better, and of much
better people, than those that go in merely for a gay shop.

Let the shop be decent and handsome, spacious as the place will allow,
and let something like the face of a master be always to be seen in it;
and, if possible, be always busy, and doing something in it, that may
look like being employed: this takes as much with the wiser observers of
such things, as any other appearance can do.

I have heard of a young apothecary, who setting up in a part of the
town, where he had not much acquaintance, and fearing much whether he
should get into business, hired a man acquainted with such business, and
made him be every morning between five and six, and often late in the
evenings, working very hard at the great mortar; pounding and beating,
though he had nothing to do with it, but beating some very needless
thing, that all his neighbours might hear it, and find that he was in
full employ, being at work early and late, and that consequently he must
be a man of vast business, and have a great practice: and the thing was
well laid, and took accordingly; for the neighbours, believing he had
business, brought business to him; and the reputation of having a trade,
made a trade for him.

The observation is just: a show may bring some people to a shop, but it
is the fame of business that brings business; and nothing raises the
fame of a shop like its being a shop of good trade already; then people
go to it, because they think other people go to it, and because they
think there is good choice of goods; their gilding and painting may go a
little way, but it is the having a shop well filled with goods,[29]
having good choice to sell, and selling reasonable--these are the things
that bring a trade, and a trade thus brought will stand by you and last;
for fame of trade brings trade anywhere.

It is a sign of the barrenness of the people's fancy, when they are so
easily taken with shows and outsides of things. Never was such painting
and gilding, such sashings and looking-glasses among the shopkeepers, as
there is now; and yet trade flourished more in former times by a gread
deal that it does now, if we may believe the report of very honest and
understanding men. The reason, I think, cannot be to the credit of the
present age, nor it it to the discredit of the former; for they carried
on their trade with less gaiety, and with less expense, than we do
now.[30]

My advice to a young tradesman is to keep the safe middle between these
extremes; something the times must be humoured in, because fashion and
custom must be followed; but let him consider the depth of his stock,
and not lay out half his estate upon fitting up his shop, and then leave
but the other half to furnish it; it is much better to have a full shop,
than a fine shop; and a hundred pounds in goods will make a much better
show than a hundred pounds' worth of painting and carved work; it is
good to make a show, but not to be _all show._

It is true, that painting and adorning a shop seems to intimate, that
the tradesman has a large stock to begin with, or else they suggest he
would not make such a show; hence the young shopkeepers are willing to
make a great show, and beautify, and paint, and gild, and carve, because
they would be thought to have a great stock to begin with; but let me
tell you, the reputation of having a great stock is ill purchased, when
half your stock is laid out to make the world believe it; that is, in
short, reducing yourself to a small stock to have the world believe you
have a great one; in which you do no less than barter the real stock for
the imaginary, and give away your stock to keep the name of it only.

I take this indeed to be a French humour, or a spice of it turned
English; and, indeed, we are famous for this, that when we do mimic the
French, we generally do it to our hurt, and over-do the French
themselves.

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