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

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'Sir--The goods you sent me last week are not at all for my purpose,
being of a sort which I am at present full of: however, if you are
willing they should lie here, I will take all opportunities to sell them
for your account; otherwise, on your first orders, they shall be
delivered to whoever you shall direct: and as you had no orders from me
for such sorts of goods, you cannot take this ill. But I have here
enclosed sent you five patterns as under, marked 1 to 5; if you think
fit to make me fifty pieces of druggets of the same weight and goodness
with the fifty pieces, No. A.B., which I had from you last October, and
mixed as exactly as you can to the enclosed patterns, ten to each
pattern, and can have the same to be delivered here any time in February
next, I shall take them at the same price which I gave you for the last;
and one month after the delivery you may draw upon me for the money,
which shall be paid to your content. Your friend and servant.

P.S. Let me have your return per next post, intimating that you can or
cannot answer this order, that I may govern myself accordingly. _To Mr
H.G., clothier, Devizes_.'

The clothier, accordingly, gives him an answer the next post, as
follows:--

'Sir--I have the favour of yours of the 22d past, with your order for
fifty fine druggets, to be made of the like weight and goodness with the
two packs, No. A.B., which I made for you and sent last October, as also
the five patterns enclosed, marked 1 to 5, for my direction in the
mixture. I give you this trouble, according to your order, to let you
know I have already put the said fifty pieces in hand; and as I am
always willing to serve you to the best of my power, and am thankful for
your favours, you may depend upon them within the time, that is to say,
some time in February next, and that they shall be of the like fineness
and substance with the other, and as near to the patterns as possible.
But in regard our poor are very craving, and money at this time very
scarce, I beg you will give me leave (twenty or thirty pieces of them
being finished and delivered to you at any time before the remainder),
to draw fifty pounds on you for present occasion; for which I shall
think myself greatly obliged, and shall give you any security you please
that the rest shall follow within the time.

As to the pack of goods in your hands, which were sent up without your
order, I am content they remain in your hands for sale on my account,
and desire you will sell them as soon as you can, for my best advantage.
I am,' &c.

Here is a harmony of business, and every thing exact; the order is given
plain and express; the clothier answers directly to every point; here
can be no defect in the correspondence; the diligent clothier applies
immediately to the work, sorts and dyes his wool, mixes his colours to
the patterns, puts the wool to the spinners, sends his yarn to the
weavers, has the pieces brought home, then has them to the thicking or
fulling-mill, dresses them in his own workhouse, and sends them up
punctually by the time; perhaps by the middle of the month. Having sent
up twenty pieces five weeks before, the warehouse-keeper, to oblige him,
pays his bill of L50, and a month after the rest are sent in, he draws
for the rest of the money, and his bills are punctually paid. The
consequence of this exact writing and answering is this--

The warehouse-keeper having the order from his merchant, is furnished in
time, and obliges his customer; then says he to his servant, 'Well, this
H.G. of Devizes is a clever workman, understands his business, and may
be depended on: I see if I have an order to give that requires any
exactness and honest usage, he is my man; he understands orders when
they are sent, goes to work immediately, and answers them punctually.'

Again, the clothier at Devizes says to his head man, or perhaps his son,
'This Mr H. is a very good employer, and is worth obliging; his orders
are so plain and so direct, that a man cannot mistake, and if the goods
are made honestly and to his time, there's one's money; bills are
cheerfully accepted, and punctually paid; I'll never disappoint him;
whoever goes without goods, he shall not.'

On the contrary, when orders are darkly given, they are doubtfully
observed; and when the goods come to town, the merchant dislikes them,
the warehouseman shuffles them back upon the clothier, to lie for his
account, pretending they are not made to his order; the clothier is
discouraged, and for want of his money discredited, and all their
correspondence is confusion, and ends in loss both of money and credit.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] [The practice of trade now sanctions courteous expressions of this
kind.]

CHAPTER III

THE TRADING STYLE

In the last chapter I gave my thoughts for the instruction of young
tradesmen in writing letters with orders, and answering orders, and
especially about the proper style of a tradesman's letters, which I
hinted should be plain and easy, free in language, and direct to the
purpose intended. Give me leave to go on with the subject a little
farther, as I think it is useful in another part of the tradesman's
correspondence.

I might have made some apology for urging tradesmen to write a plain and
easy style; let me add, that the tradesmen need not be offended at my
condemning them, as it were, to a plain and homely style--easy, plain,
and familiar language is the beauty of speech in general, and is the
excellency of all writing, on whatever subject, or to whatever persons
they are we write or speak. The end of speech is that men might
understand one another's meaning; certainly that speech, or that way of
speaking, which is most easily understood, is the best way of speaking.
If any man were to ask me, which would be supposed to be a perfect
style, or language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five
hundred people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics
excepted, should be understood by them all in the same manner with one
another, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be
understood--this would certainly be a most perfect style.

All exotic sayings, dark and ambiguous speakings, affected words, and,
as I said in the last chapter, abridgement, or words cut off, as they
are foolish and improper in business, so, indeed, are they in any other
things; hard words, and affectation of style in business, is like
bombast in poetry, a kind of rumbling nonsense, and nothing of the kind
can be more ridiculous.

The nicety of writing in business consists chiefly in giving every
species of goods their trading names, for there are certain
peculiarities in the trading language, which are to be observed as the
greatest proprieties, and without which the language your letters are
written in would be obscure, and the tradesmen you write to would not
understand you--for example, if you write to your factor at Lisbon, or
at Cadiz, to make you returns in hardware, he understands you, and
sends you so many bags of pieces of eight. So, if a merchant comes to me
to hire a small ship of me, and tells me it is for the pipin trade, or
to buy a vessel, and tells me he intends to make a pipiner of her, the
meaning is, that she is to run to Seville for oranges, or to Malaga for
lemons. If he says he intends to send her for a lading of fruit, the
meaning is, she is to go to Alicant, Denia, or Xevia, on the coast of
Spain, for raisins of the sun, or to Malaga for Malaga raisins. Thus, in
the home trade in England: if in Kent a man tells me he is to go among
the night-riders, his meaning is, he is to go a-carrying wool to the
sea-shore--the people that usually run the wool off in boats, are called
owlers--those that steal customs, smugglers, and the like. In a word,
there is a kind of slang in trade, which a tradesman ought to know, as
the beggars and strollers know the gipsy cant, which none can speak but
themselves; and this in letters of business is allowable, and, indeed,
they cannot understand one another without it.

A brickmaker being hired by a brewer to make some bricks for him at his
country-house, wrote to the brewer that he could not go forward unless
he had two or three loads _of spanish_, and that otherwise his bricks
would cost him six or seven chaldrons of coals extraordinary, and the
bricks would not be so good and hard neither by a great deal, when they
were burnt.

The brewer sends him an answer, that he should go on as well as he could
for three or four days, and then the _spanish_ should be sent him:
accordingly, the following week, the brewer sends him down two carts
loaded with about twelve hogsheads or casks of molasses, which frighted
the brickmaker almost out of his senses. The case was this:-The brewers
formerly mixed molasses with their ale to sweeten it, and abate the
quantity of malt, molasses, being, at that time, much cheaper in
proportion, and this they called _spanish_, not being willing that
people should know it. Again, the brickmakers all about London, do mix
sea-coal ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with the clay of which
they make bricks, and by that shift save eight chaldrons of coals out of
eleven, in proportion to what other people use to burn them with, and
these ashes they call _spanish_.

Thus the received terms of art, in every particular business, are to be
observed, of which I shall speak to you in its turn: I name them here to
intimate, that when I am speaking of plain writing in matters of
business, it must be understood with an allowance for all these
things--and a tradesman must be not only allowed to use them in his
style, but cannot write properly without them--it is a particular
excellence in a tradesman to be able to know all the terms of art in
every separate business, so as to be able to speak or write to any
particular handicraft or manufacturer in his own dialect, and it is as
necessary as it is for a seaman to understand the names of all the
several things belonging to a ship. This, therefore, is not to be
understood when I say, that a tradesman should write plain and explicit,
for these things belong to, and are part of, the language of trade.

But even these terms of art, or customary expressions, are not to be
used with affectation, and with a needless repetition, where they are
not called for.

Nor should a tradesman write those out-of-the-way words, though it is in
the way of the business he writes about, to any other person, who he
knows, or has reason to believe, does not understand them--I say, he
ought not to write in those terms to such, because it shows a kind of
ostentation, and a triumph over the ignorance of the person they are
written to, unless at the very same time you add an explanation of the
terms, so as to make them assuredly intelligible at the place, and to
the person to whom they are sent.

A tradesman, in such cases, like a parson, should suit his language to
his auditory; and it would be as ridiculous for a tradesman to write a
letter filled with the peculiarities of this or that particular trade,
which trade he knows the person he writes to is ignorant of, and the
terms whereof he is unacquainted with, as it would be for a minister to
quote the Chrysostome and St Austin, and repeat at large all their
sayings in the Greek and the Latin, in a country church, among a parcel
of ploughmen and farmers. Thus a sailor, writing a letter to a surgeon,
told him he had a swelling on the north-east side of his face--that his
windward leg being hurt by a bruise, it so put him out of trim, that he
always heeled to starboard when he made fresh way, and so run to
leeward, till he was often forced aground; then he desired him to give
him some directions how to put himself into a sailing posture again. Of
all which the surgeon understood little more than that he had a swelling
on his face, and a bruise in his leg.

It would be a very happy thing, if tradesmen had all their _lexicon
technicum_ at their fingers' ends; I mean (for pray, remember, that I
observe my own rule, not to use a hard word without explaining it), that
every tradesman would study so the terms of art of other trades, that he
might be able to speak to every manufacturer or artist in his own
language, and understand them when they talked one to another: this
would make trade be a kind of universal language, and the particular
marks they are obliged to, would be like the notes of music, an
universal character, in which all the tradesmen in England might write
to one another in the language and characters of their several trades,
and be as intelligible to one another as the minister is to his people,
and perhaps much more.

I therefore recommend it to every young tradesman to take all occasions
to converse with mechanics of every kind, and to learn the particular
language of their business; not the names of their tools only, and the
way of working with their instruments as well as hands, but the very
cant of their trade, for every trade has its _nostrums_, and its little
made words, which they often pride themselves in, and which yet are
useful to them on some occasion or other.

There are many advantages to a tradesman in thus having a general
knowledge of the terms of art, and the cant, as I call it, of every
business; and particularly this, that they could not be imposed upon so
easily by other tradesmen, when they came to deal with them.

If you come to deal with a tradesman or handicraft man, and talk his own
language to him, he presently supposes you understand his business; that
you know what you come about; that you have judgment in his goods, or in
his art, and cannot easily be imposed upon; accordingly, he treats you
like a man that is not to be cheated, comes close to the point, and does
not crowd you with words and rattling talk to set out his wares, and to
cover their defects; he finds you know where to look or feel for the
defect of things, and how to judge their worth. For example:--

What trade has more hard words and peculiar ways attending it, than that
of a jockey, or horse-courser, as we call them! They have all the parts
of the horse, and all the diseases attending him, necessary to be
mentioned in the market, upon every occasion of buying or bargaining. A
jockey will know you at first sight, when you do but go round a horse,
or at the first word you say about him, whether you are a dealer, as
they call themselves, or a stranger. If you begin well, if you take up
the horse's foot right, if you handle him in the proper places, if you
bid his servant open his mouth, or go about it yourself like a workman,
if you speak of his shapes or goings in the proper words--'Oh!' says the
jockey to his fellow, 'he understands a horse, he speaks the language:'
then he knows you are not to be cheated, or, at least, not so easily;
but if you go awkwardly to work, whisper to your man you bring with you
to ask every thing for you, cannot handle the horse yourself, or speak
the language of the trade, he falls upon you with his flourishes, and
with a flux of horse rhetoric imposes upon you with oaths and
asseverations, and, in a word, conquers you with the mere clamour of his
trade.

Thus, if you go to a garden to buy flowers, plants, trees, and greens,
if you know what you go about, know the names of flowers, or simples, or
greens; know the particular beauties of them, when they are fit to
remove, and when to slip and draw, and when not; what colour is
ordinary, and what rare; when a flower is rare, and when ordinary--the
gardener presently talks to you as to a man of art, tells you that you
are a lover of art, a friend to a florist, shows you his exotics, his
green-house, and his stores; what he has set out, and what he has budded
or enarched, and the like; but if he finds you have none of the terms
of art, know little or nothing of the names of plants, or the nature of
planting, he picks your pocket instantly, shows you a fine trimmed
fuz-bush for a juniper, sells you common pinks for painted ladies, an
ordinary tulip for a rarity, and the like. Thus I saw a gardener sell a
gentleman a large yellow auricula, that is to say, a _running away_, for
a curious flower, and take a great price. It seems, the gentleman was a
lover of a good yellow; and it is known, that when nature in the
auricula is exhausted, and has spent her strengh in showing a fine
flower, perhaps some years upon the same root, she faints at last, and
then turns into a yellow, which yellow shall be bright and pleasant the
first year, and look very well to one that knows nothing of it, though
another year it turns pale, and at length almost white. This the
gardeners call a _run flower_, and this they put upon the gentleman for
a rarity, only because he discovered at his coming that he knew nothing
of the matter. The same gardener sold another person a root of white
painted thyme for the right _Marum Syriacum;_ and thus they do every
day.

A person goes into a brickmaker's field to view his clamp, and buy a
load of bricks; he resolves to see them loaded, because he would have
good ones; but not understanding the goods, and seeing the workmen
loading them where they were hard and well burnt, but looked white and
grey, which, to be sure, were the best of the bricks, and which perhaps
they would not have done if he had not been there to look at them, they
supposing he understood which were the best; but he, in the abundance of
his ignorance, finds fault with them, because they were not a good
colour, and did not look red; the brickmaker's men took the hint
immediately, and telling the buyer they would give him red bricks to
oblige him, turned their hands from the grey hard well-burnt bricks to
the soft _sammel_[9] half-burnt bricks, which they were glad to dispose
of, and which nobody that had understood them would have taken off their
hands.

I mention these lower things, because I would suit my writing to the
understanding of the meanest people, and speak of frauds used in the
most ordinary trades; but it is the like in almost all the goods a
tradesman can deal in. If you go to Warwickshire to buy cheese, you
demand the cheese 'of the first make,' because that is the best. If you
go to Suffolk to buy butter, you refuse the butter of the first make,
because that is not the best, but you bargain for 'the right rowing
butter,' which is the butter that is made when the cows are turned into
the grounds where the grass has been mowed, and the hay carried off, and
grown again: and so in many other cases. These things demonstrate
the advantages there are to a tradesman, in his being thoroughly
informed of the terms of art, and the peculiarities belonging to every
particular business, which, therefore, I call the language of trade.

As a merchant should understand all languages, at least the languages of
those countries which he trades to, or corresponds with, and the customs
and usages of those countries as to their commerce, so an English
tradesman ought to understand all the languages of trade, within the
circumference of his own country, at least, and particularly of such as
he may, by any of the consequences of his commerce, come to be any way
concerned with.

Especially, it is his business to acquaint himself with the terms and
trading style, as I call it, of those trades which he buys of, as to
those he sells to; supposing he sells to those who sell again, it is
their business to understand him, not his to understand them: and if he
finds they do not understand him, he will not fail to make their
ignorance be his advantage, unless he is honester and more conscientious
in his dealings than most of the tradesmen of this age seem to be.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] [_Sammel_ is a term of art the brickmakers use for those bricks
which are not well burnt, and which generally look of a pale red colour,
and as fair as the other, but are soft.]

CHAPTER IV

OF THE TRADESMAN ACQUAINTING HIMSELF WITH ALL BUSINESS IN GENERAL

It is the judgment of some experienced tradesmen, that no man ought to
go from one business to another, and launch out of the trade or
employment he was bred to: _Tractent fabrilia fabri_--'Every man to his
own business;' and, they tell us, men never thrive when they do so.

I will not enter into that dispute here. I know some good and
encouraging examples of the contrary, and which stand as remarkable
instances, or as exceptions to the general rule: but let that be as it
will, sometimes providence eminently calls upon men out of one employ
into another, out of a shop into a warehouse, out of a warehouse into a
shop, out of a single hand into a partnership, and the like; and they
trade one time here, another time there, and with very good success too.
But I say, be that as it will, a tradesman ought so far to acquaint
himself with business, that he should not be at a loss to turn his hand
to this or that trade, as occasion presents, whether in or out of the
way of his ordinary dealing, as we have often seen done in London and
other places, and sometimes with good success.

This acquainting himself with business does not intimate that he should
learn every trade, or enter into the mystery of every employment. That
cannot well be; but that he should have a true notion of business in
general, and a knowledge how and in what manner it is carried on; that
he should know where every manufacture is made, and how bought at first
hand; that he should know which are the proper markets, and what the
particular kinds of goods to exchange at those markets; that he should
know the manner how every manufacture is managed, and the method of
their sale.

It cannot be expected that he should have judgment in the choice of all
kinds of goods, though in a great many he may have judgment too: but
there is a general understanding in trade, which every tradesman both
may and ought to arrive to; and this perfectly qualifies him to engage
in any new undertaking, and to embark with other persons better
qualified than himself in any new trade, which he was not in before; in
which, though he may not have a particular knowledge and judgment in the
goods they are to deal in or to make, yet, having the benefit of the
knowledge his new partner is master of, and being himself apt to take
in all additional lights, he soon becomes experienced, and the knowledge
of all the other parts of business qualifies him to be a sufficient
partner. For example--A.B. was bred a dry-salter, and he goes in partner
with with C.D., a scarlet-dyer, called a bow-dyer, at Wandsworth.

As a salter, A.B. has had experience enough in the materials for dyeing,
as well scarlets as all other colours, and understands very well the
buying of cochineal, indigo, galls, shumach, logwood, fustick, madder,
and the like; so that he does his part very well. C.D. is an experienced
scarlet-dyer; but now, doubling their stock, they fall into a larger
work, and they dye bays and stuffs, and other goods, into differing
colours, as occasion requires; and this brings them to an equality in
the business, and by hiring good experienced servants, they go on very
well together.

The like happens often when a tradesman turns his hand from one trade to
another; and when he embarks, either in partnership or out of it, in any
new business, it is supposed he seldom changes hands in such a manner
without some such suitable person to join with, or that he has some
experienced head workman to direct him, which, if that workman proves
honest, is as well as a partner. On the other hand, his own application
and indefatigable industry supply the want of judgment. Thus, I have
known several tradesmen turn their hands from one business to another,
or from one trade entirely to another, and very often with good success.
For example, I have seen a confectioner turn a sugar-baker; another a
distiller; an apothecary turn chemist, and not a few turn physicians,
and prove very good physicians too; but that is a step beyond what I am
speaking of.

But my argument turns upon this--that a tradesman ought to be able to
turn his hand to any thing; that is to say, to lay down one trade and
take up another, if occasion leads him to it, and if he sees an evident
view of profit and advantage in it; and this is only done by his having
a general knowledge of trade, so as to have a capacity of judging: and
by but just looking upon what is offered or proposed, he sees as much at
first view as others do by long inquiry, and with the judgment of many
advisers.

When I am thus speaking of the tradesman's being capable of making
judgment of things, it occurs, with a force not to be resisted, that I
should add, he is hereby fenced against bubbles and projects, and
against those fatal people called projectors, who are, indeed, among
tradesmen, as birds of prey are among the innocent fowls--devourers and
destroyers. A tradesman cannot be too well armed, nor too much
cautioned, against those sort of people; they are constantly surrounded
with them, and are as much in jeopardy from them, as a man in a crowd is
of having his pocket picked--nay, almost as a man is when in a crowd of
pickpockets.

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