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

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Nothing secures the tradesman against those men so well as his being
thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the
delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and
to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his
specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they
are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will;
to make allowances for all his fine flourishes and outsides, and then to
judge for himself. A projector is to a tradesman a kind of incendiary;
he is in a constant plot to blow him up, or set fire to him; for
projects are generally as fatal to a tradesman as fire in a magazine of
gunpowder.

The honest tradesman is always in danger, and cannot be too wary; and
therefore to fortify his judgment, that he may be able to guard against
such people as these, is one of the most necessary things I can do for
him.

In order, then, to direct the tradesman how to furnish himself thus with
a needful stock of trading knowledge, first, I shall propose to him to
converse with tradesmen chiefly: he that will be a tradesman should
confine himself within his own sphere: never was the Gazette so full of
the advertisements of commissions of bankrupt as since our shopkeepers
are so much engaged in parties, formed into clubs to hear news, and read
journals and politics; in short, when tradesmen turn statesmen, they
should either shut up their shops, or hire somebody else to look after
them.

The known story of the upholsterer is very instructive,[10] who, in his
abundant concern for the public, ran himself out of his business into a
jail; and even when he was in prison, could not sleep for the concern he
had for the liberties of his dear country: the man was a good patriot,
but a bad shopkeeper; and, indeed, should rather have shut up his shop,
and got a commission in the army, and then he had served his country in
the way of his calling. But I may speak to this more in its turn.

My present subject is not the negative, what he should not do, but the
affirmative, what he should do; I say, he should take all occasions to
converse within the circuit of his own sphere, that is, dwell upon the
subject of trade in his conversation, and sort with and converse among
tradesmen as much as he can; as writing teaches to write--_scribendo
discis scribere_--so conversing among tradesmen will make him a
tradesman. I need not explain this so critically as to tell you I do not
mean he should confine or restrain himself entirely from all manner of
conversation but among his own class: I shall speak to that in its place
also. A tradesman may on occasion keep company with gentlemen as well
as other people; nor is a trading man, if he is a man of sense,
unsuitable or unprofitable for a gentleman to converse with, as occasion
requires; and you will often find, that not private gentlemen only, but
even ministers of state, privy-councillors, members of parliament, and
persons of all ranks in the government, find it for their purpose to
converse with tradesmen, and are not ashamed to acknowledge, that a
tradesman is sometimes qualified to inform them in the most difficult
and intricate, as well as the most urgent, affairs of government; and
this has been the reason why so many tradesmen have been advanced to
honours and dignities above their ordinary rank, as Sir Charles
Duncombe, a goldsmith; Sir Henry Furnese, who was originally a retail
hosier; Sir Charles Cook, late one of the board of trade, a merchant;
Sir Josiah Child, originally a very mean tradesman; the late Mr Lowndes,
bred a scrivener; and many others, too many to name.

But these are instances of men called out of their lower sphere for
their eminent usefulness, and their known capacities, being first known
to be diligent and industrious men in their private and lower spheres;
such advancements make good the words of the wise man--'Seest thou a man
diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand
before mean men.[11]

In the mean time, the tradesman's proper business is in his shop or
warehouse, and among his own class or rank of people; there he sees how
other men go on, and there he learns how to go on himself; there he sees
how other men thrive, and learns to thrive himself; there he hears all
the trading news--as for state news and politics, it is none of his
business; there he learns how to buy, and there he gets oftentimes
opportunities to sell; there he hears of all the disasters in trade, who
breaks, and why; what brought such and such a man to misfortunes and
disasters; and sees the various ways how men go down in the world, as
well as the arts and management, by which others from nothing arise to
wealth and estates.

Here he sees the Scripture itself thwarted, and his neighbour tradesman,
a wholesale haberdasher, in spite of a good understanding, in spite of a
good beginning, and in spite of the most indefatigable industry, sink in
his circumstances, lose his credit, then his stock, and then break and
become bankrupt, while the man takes more pains to be poor than others
do to grow rich.

There, on the other hand, he sees G.D., a plodding, weak-headed, but
laborious wretch, of a confined genius, and that cannot look a quarter
of a mile from his shop-door into the world, and beginning with little
or nothing, yet rises apace in the mere road of business, in which he
goes on like the miller's horse, who, being tied to the post, is turned
round by the very wheel which he turns round himself; and this fellow
shall get money insensibly, and grow rich even he knows not how, and no
body else knows why.

Here he sees F.M. ruined by too much trade, and there he sees M.F.
starved for want of trade; and from all these observations he may learn
something useful to himself, and fit to guide his own measures, that he
may not fall into the same mischiefs which he sees others sink under,
and that he may take the advantage of that prudence which others rise
by.

All these things will naturally occur to him, in his conversing among
his fellow-tradesmen. A settled little society of trading people, who
understand business, and are carrying on trade in the same manner with
himself, no matter whether they are of the very same trades or no, and
perhaps better not of the same--such a society, I say, shall, if due
observations are made from it, teach the tradesman more than his
apprenticeship; for there he learned the operation, here he learns the
progression; his apprenticeship is his grammar-school, this is his
university; behind his master's counter, or in his warehouse, he learned
the first rudiments of trade, but here he learns the trading sciences;
here he comes to learn the _arcana_, speak the language, understand the
meaning of every thing, of which before he only learned the beginning:
the apprenticeship inducts him, and leads him as the nurse the child;
this finishes him; there he learned the beginning of trade, here he sees
it in its full extent; in a word, there he learned to trade, here he is
made a complete tradesman.

Let no young tradesman object, that, in the conversation I speak of,
there are so many gross things said, and so many ridiculous things
argued upon, there being always a great many weak empty heads among the
shopkeeping trading world: this may be granted without any impeachment
of what I have advanced--for where shall a man converse, and find no
fools in the society?--and where shall he hear the weightiest things
debated, and not a great many empty weak things offered, out of which
nothing can be learned, and from which nothing can be deduced?--for 'out
of nothing, nothing can come.'

But, notwithstanding, let me still insist upon it to the tradesman to
keep company with tradesmen; let the fool run on in his own way; let the
talkative green-apron rattle in his own way; let the manufacturer and
his factor squabble and brangle; the grave self-conceited puppy, who was
born a boy, and will die before he is a man, chatter and say a great
deal of nothing, and talk his neighbours to death--out of every one you
will learn something--they are all tradesmen, and there is always
something for a young tradesman to learn from them. If, understanding
but a little French, you were to converse every day a little among some
Frenchmen in your neighbourhood, and suppose those Frenchmen, you thus
kept company with, were every one of them fools, mere ignorant, empty,
foolish fellows, there might be nothing learnt from their sense, but you
would still learn French from them, if it was no more than the tone and
accent, and the ordinary words usual in conversation.

Thus, among your silly empty tradesmen, let them be as foolish and empty
other ways as you can suggest, though you can learn no philosophy from
them, you may learn many things in trade from them, and something from
every one; for though it is not absolutely necessary that every
tradesman should be a philosopher, yet every tradesman, in his way,
knows something that even a philosopher may learn from.

I knew a philosopher that was excellently skilled in the noble science
or study of astronomy, who told me he had some years studied for some
simile, or proper allusion, to explain to his scholars the phenomena of
the sun's motion round its own axis, and could never happen upon one to
his mind, till by accident he saw his maid Betty trundling her mop:
surprised with the exactness of the motion to describe the thing he
wanted, he goes into his study, calls his pupils about him, and tells
them that Betty, who herself knew nothing of the matter, could show them
the sun revolving about itself in a more lively manner than ever he
could. Accordingly, Betty was called, and bidden bring out her mop,
when, placing his scholars in a due-position, opposite not to the face
of the maid, but to her left side, so that they could see the end of the
mop, when it whirled round upon her arm. They took it immediately--there
was the broad-headed nail in the centre, which was as the body of the
sun, and the thrums whisking round, flinging the water about every way
by innumerable little streams, describing exactly the rays of the sun,
darting light from the centre to the whole system.

If ignorant Betty, by the natural consequences of her operation,
instructed the astronomer, why may not the meanest shoemaker or pedlar,
by the ordinary sagacity of his trading wit, though it may be indeed
very ordinary, coarse, and unlooked for, communicate something, give
some useful hint, dart some sudden thought into the mind of the
observing tradesman, which he shall make his use of, and apply to his
own advantage in trade, when, at the same time, he that gives such hint
shall himself, like Betty and her mop, know nothing of the matter?

Every tradesman is supposed to manage his business his own way, and,
generally speaking, most tradesmen have some ways peculiar and
particular to themselves, which they either derived from the masters
who taught them, or from the experience of things, or from something in
the course of their business, which had not happened to them before.

And those little _nostrums_ are oftentime very properly and with
advantage communicated from one to another; one tradesman finds out a
nearer way of buying than another, another finds a vent for what is
bought beyond what his neighbour knows of, and these, in time, come to
be learned of them by their ordinary conversation.

I am not for confining the tradesman from keeping better company, as
occasion and leisure requires; I allow the tradesman to act the
gentleman sometimes, and that even for conversation, at least if his
understanding and capacity make him suitable company to them, but still
his business is among those of his own rank. The conversation of
gentlemen, and what they call keeping good company, may be used as a
diversion, or as an excursion, but his stated society must be with his
neighbours, and people in trade; men of business are companions for men
of business; with gentlemen he may converse pleasantly, but here he
converses profitably; tradesmen are always profitable to one another; as
they always gain by trading together, so they never lose by conversing
together; if they do not get money, they gain knowledge in business,
improve their experience, and see farther and farther into the world.

A man of but an ordinary penetration will improve himself by conversing
in matters of trade with men of trade; by the experience of the old
tradesmen they learn caution and prudence, and by the rashness and the
miscarriages of the young, they learn what are the mischiefs that
themselves may be exposed to.

Again, in conversing with men of trade, they get trade; men first talk
together, then deal together--many a good bargain is made, and many a
pound gained, where nothing was expected, by mere casual coming to talk
together, without knowing any thing of the matter before they met. The
tradesmen's meetings are like the merchants' exchange, where they
manage, negociate, and, indeed, beget business with one another.

Let no tradesman mistake me in this part; I am not encouraging them to
leave their shops and warehouses, to go to taverns and ale-houses, and
spend their time there in unnecessary prattle, which, indeed, is nothing
but sotting and drinking; this is not meeting to do business, but to
neglect business. Of which I shall speak fully afterwards.

But the tradesmen conversing with one another, which I mean, is the
taking suitable occasions to discourse with their fellow tradesmen,
meeting them in the way of their business, and improving their spare
hours together. To leave their shops, and quit their counters, in the
proper seasons for their attendance there, would be a preposterous
negligence, would be going out of business to gain business, and would
be cheating themselves, instead of improving themselves. The proper
hours of business are sacred to the shop and the warehouse. He that goes
out of the order of trade, let the pretence of business be what it will,
loses his business, not increases it; and will, if continued, lose the
credit of his conduct in business also.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] [The story of the political upholsterer forms the subject of
several amusing papers by Addison in the _Tatler_.]

[11] [To stand in the presence of a prince is the highest mark of honour
in the east, as to sit is with us.]

CHAPTER V

DILIGENCE AND APPLICATION IN BUSINESS

Solomon was certainly a friend to men of business, as it appears by his
frequent good advice to them. In Prov. xviii. 9, he says, 'He that is
slothful in business, is brother to him that is a great waster:' and in
another place, 'The sluggard shall be clothed in rags,' (Prov. xxiii.
1), or to that purpose. On the contrary, the same wise man, by way of
encouragement, tells them, 'The diligent hand maketh rich,' (Prov. x.
4), and, 'The diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under
tribute.'

Nothing can give a greater prospect of thriving to a young tradesman,
than his own diligence; it fills himself with hope, and gives him credit
with all who know him; without application, nothing in this world goes
forward as it should do: let the man have the most perfect knowledge of
his trade, and the best situation for his shop, yet without application
nothing will go on. What is the shop without the master? what the books
without the book-keeper? what the credit without the man? Hark how the
people talk of such conduct as the slothful negligent trader discovers
in his way.

'Such a shop,' says the customer, 'stands well, and there is a good
stock of goods in it, but there is nobody to serve but a 'prentice-boy
or two, and an idle journeyman: one finds them always at play together,
rather than looking out for customers; and when you come to buy, they
look as if they did not care whether they showed you any thing or no.
One never sees a master in the shop, if we go twenty times, nor anything
that bears the face of authority. Then, it is a shop always exposed, it
is perfectly haunted with thieves and shop-lifters; they see nobody but
raw boys in it, that mind nothing, and the diligent devils never fail to
haunt them, so that there are more outcries of 'Stop thief!' at their
door, and more constables fetched to that shop, than to all the shops in
the row. There was a brave trade at that shop in Mr--'s time: he was a
true shopkeeper; like the quack doctor, you never missed him from seven
in the morning till twelve, and from two till nine at night, and he
throve accordingly--he left a good estate behind him. But I don't know
what these people are; they say there are two partners of them, but
there had as good be none, for they are never at home, nor in their
shop: one wears a long wig and a sword, I hear, and you see him often
in the Mall and at court, but very seldom in his shop, or waiting on his
customers; and the other, they say, lies a-bed till eleven o'clock every
day, just comes into the shop and shows himself, then stalks about to
the tavern to take a whet, then to Child's coffee-house to hear the
news, comes home to dinner at one, takes a long sleep in his chair after
it, and about four o'clock comes into the shop for half an hour, or
thereabouts, then to the tavern, where he stays till two in the morning,
gets drunk, and is led home by the watch, and so lies till eleven again;
and thus he walks round like the hand of a dial. And what will it all
come to?--they'll certainly break, that you may be sure of; they can't
hold it long.'

'This is the town's way of talking, where they see an example of it in
the manner as is described; nor are the inferences unjust, any more than
the description is unlike, for such certainly is the end of such
management, and no shop thus neglected ever made a tradesman rich.

On the contrary, customers love to see the master's face in the shop,
and to go to a shop where they are sure to find him at home. When he
does not sell, or cannot take the price offered, yet the customers are
not disobliged, and if they do not deal now, they may another time: if
they do deal, the master generally gets a better price for his goods
than a servant can, besides that he gives better content; and yet the
customers always think they buy cheaper of the master too.

I seem to be talking now of the mercer or draper, as if my discourse
were wholly bent and directed to them; but it is quite contrary, for it
concerns every tradesman--the advice is general, and every tradesman
claims a share in it; the nature of trade requires it. It is an old
Anglicism, 'Such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter,
that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance,
keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every
slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word,
to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the
wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of
all, the load is spoiled by the waggon overthrowing.

It is therefore no improper speech to say, such a man drives his trade;
for, in short, if trade is not driven, it will not go.

Trade is like a hand-mill, it must always be turned about by the
diligent hand of the master; or, if you will, like the pump-house at
Amsterdam, where they put offenders in for petty matters, especially
beggars; if they will work and keep pumping, they sit well, and dry and
safe, and if they work very hard one hour or two, they may rest,
perhaps, a quarter of an hour afterwards; but if they oversleep
themselves, or grow lazy, the water comes in upon them and wets them,
and they have no dry place to stand in, much less to sit down in; and,
in short, if they continue obstinately idle, they must sink; so that it
is nothing but _pump_ or _drown_, and they may choose which they like
best.

He that engages in trade, and does not resolve to work at it, is _felo
de se_; it is downright murdering himself; that is to say, in his
trading capacity, he murders his credit, he murders his stock, and he
starves, which is as bad as murdering, his family.

Trade must not be entered into as a thing of light concern; it is called
business very properly, for it is a business _for_ life, and ought to be
followed as one of the great businesses _of_ life--I do not say the
chief, but one of the great businesses of life it certainly is--trade
must, I say, be worked at, not played with; he that trades in jest, will
certainly break in earnest; and this is one reason indeed why so many
tradesmen come to so hasty a conclusion of their affairs.

There was another old English saying to this purpose, which shows how
much our old fathers were sensible of the duty of a shopkeeper: speaking
of the tradesman as just opening his shop, and beginning a dialogue with
it; the result of which is, that the shop replies to the tradesman thus:
'Keep me, and I will keep thee.' It is the same with driving the trade;
if the shopkeeper will not keep, that is, diligently attend to his shop,
the shop will not keep, that is, maintain him: and in the other sense it
is harsher to him, if he will not drive his trade, the trade will drive
him; that is, drive him out of the shop, drive him away.

All these old sayings have this monitory substance in them; namely, they
all concur to fill a young tradesman with true notions of what he is
going about; and that the undertaking of a trade is not a sport or game,
in which he is to meet with diversions only, and entertainment, and not
to be in the least troubled or disturbed: trade is a daily employment,
and must be followed as such, with the full attention of the mind, and
full attendance of the person; nothing but what are to be called the
necessary duties of life are to intervene; and even these are to be
limited so as not to be prejudicial to business.

And now I am speaking of the necessary things which may intervene, and
which may divide the time with our business or trade, I shall state the
manner in a few words, that the tradesman may neither give too much, nor
take away too much, to or from any respective part of what may be called
his proper employment, but keep as due a balance of his time as he
should of his books or cash.

The life of man is, or should be, a measure of allotted time; as his
time is measured out to him, so the measure is limited, must end, and
the end of it is appointed.

The purposes for which time is given, and life bestowed, are very
momentous; no time is given uselessly, and for nothing; time is no more
to be unemployed, than it is to be ill employed. Three things are
chiefly before us in the appointment of our time: 1. Necessaries of
nature. 2. Duties of religion, or things relating to a future life. 3.
Duties of the present life, namely, business and calling.

I. Necessities of nature, such as eating and drinking; rest, or sleep;
and in case of disease, a recess from business; all which have two
limitations on them, and no more; namely, that they be

1. Referred to their proper seasons.

2. Used with moderation.

Both these might give me subject to write many letters upon; but I study
brevity, and desire rather to hint than dwell upon things which are
serious and grave, because I would not tire you.

II. Duties of religion: these may be called necessities too in their
kind, and that of the sublimest nature; and they ought not to be thrust
at all out of their place, and yet they ought to be kept in their place
too.

III. Duties of life, that is to say, business, or employment, or
calling, which are divided into three kinds:

1. Labour, or servitude.

2. Employment.

3. Trade.

By labour, I mean the poor manualist, whom we properly call the
labouring man, who works for himself indeed in one respect, but
sometimes serves and works for wages, as a servant, or workman.

By employment, I mean men in business, which yet is not properly called
trade, such as lawyers, physicians, surgeons, scriveners, clerks,
secretaries, and such like: and

By trade I mean merchants and inland-traders, such as are already
described in the introduction to this work.

To speak of time, it is divided among these; even in them all there is a
just equality of circumstances to be preserved, and as diligence is
required in one, and necessity to be obeyed in another, so duty is to be
observed in the third; and yet all these with such a due regard to one
another, as that one duty may not jostle out another; and every thing
going on with an equality and just regard to the nature of the thing,
the tradesman may go on with a glad heart and a quiet conscience.

This article is very nice, as I intend to speak to it; and it is a
dangerous thing indeed to speak to, lest young tradesmen, treading on
the brink of duty on one side, and duty on the other side, should
pretend to neglect their duty to heaven, on pretence that I say they
must not neglect their shops. But let them do me justice, and they will
do themselves no injury; nor do I fear that my arguing on this point
should give them any just cause to go wrong; if they will go wrong, and
plead my argument for their excuse, it must be by their abusing my
directions, and taking them in pieces, misplacing the words, and
disjointing the sense, and by the same method they may make blasphemy
of the Scripture.

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