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

D >> Daniel Defoe >> The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.)




It is true, natural tempers are not to be always counterfeited--the man
cannot easily be a lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but let it
be easy or hard, it must be done, and it is done. There are men who
have, by custom and usage, brought themselves to it, that nothing could
be meeker and milder than they, when behind the counter, and yet nothing
be more furious and raging in every other part of life--nay, the
provocations they have met with in their shops have so irritated their
rage, that they would go upstairs from their shop, and fall into
phrensies, and a kind of madness, and beat their heads against the wall,
and mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it had
gotten vent, and the passions abate and cool. Nay, I heard once of a
shopkeeper that behaved himself thus to such an extreme, that, when he
was provoked by the impertinence of the customers, beyond what his
temper could bear, he would go upstairs and beat his wife, kick his
children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes as
a man chained down in Bedlam, and when the heat was over, would sit down
and cry faster then the children he had abused; and after the fit was
over he would go down into his shop again, and be as humble, as
courteous, and as calm as any man whatever--so absolute a government of
his passions had he in the shop, and so little out of it; in the shop a
soul-less animal that can resent nothing, and in the family a madman; in
the shop meek like the lamb, but in the family outrageous like a Lybian
lion.

The sum of the matter is this: it is necessary for a tradesman to
subject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business; his
customers are to be his idols: so far as he may worship idols by
allowance, he is to bow down to them and worship them;[17] at least, he
is not any way to displease them, or show any disgust or distaste at any
thing they say or do. The bottom of it all is, that he is intending to
get money by them; and it is not for him that gets money by them to
offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it; but he is to
consider, that, as Solomon says, 'The borrower is servant to the
lender,' so the seller is servant to the buyer.

When a tradesman has thus conquered all his passions, and can stand
before the storm of impertinence, he is said to be fitted up for the
main article, namely, the inside of the counter.

On the other hand, we see that the contrary temper, nay, but the very
suggestion of it, hurries people on to ruin their trade, to disoblige
the customers, to quarrel with them, and drive them away. We see by the
lady above, after having seen the ways she had taken to put this man out
of temper--I say, we see it conquered her temper, and brought her to lay
out her money cheerfully, and be his customer ever after.

A sour, morose, dogmatic temper would have sent these ladies both away
with their money in their pockets; but the man's patience and temper
drove the lady back to lay out her money, and engaged her entirely.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Paternoster Row has long been the chief seat of the bookselling and
publishing trade in London; and there are now some splendid shops of
mercers or haberdashers in St Paul's Churchyard, also in Ludgate hill
adjoining.

[16] [The necessity here insisted on seems a hard one, and scarcely
consistent with a just morality. Yet, if the tradesman takes a right
view of his situation, he will scarcely doubt the propriety of Defoe's
advice. He must consider, that, in his shop, he is, as it were, acting a
part. He performs a certain character in the drama of our social
arrangements, one which requires all the civility and forbearance above
insisted on. He is not called upon, in such circumstances, to feel,
speak, and act, as he would find himself in honour required to do in his
private or absolutely personal capacity--in his own house, for instance,
or in any public place where he mingled on a footing of equality with
his fellow-citizens. Accordingly, there is such a general sense of the
justifiableness of his conducting himself in this submissive spirit,
that no one would think of imputing it to him as a fault; but he would
be more apt to be censured or ridiculed if he had so little sense as to
take offence, in his capacity of tradesman, at any thing which it would
only concern him to resent if it were offered to him in his capacity as
a private citizen.

An incident, somewhat like that so dramatically related by Defoe,
occurred a few years ago in the northern capital. A lady had, through
whim, pestered a mercer in the manner related in the text, turning over
all his goods, and only treating him with rudeness in return. When she
finally turned to leave the shop, to inquire, as she said, for better
and cheaper goods elsewhere, she found that a shower was falling,
against which she had no protection. The tradesman, who had politely
shown her to the door, observing her hesitate on the threshold at sight
of the rain, requested her to wait a moment, and, stepping backwards for
his umbrella, instantly returned, and, in the kindest accents, requested
her to accept the loan of it. She took it, and went away, but in a few
minutes returned it, in a totally different frame of spirit, and not
only purchased extensively on this occasion, but became a constant
customer for the future.

Another tradesman in the same city was so remarkable for his
imperturbable civility, that it became the subject of a bet--an
individual undertaking to irritate him, or, if he failed, to forfeit a
certain sum. He went to the shop, and caused an immense quantity of the
finest silks to be turned over, after which he coolly asked for a
pennyworth of a certain splendid piece of satin. 'By all means,' said
the discreet trader; 'allow me, Sir, to have your penny.' The coin was
handed to him, and, taking up the piece of satin, and placing the penny
on the end of it, he cut round with his scissors, thus detaching a
little bit of exactly the size and shape of the piece of money which was
to purchase it. This, with the most polite air imaginable, he handed to
his customer, whose confusion may be imagined.]

[17] [It appears to the editor that the case is here somewhat
over-stated. While imperterbable good temper and civility are
indispensible in the shopkeeper, it is not impossible that he may also
err in displaying a _too great obsequiousness_ of _manner_. This, by
disgusting the common sense and good taste of customers, may do as much
harm as want of civility. A too _pressing_ manner, likewise, does harm,
by causing the customer to feel as if he were _obliged_ to purchase. The
medium of an easy, obliging, and good-humoured manner, is perhaps what
suits best. But here, as in many other things, it is not easy to lay
down any general rule. Much must be left to the goos sense and _tact_ of
the trader.]




CHAPTER IX

OF OTHER REASONS FOR THE TRADESMAN'S DISASTERS: AND, FIRST, OF INNOCENT
DIVERSIONS


A few directions seasonably given, and wisely received, will be
sufficient to guide a tradesman in a right management of his business,
so as that, if he observes them, he may secure his prosperity and
success: but it requires a long and serious caveat to warn him of the
dangers he meets with in his way. Trade is a straight and direct way, if
they will but keep in it with a steady foot, and not wander, and launch
out here and there, as a loose head and giddy fancy will prompt them to
do.

The road, I say, is straight and direct; but there are many turnings and
openings in it, both to the right hand and to the left, in which, if a
tradesman but once ventures to step awry, it is ten thousand to one but
he loses himself, and very rarely finds his way back again; at least if
he does, it is like a man that has been lost in a wood; he comes out
with a scratched face, and torn clothes, tired and spent, and does not
recover himself in a long while after.

In a word, one steady motion carries him up, but many things assist to
pull him down; there are many ways open to his ruin, but few to his
rising: and though employment is said to be the best fence against
temptations, and he that is busy heartily in his business, temptations
to idleness and negligence will not be so busy about him, yet tradesmen
are as often drawn from their business as other men; and when they are
so, it is more fatal to them a great deal, than it is to gentlemen and
persons whose employments do not call for their personal attendance so
much as a shop does.

Among the many turnings and bye-lanes, which, as I say, are to be met
with in the straight road of trade, there are two as dangerous and fatal
to their prosperity as the worst, though they both carry an appearance
of good, and promise contrary to what they perform; these are--

I. Pleasures and diversions, especially such as they will have us call
innocent diversions.

II. Projects and adventures, and especially such as promise mountains of
profit _in nubibus_ [in the clouds], and are therefore the more likely
to ensnare the poor eager avaricious tradesman.

1. I am now to speak of the first, namely, pleasures and diversions. I
cannot allow any pleasures to be innocent, when they turn away either
the body or the mind of a tradesman from the one needful thing which his
calling makes necessary, and that necessity makes his duty--I mean, the
application both of his hands and head to his business. Those pleasures
and diversions may be innocent in themselves, which are not so to him:
there are very few things in the world that are simply evil, but things
are made circumstantially evil when they are not so in themselves:
killing a man is not simply sinful; on the contrary, it is not lawful
only, but a duty, when justice and the laws of God or man require it;
but when done maliciously, from any corrupt principle, or to any
corrupted end, is murder, and the worst of crimes.

Pleasures and diversions are thus made criminal, when a man is engaged
in duty to a full attendance upon such business as those pleasures and
diversions necessarily interfere with and interrupt; those pleasures,
though innocent in themselves, become a fault in him, because his legal
avocations demand his attendance in another place. Thus those pleasures
may be lawful to another man, which are not so to him, because another
man has not the same obligation to a calling, the same necessity to
apply to it, the same cry of a family, whose bread may depend upon his
diligence, as a tradesman has.

Solomon, the royal patron of industry, tells us, 'He that is a lover of
pleasure, shall be a poor man.' I must not doubt but Solomon is to be
understood of tradesmen and working men, such as I am writing of, whose
time and application is due to their business, and who, in pursuit of
their pleasures, are sure to neglect their shops, or employments, and I
therefore render the words thus, to the present purpose--'The tradesman
that is a lover of pleasure, shall be a poor man.' I hope I do not wrest
the Scripture in my interpretation of it; I am sure it agrees with the
whole tenor of the wise man's other discourses.

When I see young shopkeepers keep horses, ride a-hunting, learn
dog-language, and keep the sportsmen's brogue upon their tongues, I will
not say I read their destiny, for I am no fortuneteller, but I do say, I
am always afraid for them; especially when I know that either their
fortunes and beginnings are below it, or that their trades are such as
in a particular manner to require their constant attendance. As to see a
barber abroad on a Saturday, a corn-factor abroad on a Wednesday and
Friday, or a Blackwell-hall man on a Thursday, you may as well say a
country shopkeeper should go a-hunting on a market-day, or go a-feasting
at the fair day of the town where he lives; and yet riding and hunting
are otherwise lawful diversions, and in their kind very good for
exercise and health.

I am not for making a galley-slave of a shopkeeper, and have him chained
down to the oar; but if he be a wise, a prudent, and a diligent
tradesman, he will allow himself as few excursions as possible.

Business neglected is business lost; it is true, there are some
businesses which require less attendance than others, and give a man
less occasion of application; but, in general, that tradesman who can
satisfy himself to be absent from his business, must not expect success;
if he is above the character of a diligent tradesman, he must then be
above the business too, and should leave it to somebody, that, having
more need of it, will think it worth his while to mind it better.

Nor, indeed, is it possible a tradesman should be master of any of the
qualifications which I have set down to denominate him complete, if he
neglects his shop and his time, following his pleasures and diversions.

I will allow that the man is not vicious and wicked, that he is not
addicted to drunkenness, to women, to gaming, or any such things as
those, for those are not woundings, but murder, downright killing. A man
may wound and hurt himself sometimes, in the rage of an ungoverned
passion, or in a phrensy or fever, and intend no more; but if he shoots
himself through the head, or hangs himself, we are sure then he intended
to kill and destroy himself, and he dies inevitably.

For a tradesman to follow his pleasures, which indeed is generally
attended with a slighting of his business, leaving his shop to servants
or others, it is evident to me that he is indifferent whether it thrives
or no; and, above all, it is evident that his heart is not in his
business; that he does not delight in it, or look on it with pleasure.
To a complete tradesman there is no pleasure equal to that of being in
his business, no delight equal to that of seeing himself thrive, to see
trade flow in upon him, and to be satisfied that he goes on
prosperously. He will never thrive, that cares not whether he thrives or
no. As trade is the chief employment of his life, and is therefore
called, by way of eminence, _his business_, so it should be made the
chief delight of his life. The tradesman that does not love his
business, will never give it due attendance.

Pleasure is a bait to the mind, and the mind will attract the body:
where the heart is, the object shall always have the body's company. The
great objection I meet with from young tradesmen against this argument
is, they follow no unlawful pleasures; they do not spend their time in
taverns, and drinking to excess; they do not spend their money in
gaming, and so stock-starve their business, and rob the shop to supply
the extravagant losses of play; or they do not spend their hours in ill
company and debaucheries; all they do, is a little innocent diversion
in riding abroad now and then for the air, and for their health, and to
ease their thoughts of the throng of other affairs which are heavy upon
them, &c.

These, I say, are the excuses of young tradesmen; and, indeed, they are
young excuses, and, I may say truly, have nothing in them. It is perhaps
true, or I may grant it so for the present purpose, that the pleasure
the tradesman takes is, as he says, not unlawful, and that he follows
only a little innocent diversion; but let me tell him, the words are ill
put together, and the diversion is rather recommended from the word
_little_, than from the word _innocent_: if it be, indeed, but little,
it may be innocent; but the case is quite altered by the extent of the
thing; and the innocence lies here, not in the nature of the thing, not
in the diversion or pleasure that is taken, but in the time it takes;
for if the man spends the time in it which should be spent in his shop
or warehouse, and his business suffers by his absence, as it must do, if
the absence is long at a time, or often practised--the diversion so
taken becomes criminal to him, though the same diversion might be
innocent in another.

Thus I have heard a young tradesman, who loved his bottle, excuse
himself, and say, 'It is true, I have been at the tavern, but I was
treated, it cost me nothing.' And this, he thinks, clears him of all
blame; not considering that when he spends no money, yet he spends five
times the value of the money in time. Another says, 'Why, indeed, I was
at the tavern yesterday all the afternoon, but I could not help it, and
I spent but sixpence.' But at the same time perhaps it might be said he
spent five pounds' worth of time, his business being neglected, his shop
unattended, his books not posted, his letters not written, and the
like--for all those things are works necessary to a tradesman, as well
as the attendance on his shop, and infinitely above the pleasure of
being treated at the expense of his time. All manner of pleasures should
buckle and be subservient to business: he that makes his pleasure be his
business, will never make his business be a pleasure. Innocent pleasures
become sinful, when they are used to excess, and so it is here; the most
innocent diversion becomes criminal, when it breaks in upon that which
is the due and just employment of the man's life. Pleasures rob the
tradesman, and how, then, can he call them innocent diversions? They are
downright thieves; they rob his shop of his attendance, and of the time
which he ought to bestow there; they rob his family of their due
support, by the man's neglecting that business by which they are to be
supported and maintained; and they oftentimes rob the creditors of their
just debts, the tradesman sinking by the inordinate use of those
innocent diversions, as he calls them, as well by the expense attending
them, as the loss of his time, and neglect of his business, by which he
is at last reduced to the necessity of shutting up shop in earnest,
which was indeed as good as shut before. A shop without a master is like
the same shop on a middling holiday, half shut up, and he that keeps it
long so, need not doubt but he may in a little time more shut it quite
up.

In short, pleasure is a thief to business; how any man can call it
innocent, let him answer that does so; it robs him every way, as I have
said above: and if the tradesman be a Christian, and has any regard to
religion and his duty, I must tell him, that when upon his disasters he
shall reflect, and see that he has ruined himself and his family, by
following too much those diversions and pleasures which he thought
innocent, and which perhaps in themselves were really so, he will find
great cause to repent of that which he insisted on as innocent; he will
find himself lost, by doing lawful things, and that he made those
innocent things sinful, and those lawful things unlawful to him. Thus,
as they robbed his family and creditors before of their just debts--for
maintenance is a tradesman's just debt to his family, and a wife and
children are as much a tradesman's real creditors as those who trusted
him with their goods--I say, as his innocent pleasures robbed his family
and creditors before, they will rob him now of his peace, and of all
that calm of soul which an honest, industrious, though unfortunate,
tradesman meets with under his disasters.

I am asked here, perhaps, how much pleasure an honest-meaning tradesman
may be allowed to take? for it cannot be supposed I should insist that
all pleasure is forbidden him, that he must have no diversion, no spare
hours, no intervals from hurry and fatigue; that would be to pin him
down to the very floor of his shop, as John Sheppard was locked down to
the floor of his prison.

The answer to this question every prudent tradesman may make for
himself: if his pleasure is in his shop, and in his business, there is
no danger of him; but if he has an itch after exotic diversions--I mean
such as are foreign to his shop, and to his business, and which I
therefore call _exotic_--let him honestly and fairly state the case
between his shop and his diversions, and judge impartially for himself.
So much pleasure, and no more, may be innocently taken, as does not
interfere with, or do the least damage to his business, by taking him
away from it.

Every moment that his trade wants him in his shop or warehouse, it is
his duty to be there; it is not enough to say, I believe I shall not be
wanted; or I believe I shall suffer no loss by my absence. He must come
to a point and not deceive himself; if he does, the cheat is all his
own. If he will not judge sincerely at first, he will reproach himself
sincerely at last; for there is no fraud against his own reflections: a
man is very rarely a hypocrite to himself.

The rule may be, in a few words, thus: those pleasures or diversions,
and those only, can be innocent, which the man may or does use, or
allow himself to use, without hindrance of, or injury to, his business
and reputation.

Let the diversions or pleasures in question be what they will, and how
innocent soever they are in themselves, they are not so to him, because
they interrupt or interfere with his business, which is his immediate
duty. I have mentioned the circumstance which touches this part too,
namely, that there may be a time when even the needful duties of
religion may become faults, and unseasonable, when another more needful
attendance calls for us to apply to it; much more, then, those things
which are only barely lawful. There is a visible difference between the
things which we may do, and the things which we must do. Pleasures at
certain seasons are allowed, and we may give ourselves some loose to
them; but business, I mean to the man of business, is that needful
thing, of which it is not to be said it _may_, but it _must_ be done.

Again, those pleasures which may not only be lawful in themselves, but
which may be lawful to other men, yet are criminal and unlawful to him.
To gentlemen of fortunes and estates, who being born to large
possessions, and have no avocations of this kind, it is certainly lawful
to spend their spare hours on horseback, with their hounds or hawks,
pursuing their game; or, on foot, with their gun and their net, and
their dogs to kill the hares or birds, &c.--all which we call sport.
These are the men that can, with a particular satisfaction, when they
come home, say they have only taken an innocent diversion; and yet even
in these, there are not wanting some excesses which take away the
innocence of them, and consequently the satisfaction in their
reflection, and therefore it was I said it was lawful to them to spend
their spare hours--by which I am to be understood, those hours which are
not due to more solemn and weighty occasions, such as the duties of
religion in particular. But as this is not my present subject, I
proceed; for I am not talking to gentlemen now, but to tradesmen.

The prudent tradesman will, in time, consider what he ought or ought not
to do, in his own particular case, as to his pleasures--not what another
man may or may not do. In short, nothing of pleasure or diversion can be
innocent to him, whatever it may be to another, if it injures his
business, if it takes either his time, or his mind, or his delight, or
his attendance, from his business; nor can all the little excuses, of
its being for his health, and for the needful unbending the bow of the
mind, from the constant application of business, for all these must
stoop to the great article of his shop and business; though I might add,
that the bare taking the air for health, and for a recess to the mind,
is not the thing I am talking of--it is the taking an immoderate
liberty, and spending an immoderate length of time, and that at
unseasonable and improper hours, so as to make his pleasures and
diversions be prejudicial to his business--this is the evil I object to,
and this is too much the ruin of the tradesmen of this age; and thus any
man who calmly reads these papers will see I ought to be understood.

Nor do I confine this discourse to the innocent diversions of a horse,
and riding abroad to take the air; things which, as above, are made
hurtful and unlawful to him, only as they are hindrances to his
business, and are more or less so, as they rob his shop or warehouse, or
business, or his attendance and time, and cause him to draw his
affections off from his calling.

But we see other and new pleasures daily crowding in upon the tradesman,
and some which no age before this have been in danger of--I mean, not to
such an excess as is now the case, and consequently there were fewer
tradesmen drawn into the practice.

The present age is a time of gallantry and gaiety; nothing of the
present pride and vanity was known, or but very little of it, in former
times: the baits which are every where laid for the corruption of youth,
and for the ruin of their fortunes, were never so many and so
mischievous as they are now.

We scarce now see a tradesman's apprentice come to his fifth year, but
he gets a long wig and a sword, and a set of companions suitable; and
this wig and sword, being left at proper and convenient places, are put
on at night after the shop is shut, or when they can slip out to go
a-raking in, and when they never fail of company ready to lead them into
all manner of wickedness and debauchery; and from this cause it is
principally that so many apprentices are ruined, and run away from their
masters before they come out of their times--more, I am persuaded, now,
than ever were to be found before.

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