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

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Nor, as I said before, will I charge the devil with having any hand in
the ruin of these young fellows--indeed, he needs not trouble himself
about them, they are his own by early choice--they anticipate
temptation, and are as forward as the devil can desire them to be. These
may be truly said to be drawn aside of their own lusts, and
enticed--they need no tempter.

But of these I may also say, they seldom trouble the tradesmen's class;
they get ruined early, and finish the tradesman before they begin, so my
discourse is not at present directed much to them; indeed, they are past
advice before they come in my way.

Indeed, I knew one of these sort of gentlemen-apprentices make an
attempt to begin, and set up his trade--he was a dealer in what they
call Crooked-lane wares: he got about L300 from his father, an honest
plain countryman, to set him up, and his said honest father exerted
himself to the utmost to send him up so much money.

When he had gotten the money, he took a shop near the place where he had
served his time, and entering upon the shop, he had it painted, and
fitted up, and some goods he bought in order to furnish it; but before
that, he was obliged to pay about L70 of the money to little debts,
which he had contracted in his apprenticeship, at two or three
ale-houses, for drink and eatables, treats, and junketings; and at the
barber's for long perukes, at the sempstress's for fine Holland-shirts,
turn-overs, white gloves, &c, to make a beau of him, and at several
other places.

When he came to dip into this, and found that it wanted still L30 or L40
to equip him for the company which he had learned to keep, he took care
to do this first; and being delighted with his new dress, and how like a
gentleman he looked, he was resolved, before he opened a shop, to take
his swing a little in the town; so away he went, with two of his
neighbour's apprentices, to the play-house, thence to the tavern, not
far from his dwelling, and there they fell to cards, and sat up all
night--and thus they spent about a fortnight; the rest just creeping
into their masters' houses, by the connivance of their fellow-servants,
and he getting a bed in the tavern, where what he spent, to be sure,
made them willing enough to oblige him--that is to say, to encourage him
to ruin himself.

They then changed their course, indeed, and went to the ball, and that
necessarily kept them out the most part of the night, always having
their supper dressed at the tavern at their return; and thus, in a few
words, he went on till he made way through all the remaining money he
had left, and was obliged to call his creditors together, and break
before he so much as opened his shop--I say, his creditors, for great
part of the goods which he had furnished his shop with were unpaid for;
perhaps some few might be bought with ready money.

This man, indeed, is the only tradesman that ever I met with, that set
up and broke before his shop was open; others I have indeed known make
very quick work of it.

But this part rather belongs to another head. I am at present not
talking of madmen, as I hope, indeed, I am not writing to madmen, but I
am talking of tradesmen undone by lawful things, by what they call
innocent and harmless things--such as riding abroad, or walking abroad
to take the air, and to divert themselves, dogs, gun, country-sport, and
city-recreation. These things are certainly lawful, and in themselves
very innocent; nay, they may be needful for health, and to give some
relaxation to the mind, hurried with too much business; but the
needfulness of them is so much made an excuse, and the excess of them is
so injurious to the tradesman's business and to his time, which should
be set apart for his shop and his trade, that there are not a few
tradesmen thus lawfully ruined, as I may call it--in a word, lawful or
unlawful, their shop is neglected, their business goes behind-hand, and
it is all one to the subject of breaking, and to the creditor, whether
the man was undone by being a knave, or by being a fool; it is all one
whether he lost his trade by scandalous immoral negligence, or by sober
or religious negligence.

In a word, business languishes, while the tradesman is absent, and
neglects it, be it for his health or for his pleasure, be it in good
company or in bad, be it from a good or an ill design; and if the
business languishes, the tradesman will not be long before he languishes
too; for nothing can support the tradesman but his supporting his trade
by a due attendance and application.[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[18] [In the above admirable series of plain-spoken advices, the author
has omitted one weighty reason why young tradesmen should not spend
their evenings in frivolous, or otherwise improper company. The actual
loss of time and of money incurred by such courses of conduct, is
generally of less consequence than the losses arising from habitual
distraction of mind, and the acquisition of an acquaintanceship with a
set of idle or silly companions. It is of the utmost importance that
young tradesmen should spend their leisure hours in a way calculated to
soothe the feelings, and enlarge the mind; and in the present day, from
the prevalance of literature, and other rational means for amusement,
they have ample opportunities of doing so.]

CHAPTER X

OF EXTRAVAGANT AND EXPENSIVE LIVING; ANOTHER STEP TO A TRADESMAN'S
DISASTER

Hitherto I have written of tradesmen ruined by lawful and innocent
diversions; and, indeed, these are some of the most dangerous pits for a
tradesman to fall into, because men are so apt to be insensible of the
danger: a ship may as well be lost in a calm smooth sea, and an easy
fair gale of wind, as in a storm, if they have no pilot, or the pilot be
ignorant or unwary; and disasters of that nature happen as frequently as
any others, and are as fatal. When rocks are apparent, and the pilot,
bold and wilful, runs directly upon them, without fear or wit, we know
the fate of the ship--it must perish, and all that are in it will
inevitably be lost; but in a smooth sea, a bold shore, an easy gale, the
unseen rocks or shoals are the only dangers, and nothing can hazard them
but the skilfulness of the pilot: and thus it is in trade. Open
debaucheries and extravagances, and a profusion of expense, as well as a
general contempt of business, these are open and current roads to a
tradesman's destruction; but a silent going on, in pursuit of innocent
pleasures, a smooth and calm, but sure neglect of his shop, and time,
and business, will as effectually and as surely ruin the tradesman as
the other; and though the means are not so scandalous, the effect is as
certain. But I proceed to the other.

Next to immoderate pleasures, the tradesman ought to be warned against
immoderate expense. This is a terrible article, and more particularly so
to the tradesman, as custom has now, as it were on purpose for their
undoing, introduced a general habit of, and as it were a general
inclination among all sorts of people to, an expensive way of living; to
which might be added a kind of necessity of it; for that even with the
greatest prudence and frugality a man cannot now support a family with
the ordinary expense, which the same family might have been maintained
with some few years ago: there is now (1) a weight of taxes upon almost
all the necessaries of life, bread and flesh excepted, as coals, salt,
malt, candles, soap, leather, hops, wine, fruit, and all foreign
consumptions; (2) a load of pride upon the temper of the nation, which,
in spite of taxes and the unusual dearess of every thing, yet prompts
people to a profusion in their expenses.

This is not so properly called a _tax_ upon the tradesmen; I think
rather, it may be called _a plague_ upon them: for there is, first, the
dearness of every necessary thing to make living expensive; and
secondly, an unconquerable aversion to any restraint; so that the poor
will be like the rich, and the rich like the great, and the great like
the greatest--and thus the world runs on to a kind of distraction at
this time: where it will end, time must discover.

Now, the tradesman I speak of, if he will thrive, he must resolve to
begin as he can go on; and if he does so, in a word, he must resolve to
live more under restraint than ever tradesmen of his class used to do;
for every necessary thing being, as I have said, grown dearer than
before, he must entirely omit all the enjoyment of the unnecessaries
which he might have allowed himself before, or perhaps be obliged to an
expense beyond the income of his trade: and in either of these cases he
has a great hardship upon him.

When I talk of immoderate expenses, I must be understood not yet to mean
the extravagances of wickedness and debaucheries; there are so many
sober extravagances, and so many grave sedate ways for a tradesman's
ruin, and they are so much more dangerous than those hair-brained
desperate ways of gaming and debauchery, that I think it is the best
service I can do the tradesmen to lay before them those sunk rocks (as
the seamen call them), those secret dangers in the first place, that
they may know how to avoid them; and as for the other common ways,
common discretion will supply them with caution for those, and their
senses will be their protection.

The dangers to the tradesmen whom I am directing myself to, are from
lawful things, and such as before are called innocent; for I am speaking
to the sober part of tradesmen, who yet are often ruined and overthrown
in trade; and perhaps as many such miscarry, as of the mad and
extravagant, particularly because their number far exceeds them.
Expensive living is a kind of slow fever; it is not so open, so
threatening and dangerous, as the ordinary distemper which goes by that
name, but it preys upon the spirits, and, when its degrees are increased
to a height, is as fatal and as sure to kill as the other: it is a
secret enemy, that feeds upon the vitals; and when it has gone its full
length, and the languishing tradesman is weakened in his solid part, I
mean his stock, then it overwhelms him at once.

Expensive living feeds upon the life and blood of the tradesman, for it
eats into the two most essential branches of his trade, namely, his
credit and his cash; the first is its triumph, and the last is its food:
nothing goes out to cherish the exorbitance, but the immediate money;
expenses seldom go on trust, they are generally supplied and supported
with ready money, whatever are not.

This expensive way of living consists in several things, which are all
indeed in their degree ruinous to the tradesman; such as

1. Expensive house-keeping, or family extravagance.

2. Expensive dressing, or the extravagance of fine clothes.

3. Expensive company, or keeping company above himself.

4. Expensive equipages, making a show and ostentation of
figure in the world.

I might take them all in bulk, and say, what has a young tradesman to do
with these? and yet where is there a tradesman now to be found, who is
not more or less guilty? It is, as I have said, the general vice of the
times; the whole nation are more or less in the crime; what with
necessity and inclination, where is the man or the family that lives as
such families used to live?

In short, good husbandry and frugality is quite out of fashion, and he
that goes about to set up for the practice of it, must mortify every
thing about him that has the least tincture of frugality; it is the mode
to live high, to spend more than we get, to neglect trade, contemn care
and concern, and go on without forecast, or without consideration; and,
in consequence, it is the mode to go on to extremity, to break, become
bankrupt and beggars, and so going off the trading stage, leave it open
for others to come after us, and do the same.[19]

To begin with house-keeping. I have already hinted, that every thing
belonging to the family subsistence bears a higher price than usual, I
may say, than ever; at the same time I can neither undertake to prove
that there is more got by selling, or more ways to get it, I mean to a
tradesman, than there was formerly; the consequence then must be, that
the tradesmen do not grow rich faster than formerly; at least we may
venture to say this of tradesmen and their families, comparing them with
former times, namely, that there is not more got, and I am satisfied
there is less laid up, than was then; or, if you will have it, that
tradesmen get less and spend more than they ever did. How they should be
richer than they were in those times, is very hard to say.

That all things are dearer than formerly to a house-keeper, needs little
demonstration; the taxes necessarily infer it from the weight of them,
and the many things charged; for, besides the things enumerated above,
we find all articles of foreign importation are increased by the high
duties laid on them; such as linen, especially fine linen; silk,
especially foreign wrought silk: every thing eatable, drinkable, and
wearable, are made heavy to us by high and exorbitant customs and
excises, as brandies, tobacco, sugar; deals and timber for building;
oil, wine, spice, raw silks, calico, chocolate, coffee, tea; on some of
these the duties are more than doubled: and yet that which is most
observable is, that such is the expensive humour of the times, that not
a family, no, hardly of the meanest tradesman, but treat their friends
with wine, or punch, or fine ale; and have their parlours set off with
the tea-table and the chocolate-pot--treats and liquors all exotic,
foreign and new among tradesmen, and terrible articles in their modern
expenses; which have nothing to be said for them, either as to the
expense of them, or the helps to health which they boast of: on the
contrary, they procure us rheumatic bodies and consumptive purses, and
can no way pass with me for necessaries; but being needless, they add to
the expense, by sending us to the doctors and apothecaries to cure the
breaches which they make in our health, and are themselves the very
worst sort of superfluities.

But I come back to necessaries; and even in them, family-expenses are
extremely risen, provisions are higher rated--no provisions that I know
of, except only bread, mutton, and fish, but are made dearer than
ever--house-rent, in almost all the cities and towns of note in England,
is excessively and extremely dearer, and that in spite of such
innumerable buildings as we see almost everywhere raised up, as well in
the country as in London, and the parts adjacent.

Add to the rents of houses, the wages of servants. A tradesman, be he
ever so much inclined to good husbandry, cannot always do his
kitchen-work himself, suppose him a bachelor, or can his wife, suppose
him married, and suppose her to have brought him any portion, be his
bedfellow and his cook too. These maid-servants, then, are to be
considered, and are an exceeding tax upon house-keepers; those who were
formerly hired at three pounds to four pounds a-year wages, now demand
five, six and eight pounds a-year; nor do they double anything upon us
but their wages and their pride; for, instead of doing more work for
their advance of wages, they do less: and the ordinary work of families
cannot now be performed by the same number of maids, which, in short, is
a tax upon the upper sort of tradesmen, and contributes very often to
their disasters, by the extravagant keeping three or four maid-servants
in a house, nay, sometimes five, where two formerly were thought
sufficient. This very extravagance is such, that talking lately with a
man very well experienced in this matter, he told me he had been making
his calculations on that very particular, and he found by computation,
that the number of servants kept by all sorts of people, tradesmen as
well as others, was so much increased, that there are in London, and the
towns within ten miles of it, take it every way, above a hundred
thousand more maid-servants and footmen, at this time in place, than
used to be in the same compass of ground thirty years ago;[20] and that
their wages amounted to above forty shillings a-head per annum, more
than the wages of the like number of servants did amount to at the same
length of time past; the advance to the whole body amounting to no less
than two hundred thousand pounds a-year.

Indeed, it is not easy to guess what the expense of wages to servants
amounts to in a year, in this nation; and consequently we cannot easily
determine what the increase of that expense amounts to in England, but
certainly it must rise to many hundred thousand pounds a-year in the
whole.

The tradesmen bear their share of this expense, and indeed too great a
share, very ordinary tradesmen in London keeping at least two maids, and
some more, and some a footman or two besides; for it is an ordinary
thing to see the tradesmen and shopkeepers of London keep footmen, as
well as the gentlemen: witness the infinite number of blue liveries,
which are so common now that they are called the tradesmen's liveries;
and few gentlemen care to give blue to their servants for that very
reason.

In proportion to their servants, the tradesmen now keep their tables,
which are also advanced in their proportion of expense to other things:
indeed, the citizen's and tradesmen's tables are now the emblems, not of
plenty, but of luxury, not of good house-keeping, but of profusion, and
that of the highest kind of extravagance; insomuch, that it was the
opinion of a gentleman who had been not a traveller only, but a nice
observer of such things abroad, that there is at this time more waste of
provisions in England than in any other nation in the world, of equal
extent of ground; and that England consumes for their whole subsistence
more flesh than half Europe besides; that the beggars of London, and
within ten miles round it, eat more white bread than the whole kingdom
of Scotland,[21] and the like.

But this is an observation only, though I believe it is very just; I am
bringing it in here only as an example of the dreadful profusion of this
age, and how an extravagant way of expensive living, perfectly negligent
of all degrees of frugality or good husbandry, is the reigning vice of
the people. I could enlarge upon it, and very much to the purpose here,
but I shall have occasion to speak of it again.

The tradesman, whom I am speaking to by way of direction, will not, I
hope, think this the way for him to thrive, or find it for his
convenience to fall in with this common height of living presently, in
his beginning; if he comes gradually into it after he has gotten
something considerable to lay by, I say, if he does it then, it is early
enough, and he may be said to be insensibly drawn into it by the
necessity of the times; because, forsooth, it is a received notion, 'We
must be like other folks:' I say, if he does fall into it then, when he
will pretend he cannot help it, it is better than worse, and if he can
afford it, well and good; but to begin thus, to set up at this rate,
when he first looks into the world, I can only say this, he that begins
in such a manner, it will not be difficult to guess where he will end;
for a tradesman's pride certainly precedes his destruction, and an
expensive living goes before his fall.

We are speaking now to a tradesman, who, it is supposed, must live by
his business, a young man who sets up a shop, or warehouse, and expects
to get money; one that would be a rich tradesman, rather than a poor,
fine, gay man; a grave citizen, not a peacock's feather; for he that
sets up for a Sir Fopling Flutter, instead of a complete tradesman, is
not to be thought capable of relishing this discourse; neither does this
discourse relish him; for such men seem to be among the incurables, and
are rather fit for an hospital of fools (so the French call our Bedlam)
than to undertake trade, and enter upon business.

Trade is not a ball, where people appear in masque, and act a part to
make sport; where they strive to seem what they really are not, and to
think themselves best dressed when they are least known: but it is a
plain visible scene of honest life, shown best in its native appearance,
without disguise; supported by prudence and frugality; and like strong,
stiff, clay land, grows fruitful only by good husbandry, culture, and
manuring.

A tradesman dressed up fine, with his long wig and sword, may go to the
ball when he pleases, for he is already dressed up in the habit; like a
piece of counterfeit money, he is brass washed over with silver, and no
tradesman will take him for current; with money in his hand, indeed, he
may go to the merchant's warehouse and buy any thing, but no body will
deal with him without it: he may write upon his edged hat, as a certain
tradesman, after having been once broke and set up again, 'I neither
give nor take credit:' and as others set up in their shops, 'No trust by
retail,' so he may say, 'No trust by wholesale.' In short, thus
equipped, he is truly a tradesman in masquerade, and must pass for such
wherever he is known. How long it may be before his dress and he may
suit, it not hard to guess.

Some will have it that this expensive way of living began among the
tradesmen first, that is to say, among the citizens of London; and that
their eager resolved pursuit of that empty and meanest kind of pride,
called imitation, namely, to look like the gentry, and appear above
themselves, drew them into it. It has indeed been a fatal custom, but
it has been too long a city vanity. If men of quality lived like
themselves, men of no quality would strive to live not like themselves:
if those had plenty, these would have profusion; if those had enough,
these would have excess; if those had what was good, these would have
what was rare and exotic; I mean as to season, and consequently dear.
And this is one of the ways that have worn out so many tradesmen before
their time.

This extravagance, wherever it began, had its first rise among those
sorts of tradesmen, who, scorning the society of their shops and
customers, applied themselves to rambling to courts and plays; kept
company above themselves, and spent their hours in such company as lives
always above them; this could not but bring great expense along with it,
and that expense would not be confined to the bare keeping such company
abroad, but soon showed itself in a living like them at home, whether
the tradesmen could support it or no.

Keeping high company abroad certainly brings on visitings and high
treatings at home; and these are attended with costly furniture, rich
clothes, and dainty tables. How these things agree with a tradesman's
income, it is easy to suggest; and that, in short, these measures have
sent so many tradesmen to the Mint and to the Fleet, where I am witness
to it that they have still carried on their expensive living till they
have come at last to starving and misery; but have been so used to it,
they could not abate it, or at least not quite leave it off, though they
wanted the money to pay for it.

Nor is the expensive dressing a little tax upon tradesmen, as it is now
come up to an excess not formerly known to tradesmen; and though it is
true that this particularly respects the ladies (for the tradesmen's
wives now claim that title, as they do by their dress claim the
appearance), yet to do justice to them, and not to load the women with
the reproach, as if it were wholly theirs, it must be acknowledged the
men have their share in dress, as the times go now, though, it is true,
not so antic and gay as in former days; but do we not see fine wigs,
fine Holland shirts of six to seven shillings an ell, and perhaps laced
also, all lately brought down to the level of the apron, and become the
common wear of tradesmen--nay, I may say, of tradesmen's
apprentices--and that in such a manner as was never known in England
before?

If the tradesman is thriving, and can support this and his credit too,
that makes the case differ, though even then it cannot be said to be
suitable; but for a tradesman to begin thus, is very imprudent, because
the expense of this, as I said before, drains the very life-blood of his
trade, taking away his ready money only, and making no return, but the
worst of return, poverty and reproach; and, in case of miscarriage,
infinite scandal and offence.

I am loth to make any part of my writing a satire upon the women; nor,
indeed, does the extravagance either of dress or house-keeping, lie all,
or always, at the door of the tradesmen's wives--the husband is often
the prompter of it; at least he does not let his wife into the detail of
his circumstances, he does not make her mistress of her own condition,
but either flatters her with notions of his wealth, his profits, and his
flourishing circumstances, and so the innocent woman spends high and
lives great, believing that she is in a condition to afford it, and that
her husband approves of it; at least, he does not offer to retrench or
restrain her, but lets her go on, and indeed goes on with her, to the
ruin of both.

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