There are certain professions, in themselves honest, useful, and even
estimable, for which society has agreed to entertain a feeling of
contempt. It is, for instance, very difficult to think of a curate
as anything except a butt for satirists, or to be respectful to the
profession of tailoring, although many a man for private pecuniary
reasons is meek before the particular individual who makes his clothes.
Yet the novelist and the playwright, who hold the mirror up to modern
humanity, are occasionally kind even to curates and tailors. There is a
youthful athlete in Holy Orders who thrashes, to our immense admiration,
the village bully, bewildering his victim and his admirers with his
mastery of what is described a little vaguely as the ‘old Oxford
science.’ Once, at least, a glamour of romance has been shed over the
son of a tailor, and it becomes imaginable that even the chalker of
unfinished coats may in the future be posed as heroic. There is still,
however, a profession which no eccentric novelist has ever ventured to
represent as other than entirely contemptible. The commercial traveller
is beneath satire, and outside the region of sympathy. If he appears at
all in fiction or on the stage, he is irredeemably vulgar. He is
never heroic, never even a villain, rarely comic, always, poor man,
objectionable. This is a peculiar thing in the literature of a people
like the English, who are not ashamed to glory in their commercial
success, and are always ready to cheer a politician who professes to
have the interests of trade at heart. Amid the current eulogies of
the working man and the apotheosis of the beings called ‘Captains
of Industry,’ the bagman surely ought to find at least an apologist.
Without him it seems likely that many articles would fail to find a
place in the windows of the provincial shopkeepers. Without him large
sections of the public would probably remain ignorant for years of new
brands of cigarettes, and dyspeptic people might never come across the
foods which Americans prepare for their use.
Also the individual bagman is often not without his charm. He knows, if
not courts and princes, at least hotels and railway companies. He is on
terms of easy familiarity with every ‘boots’ in several counties. He can
calculate to a nicety how long a train is likely to be delayed by a fair
‘somewhere along the line.’ He is also full of information about local
politics. In Connaught, for instance, an experienced member of the
profession will gauge for you the exact strength of the existing League
in any district. He knows what publicans may be regarded as ‘priest’s
men,’ and who have leanings towards independence. His knowledge is
frequently minute, and he can prophesy the result of a District Council
election by reckoning up the number of leading men who read the _United
Irishman_, and weighing them against those who delight in the pages of
the _Leader_. The men who can do these things are themselves local. They
reside in their district, and, as a rule, push the sales and collect the
debts of local brewers and flour-merchants. The representatives of the
larger English firms only make their rounds twice or three times a year,
and are less interesting. They pay the penalty of being cosmopolitan,
and tend to become superficial in their judgment of men and things.
Hyacinth, like most members of the public, was ignorant of the greatness
and interest of his new profession. He entered upon it with some
misgiving, and viewed his trunk of sample blankets and shawls with
disgust. Even a new overcoat, though warm and weatherproof, afforded
him little joy, being itself a sample of Mr. Quinn’s frieze. One thought
alone cheered him, and even generated a little enthusiasm for his work.
It occurred to him that in selling the produce of the Ballymoy Mill
he was advancing the industrial revival of Ireland. He knew that
other people, quite heroic figures, were working for the same end. A
Government Board found joyous scope for the energies of its officials in
giving advice to people who wanted to cure fish or make lace. It earned
the blessing which is to rest upon those who are reviled and evil spoken
of, for no one, except literary people, who write for English magazines,
ever had a good word for it. There were also those--their activity
took the form of letters to the newspapers--who desired to utilize the
artistic capacity of the Celt, and to enrich the world with beautiful
fabrics and carpentry. They, too, were workers in the cause of the
revival. Then there were great ladies, the very cream of the Anglo-Irish
aristocracy, who petted tweeds and stockings, and offered magnificent
prizes to industrious cottagers. They earned quite large sums of
money for their protégés by holding sales in places like Belfast and
Manchester, where titles can be judiciously cheapened to a wealthy
bourgeoisie, and the wives of ship-builders and cotton-spinners will
spend cheerfully in return for the privilege of shaking hands with
a Countess. A crowd of minor enthusiasts fostered such industries as
sprigging, and there was one man who believed that the future prosperity
of Ireland might be secured by teaching people to make dolls. It was
altogether a noble army, and even a commercial traveller might hold
his head high in the world if he counted himself one of its soldiers.
Hitherto results have not been at all commensurate with the amount of
printer’s ink expended in magazine articles and advertisements. Yet
something has been accomplished. Nunneries here and there have been
induced to accept presents of knitting-machines, and people have
begun to regard as somehow sacred the words ‘technical education.’
The National Board of Education has also spent a large sum of money in
reviving among its teachers the almost forgotten art of making paper
boats.
Hyacinth very soon discovered that his patriotic view of this work did
not commend itself to his brother travellers. He found that they had no
feeling but one of contempt for people whom they regarded as meddling
amateurs. Occasionally, when some convent, under a bustling Mother
Superior, advanced from the region of half-charitable sales at
exhibitions into the competition of the open market, contempt became
dislike, and wishes were expressed in quite unsuitable language that the
good ladies would mind their own proper business. Until Hyacinth learnt
to conceal his hopes of Ireland’s future as a manufacturing country he
was regarded with suspicion. No one, of course, objected to his making
what use he could of patriotism as an advertisement, but he was given to
understand that, like other advertisements, it could not be quoted
among the initiated without a serious breach of good manners. Even as an
advertisement it was not rated highly.
There was an elderly gentleman, stout and somewhat bibulous, who
superintended the consumption of certain brands of American cigarettes
in the province of Connaught. Hyacinth met him in the exceedingly
dirty Railway Hotel at Knock. Since there were no other guests, and the
evening was wet, the two were thrown upon each other’s society in the
commercial-room.
‘I don’t think,’ said Mr. Hollywell, in reply to a remark of Hyacinth’s,
‘that there’s the least use trying to drag patriotic sentiment into
business. Of course, since you represent an Irish house--woollen goods,
I think you said--you’re quite right to run the fact for all it’s worth.
I don’t in the least blame you. Only I don’t think you’ll find it pays.’
He sipped his whisky-and-water--it was still early, and he had only
arrived at his third glass--and then proceeded to give his personal
experience.
‘Now, I work for an American firm. If there was any force in the
patriotic idea I shouldn’t sell a single cigarette. My people are in
the big tobacco combine. You must have read the sort of things the
newspapers wrote about us when we started. From any point of view,
British Imperial or Irish National, we should have been boycotted long
ago if patriotism had anything to do with trade. But look at the facts.
Our chief rivals in this district are two Irish firms. They advertise
in Gaelic, which is a mistake to start with, because nobody can read it.
They get the newspaper people to write articles recommending a “great
home industry” to public support. They get local branches of all the
different leagues to pass resolutions pledging their members to smoke
only Irish tobacco. But until quite lately they simply didn’t have a
look in.’
‘Why?’ asked Hyacinth. ‘Were your things cheaper or better?’
‘No,’ said the other, ‘I don’t think they were either. You see, prices
are bound to come out pretty even in the long run, and I should say
that, if anything, they sold a slightly better article. It’s hard to
say exactly why we beat them. When competition is really keen a lot of
little things that you would hardly notice make all the difference.
For one thing, I get a free hand in the matter of subscribing to local
bazaars and race-meetings. I’ve often taken as much as a pound’s worth
of tickets for a five-pound note that some priest was raffling in aid of
a new chapel. It’s wonderful the orders you can get from shopkeepers in
that kind of way. Then, we get our things up better. Look at that.’
He handed Hyacinth a highly-glazed packet with a picture of a handsome
brown dog on it.
‘Keep it,’ said Mr. Hollywell. ‘I give away twenty or thirty of
those packets every week. Now look inside. What have you? Oh, H.M.S.
_Majestic_. That’s one of a series of photos of “Britain’s first line
of defence.” Lots of people go on buying those cigarettes just to get
a complete collection of the photos. We supply an album to keep them in
for one and sixpence. There’s another of our makes which has pictures
of actresses and pretty women. They are extraordinarily popular. They’re
perfectly all right, of course, from the moral point of view, but one in
every ten is in tights or sitting with her legs very much crossed, just
to keep up the expectation. It’s very queer the people who go for those
photos. You’d expect it to be young men, but it isn’t.’
The subject was not particularly interesting to Hyacinth, but since his
companion was evidently anxious to go on talking, he asked the expected
question.
‘Young women,’ said Mr. Hollywell. ‘I found it out quite by accident. I
got a lot of complaints from one particular town that our cigarettes had
no photos with them. I discovered after a while that a girl in one
of the principal shops had hit on a dodge for getting out the photos
without apparently injuring the packets. The funny thing was that
she never touched the ironclads or the “Types of the soldiers of all
nations,” which you might have thought would interest her, but she
collared every single actress, and had duplicates of most of them. And
she wasn’t an exception. Most girls goad their young men to buy these
cigarettes and make collections of the photos. Queer, isn’t it? I can’t
imagine why they do it.’
‘You said just now,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that latterly you hadn’t done quite
so well. Did you run out of actresses and battleships?’
‘No; but one of the Irish firms took to offering prizes and enclosing
coupons. You collected twenty coupons, and you got a silver-backed
looking-glass--girls again, you see--or two thousand coupons, and you
got a new bicycle. It’s an old dodge, of course, but somehow it always
seems to pay. However, all this doesn’t matter to you. All I wanted was
to show you that there is no use relying on patriotism. The thing to go
in for in any business is attractive novelties, cheap lines, and, in the
country shops, long credit.’
It was not very long before Hyacinth began to realize the soundness of
Mr. Hollywell’s contempt for patriotism. In the town of Clogher he
found the walls placarded with the advertisements of an ultra-patriotic
draper. ‘Féach Annseo,’ he read, ‘The Irish House. Support Home
Manufactures.’ Another placard was even more vehement in its appeal.
‘Why curse England,’ it asked, ‘and support her manufacturers?’ Try
O’Reilly, the one-price man.’ The sentiments were so admirable that
Hyacinth followed the advice and tried O’Reilly.
The shop was crowded when he entered, for it was market day in Clogher.
The Irish country-people, whose manners otherwise are the best in
the world, have one really objectionable habit. In the street or in a
crowded building they push their way to the spot they want to reach,
without the smallest regard for the feelings of anyone who happens to
be in the way. Sturdy country-women, carrying baskets which doubled the
passage room they required, hustled Hyacinth into a corner, and for a
time defeated his efforts to emerge. Getting his case of samples safely
between his legs, he amused himself watching the patriot shopkeeper and
his assistants conducting their business. It was perfectly obvious that
in one respect the announcements of the attractive placard departed
from the truth: O’Reilly was not a ‘one-price man,’ He charged for every
article what he thought his customers were likely to pay. The result was
that every sale involved prolonged bargaining and heated argument. In
most cases no harm was done. The country-women were keenly alive to the
value of their money, and evidently enjoyed the process of beating
down the price by halfpennies until the real value of the article was
reached. Then Mr. O’Reilly and his assistants were accustomed to close
the haggle with a beautiful formula:
‘To _you_,’ they said, with confidential smiles and flattering emphasis
on the pronoun--‘to _you_ the price will be one and a penny; but,
really, there will be no profit on the sale.’
Occasionally with timid and inexperienced customers O’Reilly’s method
proved its value. Hyacinth saw him sell a dress-length of serge to a
young woman with a baby in her arms for a penny a yard more than he
had charged a moment before for the same material. Another thing which
struck him as he watched was the small amount of actual cash which was
paid across the counter. Most of the women, even those who seemed quite
poor, had accounts in the shop, and did not shrink from increasing
them. Once or twice a stranger presented some sort of a letter of
introduction, and was at once accommodated with apparently unlimited
credit.
At length there was a lull in the business, and Hyacinth succeeded in
spreading his goods on a vacant counter, and attracting the attention of
Mr. O’Reilly. He began with shawls.
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you will give me a good order for these
shawls.’
Mr. O’Reilly fingered them knowingly.
‘Price?’ he said.
Hyacinth mentioned a sum which left a fair margin of profit for Mr.
Quinn. O’Reilly shook his head and laughed.
‘Can’t do it.’
Hyacinth reduced his price at once as far as possible.
‘No use,’ said Mr. O’Reilly.
Compared with the suave oratory to which he treated his customers, this
extreme economy of words was striking.
‘See here,’ he said, producing a bundle of shawls from a shelf beside
him. ‘I get these for twenty-five shillings a dozen less from Thompson
and Taylor of Manchester.’
Hyacinth looked at them curiously. Each bore a prominent label setting
forth a name for the garment in large letters surrounded with wreaths
of shamrocks. ‘The Colleen Bawn,’ he read, ‘Erin’s Own,’ ‘The Kathleen
Mavourneen,’ ‘The Cruiskeen Lawn.’ The appropriateness of this last
title was not obvious to the mere Irishman, but the colour of the
garment was green, so perhaps there was a connection of thought in the
maker’s mind between that and ‘Lawn.’ ‘Cruiskeen’ he may have taken for
the name of a place.
‘Are these,’ asked Hyacinth, ‘what you advertise as Irish goods?’
Mr. O’Reilly cleared his throat twice before he replied.
‘They are got up specially for the Irish market.’ In the interests of
his employer Hyacinth kept his temper, but the effort was a severe one.
‘These,’ he said, ‘are half cotton. Mine are pure wool. They are really
far better value even if they were double the price.’
Mr. O’Reilly shrugged his shoulders.
‘I don’t say they’re not, but I should not sell one of yours for every
dozen of the others.’
‘Try,’ said Hyacinth; ‘give them a fair chance. Tell the people that
they will last twice as long. Tell them that they are made in Ireland.’
‘That would not be the slightest use. They would simply laugh in my
face. My customers don’t care a pin where the goods are made. I have
never in my life been asked for Irish manufacture.’
‘Then, why on earth do you stick up those advertisements?’ said
Hyacinth, pointing to the ‘Féach Annseo’ which appeared on a hoarding
across the street.
Mr. O’Reilly was perfectly frank and unashamed.
‘The other drapery house in the town is owned by a Scotchman, and of
course it pays more or less to keep on saying that I am Irish. Besides,
I mean to stand for the Urban Council in March, and those sort of ads.
are useful at an election, even if they are no good for business.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ said Hyacinth, shirking a discussion on
the morality of advertising: ‘I’ll let you have a dozen shawls at cost
price, and take back what you can’t sell, if you give me your word to do
your best for them.’
Similar discussions followed the display of serges and blankets. It
appeared that nice-looking goods could be sent over from England at
lower prices. It was vain for Hyacinth to press the fact that his things
were better. Mr. O’Reilly admitted as much.
‘But what am I to do? The people don’t want what is good. They want a
cheap article which looks well, and they don’t care a pin whether the
thing is made in England, Ireland, or America. Take my advice,’ he added
as Hyacinth left the shop: ‘get your boss to do inferior lines--cheap,
cheap and showy.’
So far Mr. Hollywell’s opinions were entirely justified. The appeal of
the patriotic press to the public and the shopkeepers on behalf of the
industrial revival of Ireland had certainly not affected the town of
Clogher. Hyacinth was bitterly disappointed; but hope, when it is born
of enthusiasm, dies hard, and he was greatly interested in a speech
which he read one day in the ‘Mayo Telegraph’. It had been made at a
meeting of the League by an Ardnaree shopkeeper called Dowling. A trade
rival--the fact of the rivalry was not emphasized--had advertised in
a Scotch paper for a milliner. Dowling was exceedingly indignant. He
quoted emigration statistics showing the number of girls who left Mayo
every year for the United States. He pointed out that all of them might
be employed at home, as milliners or otherwise, if only the public would
boycott shops which sold English goods or employed Scotch milliners.
He more than suspected that the obnoxious advertisement was part of an
organized attempt to effect a new plantation of Connaught--‘worse than
Cromwell’s was.’ The fact that Connaught was the only part of Ireland
which Cromwell did not propose to plant escaped the notice of both
Mr. Dowling and his audience. The speech concluded with a passionate
peroration and a verse, no doubt declaimed soundingly, of ‘The West’s
Awake.’
Hyacinth made an expedition to Ardnaree, and called hopefully on the
orator. His reception was depressing in the extreme. The shop, which was
large and imposing, was stocked with goods which were obviously English,
and Mr. Dowling curtly refused even to look at the samples of Mr.
Quinn’s manufactures. Hyacinth quoted his own speech to the man, and was
amazed at the cynical indifference with which he ignored the dilemma.
‘Business is one thing,’ he said, ‘and politics is something entirely
different.’
Hyacinth lost his temper completely.
‘I shall write to the papers,’ he said, ‘and expose you. I shall have
your speech reprinted, and along with it an account of the way you
conduct your business.’
A mean, hard smile crossed Mr. Dowling’s mouth before he answered:
‘Perhaps you don’t know that my wife is the Archbishop’s niece?’
Hyacinth stared at him. For a minute or two he entirely failed to
understand what Mrs. Dowling’s relationship to a great ecclesiastic had
to do with the question. At last a light broke on him.
‘You mean that an editor wouldn’t print my letter because he would be
afraid of offending a Roman Catholic Archbishop?’
The expression ‘Roman Catholic’ caught Mr. Dowling’s attention.
‘Are you a Protestant?’ he asked. ‘You are--a dirty Protestant--and you
dare to come here into my own house, and insult me and trample on my
religious convictions. I’m a Catholic and a member of the League. What
do you mean, you Souper, you Sour-face, by talking to me about Irish
manufactures? Get out of this house, and go to the hell that’s waiting
for you!’
As Hyacinth turned to go, there flashed across his mind the recollection
of Miss Goold and her friends who wrote for the _Croppy_.
‘There’s one paper in Ireland, anyhow,’ he said, ‘which is not afraid
of your wife nor your Archbishop. I’ll write to the _Croppy_, and you’ll
see if they won’t publish the facts.’
Mr. Dowling grinned.
‘I don’t care if they do,’ he said. ‘The priests are dead against the
_Croppy_, and there’s hardly a man in the town reads it. Go up there
now to Hely’s and try if you can buy a copy. I tell you it isn’t on sale
here at all, and whatever they publish will do me no harm.’
When Hyacinth returned to the hotel he found Mr. Holywell seated, with
the inevitable whisky-and-water beside him, in the commercial-room.
‘Well, Mr. Conneally,’ he said, ‘and how is patriotism paying you? Find
people ready to buy what’s Irish?’
Hyacinth, boiling over with indignation, related his experience with Mr.
Dowling.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Mr. Hollywell. ‘But anyhow you’re just as
well out of a deal with that fellow. I wouldn’t care to do business with
him myself. I happen to know, and you may take my word for it’--his
voice sunk to a confidential whisper--‘that he’s very deep in the books
of two English firms, and that he daren’t--simply daren’t--place
an order with anyone else. They’d have him in the Bankruptcy Court
to-morrow if he did. I shouldn’t feel easy with Mr. Dowling’s cheque for
an account until I saw how the clerk took it across the bank counter.
You mark my words, there’ll be a fire in that establishment before the
year’s out.’
The prophecy was fulfilled, as Hyacinth learnt from the _Mayo
Telegraphy_ and Mr. Dowling’s whole stock of goods was consumed. There
were rumours that a sceptical insurance company made difficulties about
paying the compensation demanded; but the inhabitants of Ardnaree marked
their confidence in the husband of an Archbishop’s niece by presenting
him with an address of sympathy and a purse containing ten sovereigns.
Most of Hyacinth’s business was done with small shopkeepers in remote
districts. The country-people who lived out of reach of such centres
of fashion as Ardnaree and Clogher were sufficiently unsophisticated to
prefer things which were really good. Hats and bonnets were not quite
universal among the women in the mountain districts far back where they
spoke Irish, and Mr. Quinn’s head-kerchiefs were still in request. Even
the younger women wanted garments which would keep them warm and dry,
and Hyacinth often returned well satisfied from a tour of the country
shops. Sometimes he doubted whether he ought to trust the people with
more than a few pounds’ worth of goods, but he gradually learnt that,
unlike the patriotic Mr. Dowling, they were universally honest. He
discovered, too, that these people, with their imperfect English and
little knowledge of the world, were exceedingly shrewd. They had very
little real confidence in oratorical politicians, and their interest
in public affairs went no further than voting consistently for the
man their priest recommended. But they quickly understood Hyacinth’s
arguments when he told them that the support of Irish manufactures would
help to save their sons and daughters from the curse of emigration.
‘Faith, sir,’ said a shopkeeper who kept a few blankets and tweeds among
his flour-sacks and porter-barrels, ‘since you were talking to the boys
last month, I couldn’t induce one of them to take the foreign stuff if I
was to offer him a shilling along with it.’