OBSERVING AT HAND.
A tribe of little children had gathered round Mrs. White’s windows
before Letitia and Thérèse arrived at the shop; the reason of which was
that the grocery and drapery goods were disposed in a new style of
elegance, in honour of her ladyship. Such tempting candies in the one
window; such shining pins, such a rainbow box of cottons, such rolls of
ribands, stuffs, calicoes, and flannels in the other! The little things
could not be persuaded to move off even when White, who was on the
watch, bustled about to make a clear path for the lady. There was plenty
of bobbing from the girls, and pulling of forelocks from the boys;
plenty of elbowing, and pushing, and signing, when it became necessary
for somebody to speak in answer to her kind questions; but there was no
inclination to make way. They were even rude enough to crowd about the
door and peep in, while she was buying snuff and sugar-candy.
Letitia soon found that if White was shrewd in changing his occupation
and profession according to circumstances, his wife was no less shrewd
in understanding and conducting her own. It would be a wonder, the lady
thought, if between them, they did not prove a match for their
co-operative neighbours.
“I charge you the lowest, ma’am, the lowest, I assure you; and as low as
is fair....”
“O, I have no doubt of it, Mrs. White. I am not going to dispute your
prices, I assure you.”
“Indeed, my lady, I don’t go by the rules of the folks over the way; and
why? Because they talk of charging only the interest of what their stock
costs them; while I must have profit too, and that is interest twice
over.”
“The other half is what you live on, Mrs. White, instead of consuming
part of their stock, you know.”
“True, madam. Double interest is fair profit, as my father used to say;
and he, being a schoolmaster, knew the right of such things.”
“And taught them to you, it seems. But you do not mean to say that all
profit is double interest. There is your neighbour, the apothecary, he
charges at a much higher rate for his medicines.”
“Aye,” said White. “His is a fine conjuring trade. He shakes up three or
four things in a bottle, and what was worth twopence is directly charged
two shillings.”
“But consider, John, this is not all profit. Think what he paid for his
learning, and what time he gives up to his patients. He has to pay
himself for all this out of his drugs.”
“Then why not call some of his gains wages at once, and charge his
patients for such, instead of pretending to give his time and labour,
and charging his medicines ten times dearer than he need?”
“Many wish to be allowed to do this, I understand,” said Letitia. “They
dislike the temptation to cram their patients with medicine, in order to
repay the expenses of their education; and they wish it to be
understood, that when we pay for a blister or a powder, we pay for
medical skill and aid, as well as for Spanish flies or bark. In the same
way, nobody supposes that great physicians charge guineas for writing
five lines of a prescription, or lawyers for reading over a sheet of
parchment.”
“There is the risk in their case,” observed White, “as well as the
education. For one that gets rich in their profession, there are many
that make but little; and this uncertainty ought to have a large
reward.”
“If it was not for such uncertainty, my lady, I could sell some of my
goods cheaper. But in a place like this, I can never make sure of
selling a new article, as I could in a large town; so, when I venture
upon any thing new, I must charge it high to make up for my money being
locked up, perhaps, and for the damage of the goods from lying by.”
“Like a hackney coachman in a town,” observed Letitia. “Coach fares are
complained of, as if a driver had to charge only for driving from one
point to another; but besides the interest of the money his coach and
horses cost him, and the expense of repairs, he must charge the wages of
the many hours and days that he and his horses are idle on the stand.”
“Well now, ma’am, there is one set of people whose gains make me more
angry than almost any thing I can mention; and they are the public
players and singers, and such like folks.”
White here came round the counter to his wife’s side, and kicked, and
winked, and coughed, till Nanny and Thérèse were amazed, and Letitia
laughed. Nanny went on,
“Lord, John, I know more about that sort of people than you think, from
there being a company playing in Mr. Jarvis’s barn; and I assure you,
ma’am, the satins they pretended to wear were all glazed calico; and the
jewels, my lady, were all made of tinfoil. Well; they got, even in a
poor place like this, ever so much more than their living could have
cost them; and I have heard of some of the better sort,—London actresses
and such,—making more in a night than an apothecary in a whole year. Why
now, John, what should you know about it, to object in this way? I tell
you....”
“I can tell you that it is true,” said Letitia; “and I can tell you the
reason. Besides the uncertainty, which is much greater in those
professions than in any other, there is a kind of discredit belonging to
them; so that it requires a very strong inducement to tempt people of
great talent to engage in them. When the time comes,—and I expect it
will come,—for public singers and actors to be treated with proper
respect, the best of them will not be paid extravagantly, and the
inferior ones will not be half-starved, as they are now. There will be
no disgrace, and less uncertainty; and payment will therefore be more
equal.”
“Then perhaps scavengers will be paid no more than plough-boys; for
really, it seems to me wrong that there should be any reproach against
scavengers on account of their occupation. You ladyship will excuse my
mentioning them before you.”
“To be sure, Mrs. White, since we both think them a respectable class,
in as far as they are useful. But they are paid high, as much on account
of the disagreeableness of their business as its being ill thought of.
Plumbers, and gilders, and miners, and distillers are paid more than
shepherds and gardeners, because their business is less healthy and
agreeable than those which are carried on in the open air, and in
perfect safety.”
“Well, ma’am, I suppose it is all fair and even in the end; but it seems
very much like chance; for people do not stop to consider the
pleasantness, or the easiness, or the constancy, or the certainty of the
business of the person they are paying, or the trust they put in him.
They think of no such things when they go to the play, or buy early
strawberries.”
“True; there are no such nice distinctions on all occasions; nor are
they necessary; but yet there is no chance in the matter. When a duke
fees his physician, and his duchess pays her jeweller’s bill, the
nobleman does not calculate the expense at which his physician acquired
his profession, and the long time he waited for practice; nor does the
lady think of the costly stock of her tradesman, and the delicate nature
of his workmanship; and yet, these are the circumstances which determine
the recompense of each. If it was as easy to be a physician as a
plough-boy, there would be as many physicians as plough-boys; and if a
diamond necklace required no more capital and skill than a bunch of
asparagus, there would be as many jewellers as green-grocers; and then
physicians and jewellers would be paid no more than ploughmen and
green-grocers.”
“But, my lady, we do not want so many physicians as ploughmen.”
“True; and it is therefore a very happy thing that fewer can be the one
than the other. If we leave the rewards of labour to take their natural
course, we shall find that there always turns up a larger quantity of
the sort we want most, and a lesser quantity of the sort we want least.
In profits, I suppose, Mrs. White, you find less variety than in wages.
It is of wages, you know, that we have been talking since we began about
the apothecary.”
“Why, my lady, there is a disagreeable and an agreeable way of making
profits of stock; and there is, I am sure, much more risk in some cases
than others.”
“Yes; but there is no consideration of the easiness or the difficulty of
selling things, or of the trust put in the seller, as there is in the
manufacture of the thing sold. A smuggler, or any other kind of
speculator, may make more one month, and lose more the next, than the
regular trader pretends to calculate; but, I fancy, if we were able to
see into the affairs of all the people in this village, or in any town,
we should find less difference in what people make from an equal amount
of stock, than from an equal quantity of labour. Your rule, of double
interest being fair profit, shows this.”
“Certainly, my lady; or there would not be steady sellers of so many
kinds of stock. People would choose the most profitable; which they
might do more easily in selling goods than making them. My husband
shifts his labour, as I believe he told you, from one employment to
another;—(well for him that he can!) And I should shift my little
capital from one kind of goods to another, if there was any real and
lasting difference in the profits they would bring. But I don’t find
that crockery would bring higher profits than grocery, and so I go on
being a grocer; and the butcher down the street finds he makes as much
of his joints as I of my stuffs, one time with another; and if he did
not, I suppose his wife would turn draper.—We all find means to live;
though I am sorry to say our profits are lower than they were; and if
all my good father said be true, they will be lower still ten years
hence.”
“Is that the sexton?” inquired Letitia, seeing an old man pass with a
large key in his hand. It was, and John White must be going to see if
all was right in his lordship’s pew, as the sexton was evidently about
to open the church. Letitia paid for her purchases and followed, as one
of her objects was to see the church as well as the sexton. Several
neighbours popped into Nanny’s shop before she had cleared her counter,
to hear what the lady could have been saying and doing all this while.
Nanny looked rather grand and mysterious, chiefly observing upon the
comfort of having got somebody into the neighbourhood that one might
speak to with some chance of being understood. She was a lady of sense
and learning....
“Though she did not go to school to your father, Nanny.”
“If she did not, she went to school to somebody that taught her to
respect what my father taught me, neighbour; and so far, there are some
folks that might take a lesson from her.”
On this, the wink went round, and the neighbours dropped off, leaving
Nanny to muse on what fancy could have possessed her husband to tread on
her toes and twitch her gown when she spoke of the strolling players.
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