What is a dry-goods jobber? No wonder you ask. You have been hunting,
perhaps, for our peripatetic postoffice, and have stumbled upon Milk
Street and Devonshire Street and Franklin Street. You are almost ready
to believe in the lamp of Aladdin, that could build palaces in a night.
Looking up to the stately and costly structures which have usurped the
place of once familiar dwellings, and learning that they are, for the
most part, tenanted by dry-goods jobbers, you feel that for such huge
results there must needs be an adequate cause, and so you ask, What is a
dry-goods jobber?
It is more than a curious question. For parents desirous of finding
their true sphere for promising and for unpromising sons, it is
eminently a practical question. It is a question comprehensive of
dollars and cents,--also of bones and sinews, of muscles, nerves, and
brains, of headache, heartache, and the cyclopaedia of being, doing,
and enduring. An adequate answer to such a question must needs ask your
indulgence, for it cannot be condensed into a very few words.
A dry-goods jobber is a wholesale buyer and seller, for cash or for
approved credit, of all manner of goods, wares, and materials, large
and small, coarse and fine, foreign and domestic, which pertain to the
clothing, convenience, and garnishing, by night and by day, of men,
women, and children: from a button to a blanket; from a calico to a
carpet; from stockings to a head-dress; from an inside handkerchief to a
waterproof; from a piece of tape to a thousand bales of shirtings; not
forgetting linen, silk, or woollen fabrics, for drapery or upholstery,
for bed or table, including hundreds of items which time would fail me
to recite. All these the dry-goods jobber provides for his customer, the
retailer, who in his turn will dispense them to the consumer.
A really competent and successful dry-goods jobber, in the year of
grace, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one, is a new creation. He
is begotten of the times. Of him, as truly as of the poet, and with yet
more emphasis, it must be said, He is born, not made. He is a poet, a
philosopher, an artist, an engineer, a military commander, an advocate,
an attorney, a financier, a steam-engine, a telegraph-operator, a
servant-of-all-work, a Job, a Hercules, and a Bonaparte, rolled into
one.
"Exaggeration!" do you say? Not at all.--You asked for information? You
shall have it, to your heart's content.
To a youth, for a time interrupted in his preparation for college, I
said,--
Never mind; this falls in exactly with my well-considered plan. You
shall go into a dry-goods store till your eyes recover strength; it will
be the best year's schooling of your life.
"How so?" was the dubious answer; "what can I learn there?"
Learn? Everything,--common sense included, which is generally excluded
from the University curriculum: for example, time, place, quantity, and
the worth of each. You shall learn length, breadth, and thickness; hard
and soft; pieces and yards; dozens and the fractions thereof; order and
confusion, cleanliness and dirt,--to love the one and hate the other;
materials, colors, and shades of color; patience, manners, decency
in general; system and method, and the relation these sustain to
independence; in short, that there is a vast deal more out of books than
in books; and, finally, that the man who knows only what is in books is
generally a lump of conceit, and of about as much weight in the scales
of actual life as the ashes of the Alexandrian library, or the worms in
any parchments that may have survived that conflagration.
"Whew!" was his ejaculation; "I didn't know there was so much."
I dare say not. Most of your limited days have passed under the training
of men who are in the like predicament,--whose notion of the chief end
of man is, to convert lively boys into thick dictionaries,--and who
honestly believe that the chief want of the age is your walking
dictionary. Any other type of humanity, they tell us, "won't pay."
Much they know of what will and what won't pay! This comes of partial
education,--of one-sided, of warped, and biased education. It puts one
out of patience, this arrogance of the University, this presuming
upon the ignorance of the million, this assertion of an indispensable
necessity to make the boy of the nineteenth century a mere expert in
some subdivision of one of the sciences. The obstinacy of an hereditary
absolutism, which the world has outgrown, still lingers in our schools
of learning. Let us admit the divine right of Science, admit the fitness
of a limited number of our youth to become high-priests in her temple,
but no divine right of fossil interpreters of Science to compel the
entire generation to disembowel their sons and make of these living
temples mere receptacles of Roman, Grecian, or Egyptian relics. We
don't believe that "mummy is medicinal," the Arabian doctor Haly to the
contrary notwithstanding. If it ever was, its day has gone by. Therefore
let all sensible people pray for a Cromwell,--not to pull down
University Science, but to set up the Commonwealth of Common Sense, to
subordinate the former to the latter, and to proclaim an education for
our own age and for its exigencies. Your dry-goods jobber stands in
violent contrast to your University man in the matter of practical
adaptation. His knowledge is no affair of dried specimens, but every
particle of it a living knowledge, ready, at a moment's warning, for all
or any of the demands of life.
You are perhaps thinking,--"Yes, that is supposable, because the lessons
learned by the jobber are limited to the common affairs of daily life,
are not prospective; because, belonging only to the passing day, they
are easily surveyed on all sides, and their full use realized at once;
in short, a mere matter of buying and selling goods: a very inferior
thing, as compared with the dignified and scholarly labors of the
student."
How mistaken this estimate is will appear, as we advance to something
like a comprehensive survey of the dry-goods jobber's sphere.
First, then, he is a buyer of all manner of goods, wares, and materials
proper to his department in commerce. He is minutely informed in the
history of raw materials. He knows the countries from which they
come,--the adaptation of soils and climates to their raising,--the skill
of the cultivators,--the shipping usages,--the effect of transportation
by land and sea on raw materials, and on manufactured articles,--with
all the mysteries of insurance allowances and usages, the debentures
on exportation, and the duties on importation, in his own and in other
lands. His forecast is taxed to the utmost, as to what may be the
condition of his own market, six, twelve, or eighteen months from the
time of ordering goods, both as to the quantity which may be in market,
and as to the fashion, which is always changing,--and also as to the
condition of his customers to pay for goods, which will often depend
upon the fertility of the season. As respects home-purchases, he is
compelled to learn, or to suffer for the want of knowing, that the
difference between being a skilful, pleasant buyer and the opposite is a
profit or loss of from five to seven and a half or ten per cent.,--or,
in other words, the difference, oftentimes, between success and ruin,
between comfort and discomfort, between being a welcome and a hated
visitor, between being honored as an able merchant and contemned as a
mean man or an unmitigated bore.
Is your curiosity piqued to know wherein buyers thus contrasted may
differ? They differ endlessly, like the faces you meet on the street.
Thus, one man is born to an open, frank, friendly, and courteous manner;
another is cold, reserved, and suspicious. One is prompt, hilarious,
and provocative of every good feeling, whenever you chance to meet; the
other is slow, morose, and fit to waken every dormant antipathy in your
soul. An able buyer is, or becomes, observing to the last degree. He
knows the slightest differences in quality and in style, and possesses
an almost unerring taste,--knows the condition of the market,--knows
every holder of the article he wants, and the lowest price of each. He
knows the peculiarities of the seller,--his strong points and his weak
points, his wisdom and his foibles, his very temperament, and how it is
acted upon by his dinner or the want of it. He knows the estimate put
upon his own note by that seller. He knows what his note will sell for
in the street. He knows to a feather's weight the influence of each of
these items upon the mind of the seller of whom he wishes to make a
purchase. Talk about diplomacy!--there's not a man in any court in
Europe who knows his position, his fulcrum, and his lever, and the use
he can make of them, as this man knows. He can unravel any combination,
penetrate any disguise, surmount any obstacle. Beyond all other men, he
knows when to talk, and when to refrain from talking,--how to throw the
burden of negotiation on the seller,--how to get the goods he wants
at his own price, not at _his_ asking, but on _the suggestion of the
seller_, prompted by his own politely obvious unwillingness to have the
seller part with his merchandise at any price not entirely acceptable to
himself.
The incompetent man, on the other hand, is presuming, exacting, and
unfeeling. He not only desires, but asserts the desire, in the
very teeth of the seller, to have something which that seller has
predetermined that he shall not have. He fights a losing game from the
start. He will probably begin by depreciating the goods which he knows,
or should know, that the seller has reason to hold in high esteem. He
will be likely enough to compare them to some other goods which he knows
to be inferior. He will thus arouse a feeling of dislike, if not of
anger, where his interest should teach him to conciliate and soothe; and
if he sometimes carry his point, his very victory is in effect a defeat,
since it procures him an increased antipathy. This the judicious
buyer never does. He repudiates, as a mere half-truth, and a relic of
barbarism, the maxim, "There is no friendship in trade."
"But," you are asking, "do only those succeed who are born to these
extraordinary endowments? And those who do succeed, are they, in
fact, each and all of them, such wonderfully capable men as you have
described?"
If by success you mean mere money-making, it is not to be denied that
some men do that by an instinct, little, if at all, superior to that of
the dog who smells out a bone. There are exceptions to all rules; and
there are chances in all games, even in games of skill. Lord Timothy
Dexter, as he is facetiously called, shipped warming-pans to the West
Indies, in defiance of all geographical objections to the venture, and
made money by the shipment,--not because warming-pans were wanted there,
but because the natives mistook and used them for molasses-ladles. It
must be owned that a portion of the successful ones are _lucky_,--that
a portion of them use the blunt weapon of an indomitable will, as an
efficient substitute for the finer edge of that nice tact and good
manners which they lack. Their very rudeness seems to commend them to
the rude natures which confound refinement with trickery and assume that
brutality must needs be honest.
But there are other things to be said of buying. The dry-goods jobber
frequents the auction-room. If you have never seen a large sale of
dry-goods at auction, you have missed one of the remarkable incidents
of our day. You are not yet aware of how much an auctioneer and two or
three hundred jobbers can do and endure in the short space of three
hours. You must know that fifty or a hundred thousand dollars' worth of
goods may easily change owners in that time. You are not to dream of the
leisurely way of disposing of somebody's household-furniture or library,
which characterizes the doings of one or two of our fellow-citizens who
manage such matters within speaking distance of King's Chapel: but are
rather to picture to yourself a congregation of three hundred of the
promptest men in our Atlantic cities, with a sprinkling of Westerners
quite as wide awake for bargains, each of them having marked his
catalogue; an auctioneer who considers the sale of a hundred lots an
hour his proper _rôle_, and who is able to see the lip, eye, or finger
of the man whose note he covets, in spite of all sounds, signs, or
opaque bodies. The man of unquiet nerves or of exacting lungs would
do well to leave that arena to the hard-heads and cool-bloods who can
pursue their aim and secure their interests: undisturbed either by
the fractional rat-a-tat-tat of the auctioneer's "Twenty-seven
af--naf--naf--naf,--who'll give me thirty?" or by the banter and
comicalities which a humor-loving auctioneer will interject between
these bird-notes, without changing his key, or arresting his sale a
moment. If you would see the evidence of comprehensive and minute
knowledge, of good taste, quick wit, sound judgment, and electrical
decision, attend an auction-sale in New York some morning. There will be
no lack of fun to season the solemnity of business, nor of the mixture
of courtesy and selfishness usual in every gathering, whether for
philanthropic, scientific, or commercial purposes. Many dry-goods
jobbers will attend the sale with no intention of buying, but simply to
note the prices obtained, and, having traced the goods to their owners,
to get the same in better order and on better terms; the commission paid
to the auctioneer being divided, or wholly conceded by the seller to the
buyer, according to his estimate of the note.
A dry-goods buyer will sometimes spend a month in New York, the first
third or half of which he will devote to ascertaining what goods are in
the market, and what are to arrive; also to learning the mood of the
English, French, and Germans who hold the largest stocks. Sometimes
these gentlemen will make an early trial of their goods at auction.
Unsatisfactory results will rouse their phlegm or fire, and they declare
they will not send another piece of goods to auction, come what may. For
local or temporary reasons, buyers sometimes persist in holding back
till the season is so far advanced that the foreign gentlemen become
alarmed. Their credits in London, Paris, and Amsterdam are running out;
they are anxious to make remittances; and then ensues one of those
dry-goods panics so characteristic of New York and its mixed multitude;
an avalanche of goods descends upon the auction-rooms, and prices
drop ten, twenty, forty per cent., it may be, and the unlucky or
short-sighted men who made early purchases are in desperate haste to run
off their stocks before the market is irreparably broken down. Whether,
therefore, to buy early or late, in large or in small quantities, at
home or abroad,--are questions beset with difficulty. He who imports
largely may land his goods in a bare market and reap a golden harvest,
or in a market so glutted with goods that the large sums he counts out
to pay the duties may be but a fraction of the loss he knows to be
inevitable.
In addition to the problems belonging to time and place of purchasing,
to quantities and prices, there is a host of other problems begotten of
styles, of colors, of assortments, of texture and finish, of adaptation
to one market or another. The profit on a case of goods is often
sacrificed by the introduction or omission of one color or figure,
the presence or absence of which makes the merchandise desirable or
undesirable. Little less than omniscience will suffice to guard against
the sometimes sudden, and often most unaccountable, freaks of fashion,
whose fiat may doom a thing, in every respect admirably adapted to its
intended use, to irretrievable condemnation and loss of value. And when
you remember that the purchases of dry-goods must be made in very large
quantities, from a month to six or even twelve months before the buyer
can sell them, and that his sales are many times larger than his
capital, and most of them on long credit, you have before you a
combination of exigencies hardly to be paralleled elsewhere.
The crisis of 1857 brought a general collapse. Scores and scores of
jobbers failed; very few dared to buy goods. Mills were compelled to run
on short time, or to cease altogether. The country became bare of
the common necessaries of life. In process of time trade rallied.
Manufacturing recommenced; orders for goods poured in; and for a
twelve-month and more the manufacturer has had it all his own way. His
goods are all sold ahead, months ahead of his ability to manufacture.
He makes his own price, and chooses his customer. This operates not
unkindly on the jobbers who are wealthy and independent; but for those
who have but lately begun to mount the hill of difficulty, it offers one
more impediment. For, to men who have a great many goods to sell, it
is a matter of moment to secure the customers who can buy in large
quantities, and whose notes will bring the money of banks or private
capitalists as soon as offered. Against such buyers, men of limited
means and of only average business-ability have but a poor chance.
There will always be some articles of merchandise in the buying or
selling of which they cannot compete.
When a financial crisis overtakes the community, we hear much and sharp
censure of all _speculation_. Speculators, one and all, are forthwith
consigned to an abyss of obloquy. The virtuous public outside of trade
washes its hands of all participation in the iniquity. This same
virtuous public knows very little of what it is talking about. What is
speculation? Shall we say, in brief and in general, that it consists in
running risks, in taking extra-hazardous risks, on the chance of making
unusually large profits? Is it that men have abandoned the careful ways
of the fathers, and do not confine themselves to small stores, small
stocks, and cash transactions? And do you know who it is that has
compelled this change? That same public who denounce speculation in one
breath, and in the next clamor for goods at low prices, and force
the jobber into large stores and large sales at small profits as the
indispensable condition of his very existence.
Those who thus rail at speculation are generally quite unaware that
their own inexorable demand for goods at low prices is one of the
principal efficient causes of that of which they complain. They do not
know that the capacious maw of the insatiable public is yearly filled
with millions on millions of shirtings and sheetings, and other articles
of prime necessity, without one farthing of profit to the jobber. The
outside world reason from the assumption, that the jobber might, but
will not, avoid taking considerable risks. They do not consider,
for they do not know, how entirely all is changed from the days and
circumstances in which a very small business would suffice to maintain
the merchant. They do not consider, that, an immense amount of goods
being of compulsion sold without profit, a yet other huge amount must
be so sold as to compensate for this. Nor do they consider that the
possibility of doing this is often contingent upon the buyer's carefully
calculated probability of a rise in the article he is purchasing. Many a
time is the jobber enabled and inclined to purchase largely only by the
assurance that from the time of his purchase the price will be advanced.
The _selling_ of dry-goods is another department in high art about which
the ignorance of outsiders is ineffable. I was once asked, in the way
of courtesy and good neighborhood, to call on a clergyman in our
vicinity,--which I did. Desirous of doing his part in the matter of good
fellowship and smooth conversation, he began thus:--
"Well, now, Mr. Smith, you know all about business: I suppose, if I were
to go into a store to buy goods, nineteen men out of twenty would cheat
me, if they could; wouldn't they?"
"No, Sir!" I answered, with a swelling of indignation at the injustice,
a mingling of pity for the ignorance, and a foreboding of small benefit
from the preaching of a minister of the gospel who knew so little of the
world he lived in. "No, Sir; nineteen men in twenty would not cheat you,
if they could; for the best of all reasons,--it would be dead against
their own interest."
Not a day passes but the question is asked by our youths who are being
initiated in the routine of selling goods,--"Is this honest? Is that
honest? Is it honest to mark your goods as costing more than they do
cost? Is it honest to ask one man more than you ask another? Ought not
the same price to be named to every buyer? Isn't it cheating to get
twenty-five per cent. profit? Can a man sell goods without lying? Are
men compelled to lie and cheat a little in order to earn an honest
living?" What is the reason that these questions will keep coming up?
That they can no more be laid than Banquo's ghost? Here are some of the
reasons. First, and foremost, multitudes of young men, whose parents
followed the plough, the loom, or the anvil, have taken it into their
heads, that they will neither dig, hammer, nor ply the shuttle. To soil
their hands with manual labor they cannot abide. The sphere of commerce
looks to their longing eyes a better thing than lying down in green
pastures, or than a peaceful life beside still waters, procured by
laborious farming, or by any mechanical pursuit. Clean linen and stylish
apparel are inseparably associated in their minds with an easy and
elegant life, and so they pour into our cities, and the ranks of the
merchants are filled, and over-filled, many times. Once, the merchant
had only to procure an inviting stock, and his goods sold themselves.
He did not go after customers; they came to him; and it was a matter of
favor to them to supply their wants. Now, all that is changed. There are
many more merchants than are needed; buyers are in request; and buyers
whose credit is the best, to a very great extent, dictate the prices at
which they will buy. The question is no longer, How large a profit can
I get? but, How small a profit shall I accept? The competition for
customers is so fierce that the seller hardly dares ask any profit, for
fear his more anxious neighbor will undersell him. In order to attract
customers, one thing after another has been made "a leading article,"
a bait to be offered at cost or even less than cost,--that being
oftentimes the condition on which alone the purchaser will make a
beginning of buying.
"Jenkins," cried an anxious seller, "you don't buy anything of me, and I
can sell you as cheap as any. Here's a bale of sheetings now, at eight
cents, will do you good."
"How many have you got?"
"Oh, plenty."
"Well, how many?"
"Fifteen bales."
"Well, I'll take them."
"Come in and buy something more."
"No, nothing more to-day."
There was a loss of seventy-five dollars, and he did not dare buy more.
It will be obvious that the selling a part of one's goods at less than
cost enhances the necessity of getting a profit on the rest. But how
to do this, under the sharp scrutiny of a buyer who knows that his own
success, not to say his very existence, depends upon his paying no
profit possible to be avoided,--no profit, at all events, not certainly
paid by some sharp neighbor who is competing with him for the same
trade?
"But is there anything in all this," you are asking, "to preclude the
jobber's telling the truth?" Nothing. "Anything to preclude strict
honesty?" Nothing. "Why, then, do the questions you have quoted
continually recur?"
I answer: In order to get his share of the best custom in his line, the
dry-goods jobber has taken a store in the best position in town, at a
rent of from three to fifty thousand dollars a year; has hired men and
boys at all prices, from fifty dollars to five thousand,--and enough of
these to result in an aggregate of from five to fifty thousand dollars
a year for help, without which his business cannot be done. Add to
this the usual average for store-expenses of every name, and for
the family-expenses of two, five, or seven partners, and you find a
dry-goods firm under the necessity of getting out of their year's sales
somewhere from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars profit,
before they shall have saved one cent to meet the losses of an
unfavorable season.
Now, though there is nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a
single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the
sale of his goods,--much to educate him in all manner of expedients to
baffle the inquiries of customers who would be offended, if they could
discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could
never meet his expenses. And the jobber's problem is complicated by the
folly, universally prevalent among buyers, of expecting some partiality
or peculiarity of favor over their neighbors who are just as good as
themselves. Every dry-goods jobber knows that his customer's foolish
hope and expectation often demand three absurdities of him: first, the
assurance that he has the advantage over all other jobbers in a better
stock of goods, better bought; secondly, that he has a peculiar
friendship for himself; and thirdly, that, though of other men he must
needs get a profit, in his special instance he shall ask little or
none; and that, such is his regard for him, it is a matter of no moment
whether he live in Lowell or Louisiana, in New Bedford or Nebraska, or
whether he pay New England bank-notes within thirty days, or wild-cat
money and wild lands, which may be converted into cash, with more or
less expense and loss, somewhere between nine months and nine-and-twenty
years.
And yet the uninitiated "can't understand how an honest merchant can
have two prices for the same goods." An honest man has but one price
for the same goods, and that is the cash price. All outside of that is
barter,--goods for notes. His first inquiry is, What is the market-value
of the note offered? True, he knows that many of the notes he takes
cannot be sold at all; but he also knows that the notes he is willing to
take will in the aggregate be guarantied by a reservation of one, two,
or three per cent., and that the note of the particular applicant for
credit will tend to swell or to diminish the rate; and he cannot afford
to exchange his goods for any note, except at a profit which will
guaranty its payment when due,--which, in other words, will make the
note equal in value to cash.
Now it is just because all business-contingencies cannot be worked into
an unvarying form, as regular as the multiplication-table, and as plain
to the apprehension of all men, that a vast amount of lying and of
dishonesty is imputed, where it does not exist. Merchants are much like
other men,--wise and unwise, far-sighted and short-sighted, selfish
and unselfish, honest and dishonest. But that they are as a class more
dishonest than other men is so far from being true, that I much doubt if
we should overstrain the matter, if we should affirm that they are
the most honest class of men in the community. There is much in their
training which contributes directly, and most efficiently, to this
result. Their very first lessons are in feet and inches, in pounds and
ounces, in exact calculations, in accounts and balances. Carelessness,
mistakes, inaccuracies, they are made to understand, are unpardonable
sins. The boy who goes into a store learns, for the first time, that
half a cent, a quarter of a cent, an eighth of a cent, may be a matter
of the gravest import. He finds a thorough book-keeper absolutely
refusing himself rest till he has detected an error of ten cents in a
business of six months. And every day's experience enforces the lesson.
It is giving what is due, and claiming what is due, from year's end to
year's end. Among merchants it is matter of common notoriety, that the
prompt and exact adherence to orders insisted on by merchants, and
prompt advice of receipt of business and of progress, cannot be expected
from our worthy brethren at the bar. (The few honorable exceptions are
respectfully informed that they are not referred to.) We do not expect
them to weigh or measure the needless annoyance to which they often
subject us, because they have never been, like ourselves, trained to
the use of weights and measures; and therefore we are not willing to
stigmatize them as dishonest, though they do, in fact, often steal
our time and strength and patience, by withholding an answer to a
business-letter.
None but those who are in the business know the assiduous attention with
which the dry-goods jobber follows up his customers. None but they know
the urgent necessity of doing this. The jobber may have travelled a
thousand miles to make his customer's acquaintance, and to prevail upon
him to come to Boston to make his purchases; and some neighbor, who
boards at the hotel he happens to make his resting-place, lights upon
him, shows him attention, tempts him with bargains not to be refused,
prevails upon him to make the bulk of his purchases of him, before
his first acquaintance even hears of his arrival. To guard against
disappointments such as this, the jobber sends his salesmen to live at
hotels, haunts the hotels himself, studies the hotel-register far more
assiduously than he can study his own comfort, or the comfort of his
wife and children. Of one such jobber it was said, facetiously,--"He
goes the round of all the hotels every morning with a lantern, to wake
up his customers." I had an errand one day at noon to such a devotee.
Inquiring for him in the counting-room, I was told by his book-keeper
to follow the stairs to the top of the store, and I should find him. I
mounted flight after flight to the attic, and there I found, not only
the man, but also one or two of his customers, surrounding a huge
packing-case, upon which they had extemporized a dinner, cold turkey
and tongue, and other edibles, taken standing, with plenty of fun for a
dessert. The next time we happened to meet, I said,--"So you take not
only time, but also customers, by the forelock!"
"Yes, to be sure," was his answer; "let 'em go to their hotel to dinner
in the middle of a bill, and somebody lights upon 'em, and carries 'em
off to buy elsewhere; or they begin to remember that it is a long way
home, feel homesick, slip off to New York as being so far on the way,
and that's the last you see of 'em. No, we're bound to see 'em through,
and no let-up till they've bought all they've got on their memorandum."
We have not yet touched the question of credit. To whom shall the jobber
sell his goods? It is the question of questions. Many a man who has
bought well, who in other respects has sold well, who possessed all
the characteristics which recommend a man to the confidence and to the
good-will of his fellows, has made shipwreck of his fortunes because of
his inability to meet this question. He sold his goods to men who never
paid him. To say that in this the most successful jobbers are governed
by an instinct, by an intuitive conviction which is superior to all
rules of judgment, would be to allege what it would be difficult to
prove. It would be less difficult to maintain that every competent
merchant, however unconscious of the fact, has a standard of judgment by
which he tries each applicant for credit. There are characteristics of
men who can safely be credited, entirely familiar to his thoughts. He
looks upon the man and instantly feels that he is or is not the man
for him. He thinks his decision an instinct, or an intuition, because,
through much practice, these mental operations have become so rapid as
to defy analysis. Not being infallible, he sometimes mistakes; and when
he so mistakes, he will be sure to say,--I made that loss because I
relied too much upon this characteristic, or because I did not allow
its proper weight to the absence of some other,--because I thought his
shrewdness or his honesty, his enterprise or his economy, would save
him: implying that he had observed some non-conformity to his standard,
but had relied upon some excellency in excess to make up for it.
What are the perplexities which beset the question, To whom shall the
jobber sell his goods? They are manifold; and some of them are peculiar
to our country. Our territory is very extensive; our population very
heterogeneous; the economy and close calculation which recommend a man
in Massachusetts may discredit him in Louisiana. The very countenance is
often a sure indication of character and of capacity, when it is one of
a class and a region whose peculiarities we thoroughly understand;
but coming to us from other classes and regions, we are often at
fault,--more especially in these latter days, when all strong-mindedness
is presumed to be foreshadowed in a stiff beard. Time was when something
could be inferred from a lip, a mouth, a chin,--when character could be
found in the contour and color of a cheek; but that time has passed.
The time was, when, among a homogeneous people, a few time-honored
characteristics were both relied on and insisted on: for example, good
parentage, good moral character, a thorough training, and superior
capacity, joined to industry, economy, sound judgment, and good manners.
But Young America has learned to make light of some of these, and to
dispense altogether with others of them.
Once the buyer was required to prove himself an honest, worthy, and
capable man. If he wanted credit, he must humbly sue for it, and prove
himself deserving of it; and no man thought of applying for it who was
not prepared to furnish irrefragable evidence. Once, a reference to some
respectable acquaintance would serve the purpose; and neighbors held
themselves bound to tell all they knew. The increase of merchants, and
fierce competition for customers, have changed this. Men now
regard their knowledge of other men as a part of their capital or
stock-in-trade. Their knowledge has been acquired at much cost of labor
and money; and they hold themselves absolved from all obligation to
give away what they have thus expensively acquired. Moreover, their
confidence has sometimes been betrayed, and their free communications
have been remorselessly used to their disadvantage. Alas, it cannot
be denied that even dry-goods jobbers, with all their extraordinary
endowments, are not quite perfect! for some of them will "state the
thing that is not," and others "convey" their neighbor's property into
their own coffers: men who prefer gain to godliness, and mistake much
money for respectability.
There are very few men, in certain sections of the country, who will
absolutely refuse to give a letter of introduction to a neighbor on the
simple ground of ill-desert. Men dread the ill-will of their neighbor,
and particularly the ill-will of an unscrupulous neighbor; so, when such
a neighbor asks a letter, they give it. I remember such a one bringing a
dozen or more letters, some of which contained the highest commendation.
The writer of one of these letters sent a private note, through the
mail, warning one of the persons addressed against the bearer of his own
commendatory letter. Those who had no warning sold, and lost. It would
be difficult to find a man, however unworthy, who could not, from some
quarter, obtain a very respectable letter of introduction. One of the
greatest rogues that ever came to Boston brought letters from two of
the foremost houses in New York to two firms second to none in Boston.
Neither of these gentlemen was in fault in the matter; the train had
been laid by some obliging cousin in a banking-house in London.
In making up our account of the difficulties with which a dry-goods
jobber has to deal, in conducting a successful business, it must be
distinctly stated, that on no man can he count for information which
will, however remotely or slightly, compromise the interest of the one
inquired of. Never, perhaps, was it so true as now, that "the seller has
need of a hundred eyes." The competent jobber uses his eyes first of all
upon the person of the man who desires to buy of him. He questions him
about himself, with such directness or indirectness as instinct and
experience dictate. He learns to discriminate between the sensitiveness
of the high-toned honest man and the sensitiveness of the rogue. Many
men of each class are inclined to resent and resist the catechism.
Strange as it may seem, the very men who would inexorably refuse a
credit to those who should decline to answer their inquiries are the men
most inclined to resent any inquiry about themselves. While they demand
the fullest and most particular information from their customers,
they wonder that others will not take them on their own estimate of
themselves.
The jobber next directs his attention to the buyer's knowledge of goods:
of their quality, their style, their worth in market, and their fitness
for his own market; all of which will come to light, as he offers to
his notice the various articles he has for sale. He will improve the
opportunity to draw him out in general conversation, so guiding it as to
touch many points of importance, and yet not so as to betray a want of
confidence. He sounds him as to his knowledge of other merchants at home
and in the city; takes the names of his references,--of several, if he
can get them; puts himself in communication with men who know him, both
at his home and in the city. If he can harmonize the information derived
from all these sources into a consistent and satisfactory whole, he will
then do his utmost to secure his customer, both by selling him his goods
at a profit so small that he need have little fear of any neighbor's
underselling him, and also by granting every possible accommodation as
to the time and manner of payment.
A moderately thoughtful man will by this time begin to think the
elements of toil and of perplexity already suggested sufficient for the
time and strength of any man, and more than he would wish to undertake.
But experience alone could teach him in how many ways indulged customers
can and do manage to make the profit they pay so small, and the toil
and vexation they occasion so great, that the jobber is often put upon
weighing the question, Should I not be richer without them? Thus, for
example, some of them will affect to doubt that the jobber wishes to
sell to them, and propose, as a test, that he shall let them have
some choice article at the cost, or at less than the cost, now on one
pretext, and now on another,--intimating an indisposition to buy, if
they cannot be indulged in that one thing. If they carry their point,
that exceptional price is thenceforth claimed as the rule. Another day
the concession will be asked on something else; and by extending this
game so as to include a number of jobbers, these shrewd buyers will
manage to lay in an assorted stock on which there will have been little
or no profit to the sellers. To cap the climax of vexation, these
persons will very probably come in, after not many days, and propose
to cash their notes at double interest off. Only an official of
the Inquisition could turn the thumb-screw so many times, and so
remorselessly.
But we have yet to consider the collection of debts. The jobber who has
not capital so ample as to buy only for cash is expected invariably to
settle his purchases by giving his note, payable at bank on a fixed day.
He pays it when due, or fails. Not so with his customers: multitudes
of them shrink from giving a note payable at bank, and some altogether
refuse to do so. They wish to buy on open account; or to give a note to
be paid at maturity, if convenient,--otherwise not. The number of really
prompt and punctual men, as compared with those who are otherwise, is
very small. The number of those who never fail is smaller still. The
collection-laws are completely alike, probably, in no two States. Some
of them appear to have been constructed for the accommodation, not of
honest creditors, but of dishonest debtors. In others, they are such as
to put each jobber in fear of every other,--a first attachment taking
all the property, if the debt be large enough, leaving little or
nothing, usually, for those who have been willing to give the debtor
such indulgence as might enable him to pay in full, were it granted by
all his creditors.
No jobber can open his letters in the morning in the certainty of
finding no tidings of a failure. No jobber, leaving his breakfast-table,
can assure his wife and children, sick or well, that he will dine or sup
with them; any one of a dozen railroad-trains may, for aught he knows,
be sweeping him away to some remote point, to battle with the mischances
of trade, the misfortunes of honest men, or the knavery of rogues and
the meshes of the law. Once in the cars, he casts his eye around in
uneasy expectation of finding some one or more of his neighbors bound on
the same errand. While yet peering over the seats in front of him, he is
unpleasantly startled by a slap on the shoulder, and, "Ah, John!
bound East? What's in the wind? Any ducks in these days?"
"Why,--yes,--no,--that is, I'm going down along,--little uncertain how
far,--depends on circumstances." "So, so,--I see,--mum's the word."
Well, neither is quite ready to trust the other,--neither quite ready to
know the worst; so long as a blow is suspended, it may not fall; and so,
with desperate exertions, they change the subject, converse on things
indifferent,--or subside into more or less moody meditations upon their
respective chances and prospects.
Any jobber who has seen service will tell you stories without number of
these vexatious experiences, sometimes dashed with the comical in no
common measure. He will tell you of how they arrived at the last town
on the railroad, some six or seven of them; of how not a word had been
lisped of their destination; of the stampede from the railroad-station
to the tavern; of the spirited bids for horses and wagons; of the
chop-fallen disappointment of the man for whom no vehicle remained; of
his steeple-chase a-bareback; and of their various successes with writs
and officers, in their rush for the store of the delinquent debtor. Of
three such Jehus, the story goes, that, two of them having bought the
monopoly of the inside of the only vehicle, and, in so doing, as they
thought, having utterly precluded any chance for the third, their
dauntless competitor instantly mounted with the driver, commenced
negotiations for the horse, which speedily resulted in a purchase, and
thereupon detached the horse from the vehicle, drove on, and effected a
first attachment, which secured his debt.
The occurrence of "a bad year" compels many a jobber to abandon his
store and home for one, two, or three months together, and visit his
customers scattered all over the land, to make collections. Then it is
that the power of persuasion, if possessed, is brought into efficient
use; discrimination, too, is demanded; good judgment, and power of
combination. For a debt that cannot be paid in money may possibly be
paid partly in money, or in merchandise of some sort, and in part
secured; and, among the securities offered, to choose those which will
involve the least delay is generally no easy matter.
To those who, without experience, are commencing a jobbing-business,
a capital of thirty, forty, or fifty thousand dollars seems an
inexhaustible fund. Experience teaches that an incautious and unskilful
man may easily bury even the largest of these sums in a single season.
If not actually lost, it has in effect ceased to be capital, because it
cannot be collected, and the notes he has taken are such as will not be
discounted.
Success in the jobbing-business makes such demand on talent and capacity
as outsiders seldom dream of. Half-a-dozen Secretaries of State, with a
Governor and a President thrown in, would not suffice to constitute a
first-class jobbing-firm. The general or special incompetency of these
distinguished functionaries in their several spheres may probably be
covered by the capacity of their subordinates. The President of these
United States--of late years, at all events--is not supposed to be in
a position to know whether the will is or is not "a self-determining
power." But no jobbing-firm can thus cloak its deficiencies, or shirk
its responsibilities. Goods must be bought, and sold, and paid for; and
a master-spirit in each department, capable of penetrating to every
particular, and of controlling every subordinate, cannot be dispensed
with. He must know that every man to whom he delegates any portion of
his work is competent and trustworthy. He must be able to feel that the
thing which he deputes to each will be as surely and as faithfully done
as though done by his own hand. No criticism is more common or more
depreciatory than that "Such a one will not succeed, because he has
surrounded himself with incompetent men."
It is much to be regretted that it cannot be said, that no man can
succeed in the jobbing-business who is not a model of courtesy.
Unhappily, our community has not yet reached that elevation. But this
may with truth be affirmed,--that many a man fails for the want of
courtesy, and for the want of that good-will to his fellows from which
all real courtesy springs. There is small chance for any man to succeed
who does not command his own spirit. There is no chance whatever for
an indolent man; and, in the long run, little or no chance for the
dishonest man. The same must be said for the timid and for the rash man.
Nor can we offer any encouragement to the intermittent man. From year's
end to year's end, the dry-goods jobber finds himself necessitated to be
studying his stock and his ledger. He knows, that, while men sleep, the
enemy will be sowing tares. In his case, the flying moments are the
enemy, and bad stock and bad debts are the tares. To weed out each of
these is his unceasing care. And as both the one and the other are
forever choking the streams of income which should supply the means of
paying his own notes, his no less constant care is to provide such other
conduits as shall insure him always a full basin at the bank. Nobody but
a jobber can know the vexation of a jobber who cannot find money to cash
his notes when they are beginning to be thrown into the market at a
price a shade lower than his neighbor's notes are sold at.
In conclusion, a few material facts should be stated.
As a general proposition, it is not to be denied, that those who are
in haste to get rich will find in the dry-goods jobbing-business many
temptations and snares into which one may easily fall. A young man who
is not fortified by a faithful home-training, and by sound religious
principle, will be likely enough to degenerate into a heartless
money-maker.
While the young man who has been well trained at home, who appreciates
good manners, good morals, and good books, will derive immense advantage
in acquiring that quick discernment, that intuitive apprehension of
the rights and of the pleasure of others, and that nice tact, which
characterize the highest style of merchants,--he who has not been thus
prepared will be more than likely to mistake _brusquerie_ for manliness,
and brutality for the sublime of independence. As in a great house there
are vessels unto honor and also unto dishonor, so in the purlieus of
the dry-goods trade there are gentlemen who would honor and adorn any
society, and also men whose manners would shame Hottentots,--whose
language, innocent of all preference for Worcester or Webster, a terror
to all decent ideas, like scarecrows in corn-fields, is dressed in the
cast-off garments of the refuse of all classes.
Success in retailing does not necessarily qualify a man to succeed in
the dry-goods jobbing-business. The game is played on a much larger
scale; it includes other chances, and demands other qualifications,
natural and acquired. Instances are not wanting of men who, in the
smaller towns, had made to themselves a name and acquired an honorable
independence, sinking both capital and courage in their endeavors to
manage the business of a city-jobber.
It should be well remembered, that, while it is not indispensable to
success in the jobbing-business that each partner should be an expert
in every department of the business, in buying, selling, collecting,
paying, and book-keeping, it is absolutely necessary that each should
be such in his own department,--and that the firm, as a unit, should
include a completely competent man for each and every one of these
departments. The lack of the qualities which are indispensable to any
one of these may, and probably will, prove an abyss deep enough to
ingulf the largest commercial ship afloat.
Finally, to avoid disappointment, the man who would embark in the
dry-goods trade should make up his mind to meet every variety of
experience known to mortals, and to be daunted by nothing. He will
assuredly find fair winds and head winds, clear skies and cloudy skies,
head seas and cross seas as well as stern seas. A wind that justifies
studding-sails may change, without premonition, to a gale that will make
ribbons of top-sails and of storm-sails. The best crew afloat cannot
preclude all casualties, or exclude sleepless nights and cold sweats now
and then; but a quick eye, a cool head, a prompt hand, and indomitable
perseverance will overcome almost all things.