THE TRADING STYLE
In the last chapter I gave my thoughts for the instruction of young
tradesmen in writing letters with orders, and answering orders, and
especially about the proper style of a tradesman's letters, which I
hinted should be plain and easy, free in language, and direct to the
purpose intended. Give me leave to go on with the subject a little
farther, as I think it is useful in another part of the tradesman's
correspondence.
I might have made some apology for urging tradesmen to write a plain and
easy style; let me add, that the tradesmen need not be offended at my
condemning them, as it were, to a plain and homely style--easy, plain,
and familiar language is the beauty of speech in general, and is the
excellency of all writing, on whatever subject, or to whatever persons
they are we write or speak. The end of speech is that men might
understand one another's meaning; certainly that speech, or that way of
speaking, which is most easily understood, is the best way of speaking.
If any man were to ask me, which would be supposed to be a perfect
style, or language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five
hundred people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics
excepted, should be understood by them all in the same manner with one
another, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be
understood--this would certainly be a most perfect style.
All exotic sayings, dark and ambiguous speakings, affected words, and,
as I said in the last chapter, abridgement, or words cut off, as they
are foolish and improper in business, so, indeed, are they in any other
things; hard words, and affectation of style in business, is like
bombast in poetry, a kind of rumbling nonsense, and nothing of the kind
can be more ridiculous.
The nicety of writing in business consists chiefly in giving every
species of goods their trading names, for there are certain
peculiarities in the trading language, which are to be observed as the
greatest proprieties, and without which the language your letters are
written in would be obscure, and the tradesmen you write to would not
understand you--for example, if you write to your factor at Lisbon, or
at Cadiz, to make you returns in hardware, he understands you, and
sends you so many bags of pieces of eight. So, if a merchant comes to me
to hire a small ship of me, and tells me it is for the pipin trade, or
to buy a vessel, and tells me he intends to make a pipiner of her, the
meaning is, that she is to run to Seville for oranges, or to Malaga for
lemons. If he says he intends to send her for a lading of fruit, the
meaning is, she is to go to Alicant, Denia, or Xevia, on the coast of
Spain, for raisins of the sun, or to Malaga for Malaga raisins. Thus, in
the home trade in England: if in Kent a man tells me he is to go among
the night-riders, his meaning is, he is to go a-carrying wool to the
sea-shore--the people that usually run the wool off in boats, are called
owlers--those that steal customs, smugglers, and the like. In a word,
there is a kind of slang in trade, which a tradesman ought to know, as
the beggars and strollers know the gipsy cant, which none can speak but
themselves; and this in letters of business is allowable, and, indeed,
they cannot understand one another without it.
A brickmaker being hired by a brewer to make some bricks for him at his
country-house, wrote to the brewer that he could not go forward unless
he had two or three loads _of spanish_, and that otherwise his bricks
would cost him six or seven chaldrons of coals extraordinary, and the
bricks would not be so good and hard neither by a great deal, when they
were burnt.
The brewer sends him an answer, that he should go on as well as he could
for three or four days, and then the _spanish_ should be sent him:
accordingly, the following week, the brewer sends him down two carts
loaded with about twelve hogsheads or casks of molasses, which frighted
the brickmaker almost out of his senses. The case was this:-The brewers
formerly mixed molasses with their ale to sweeten it, and abate the
quantity of malt, molasses, being, at that time, much cheaper in
proportion, and this they called _spanish_, not being willing that
people should know it. Again, the brickmakers all about London, do mix
sea-coal ashes, or laystal-stuff, as we call it, with the clay of which
they make bricks, and by that shift save eight chaldrons of coals out of
eleven, in proportion to what other people use to burn them with, and
these ashes they call _spanish_.
Thus the received terms of art, in every particular business, are to be
observed, of which I shall speak to you in its turn: I name them here to
intimate, that when I am speaking of plain writing in matters of
business, it must be understood with an allowance for all these
things--and a tradesman must be not only allowed to use them in his
style, but cannot write properly without them--it is a particular
excellence in a tradesman to be able to know all the terms of art in
every separate business, so as to be able to speak or write to any
particular handicraft or manufacturer in his own dialect, and it is as
necessary as it is for a seaman to understand the names of all the
several things belonging to a ship. This, therefore, is not to be
understood when I say, that a tradesman should write plain and explicit,
for these things belong to, and are part of, the language of trade.
But even these terms of art, or customary expressions, are not to be
used with affectation, and with a needless repetition, where they are
not called for.
Nor should a tradesman write those out-of-the-way words, though it is in
the way of the business he writes about, to any other person, who he
knows, or has reason to believe, does not understand them--I say, he
ought not to write in those terms to such, because it shows a kind of
ostentation, and a triumph over the ignorance of the person they are
written to, unless at the very same time you add an explanation of the
terms, so as to make them assuredly intelligible at the place, and to
the person to whom they are sent.
A tradesman, in such cases, like a parson, should suit his language to
his auditory; and it would be as ridiculous for a tradesman to write a
letter filled with the peculiarities of this or that particular trade,
which trade he knows the person he writes to is ignorant of, and the
terms whereof he is unacquainted with, as it would be for a minister to
quote the Chrysostome and St Austin, and repeat at large all their
sayings in the Greek and the Latin, in a country church, among a parcel
of ploughmen and farmers. Thus a sailor, writing a letter to a surgeon,
told him he had a swelling on the north-east side of his face--that his
windward leg being hurt by a bruise, it so put him out of trim, that he
always heeled to starboard when he made fresh way, and so run to
leeward, till he was often forced aground; then he desired him to give
him some directions how to put himself into a sailing posture again. Of
all which the surgeon understood little more than that he had a swelling
on his face, and a bruise in his leg.
It would be a very happy thing, if tradesmen had all their _lexicon
technicum_ at their fingers' ends; I mean (for pray, remember, that I
observe my own rule, not to use a hard word without explaining it), that
every tradesman would study so the terms of art of other trades, that he
might be able to speak to every manufacturer or artist in his own
language, and understand them when they talked one to another: this
would make trade be a kind of universal language, and the particular
marks they are obliged to, would be like the notes of music, an
universal character, in which all the tradesmen in England might write
to one another in the language and characters of their several trades,
and be as intelligible to one another as the minister is to his people,
and perhaps much more.
I therefore recommend it to every young tradesman to take all occasions
to converse with mechanics of every kind, and to learn the particular
language of their business; not the names of their tools only, and the
way of working with their instruments as well as hands, but the very
cant of their trade, for every trade has its _nostrums_, and its little
made words, which they often pride themselves in, and which yet are
useful to them on some occasion or other.
There are many advantages to a tradesman in thus having a general
knowledge of the terms of art, and the cant, as I call it, of every
business; and particularly this, that they could not be imposed upon so
easily by other tradesmen, when they came to deal with them.
If you come to deal with a tradesman or handicraft man, and talk his own
language to him, he presently supposes you understand his business; that
you know what you come about; that you have judgment in his goods, or in
his art, and cannot easily be imposed upon; accordingly, he treats you
like a man that is not to be cheated, comes close to the point, and does
not crowd you with words and rattling talk to set out his wares, and to
cover their defects; he finds you know where to look or feel for the
defect of things, and how to judge their worth. For example:--
What trade has more hard words and peculiar ways attending it, than that
of a jockey, or horse-courser, as we call them! They have all the parts
of the horse, and all the diseases attending him, necessary to be
mentioned in the market, upon every occasion of buying or bargaining. A
jockey will know you at first sight, when you do but go round a horse,
or at the first word you say about him, whether you are a dealer, as
they call themselves, or a stranger. If you begin well, if you take up
the horse's foot right, if you handle him in the proper places, if you
bid his servant open his mouth, or go about it yourself like a workman,
if you speak of his shapes or goings in the proper words--'Oh!' says the
jockey to his fellow, 'he understands a horse, he speaks the language:'
then he knows you are not to be cheated, or, at least, not so easily;
but if you go awkwardly to work, whisper to your man you bring with you
to ask every thing for you, cannot handle the horse yourself, or speak
the language of the trade, he falls upon you with his flourishes, and
with a flux of horse rhetoric imposes upon you with oaths and
asseverations, and, in a word, conquers you with the mere clamour of his
trade.
Thus, if you go to a garden to buy flowers, plants, trees, and greens,
if you know what you go about, know the names of flowers, or simples, or
greens; know the particular beauties of them, when they are fit to
remove, and when to slip and draw, and when not; what colour is
ordinary, and what rare; when a flower is rare, and when ordinary--the
gardener presently talks to you as to a man of art, tells you that you
are a lover of art, a friend to a florist, shows you his exotics, his
green-house, and his stores; what he has set out, and what he has budded
or enarched, and the like; but if he finds you have none of the terms
of art, know little or nothing of the names of plants, or the nature of
planting, he picks your pocket instantly, shows you a fine trimmed
fuz-bush for a juniper, sells you common pinks for painted ladies, an
ordinary tulip for a rarity, and the like. Thus I saw a gardener sell a
gentleman a large yellow auricula, that is to say, a _running away_, for
a curious flower, and take a great price. It seems, the gentleman was a
lover of a good yellow; and it is known, that when nature in the
auricula is exhausted, and has spent her strengh in showing a fine
flower, perhaps some years upon the same root, she faints at last, and
then turns into a yellow, which yellow shall be bright and pleasant the
first year, and look very well to one that knows nothing of it, though
another year it turns pale, and at length almost white. This the
gardeners call a _run flower_, and this they put upon the gentleman for
a rarity, only because he discovered at his coming that he knew nothing
of the matter. The same gardener sold another person a root of white
painted thyme for the right _Marum Syriacum;_ and thus they do every
day.
A person goes into a brickmaker's field to view his clamp, and buy a
load of bricks; he resolves to see them loaded, because he would have
good ones; but not understanding the goods, and seeing the workmen
loading them where they were hard and well burnt, but looked white and
grey, which, to be sure, were the best of the bricks, and which perhaps
they would not have done if he had not been there to look at them, they
supposing he understood which were the best; but he, in the abundance of
his ignorance, finds fault with them, because they were not a good
colour, and did not look red; the brickmaker's men took the hint
immediately, and telling the buyer they would give him red bricks to
oblige him, turned their hands from the grey hard well-burnt bricks to
the soft _sammel_[9] half-burnt bricks, which they were glad to dispose
of, and which nobody that had understood them would have taken off their
hands.
I mention these lower things, because I would suit my writing to the
understanding of the meanest people, and speak of frauds used in the
most ordinary trades; but it is the like in almost all the goods a
tradesman can deal in. If you go to Warwickshire to buy cheese, you
demand the cheese 'of the first make,' because that is the best. If you
go to Suffolk to buy butter, you refuse the butter of the first make,
because that is not the best, but you bargain for 'the right rowing
butter,' which is the butter that is made when the cows are turned into
the grounds where the grass has been mowed, and the hay carried off, and
grown again: and so in many other cases. These things demonstrate
the advantages there are to a tradesman, in his being thoroughly
informed of the terms of art, and the peculiarities belonging to every
particular business, which, therefore, I call the language of trade.
As a merchant should understand all languages, at least the languages of
those countries which he trades to, or corresponds with, and the customs
and usages of those countries as to their commerce, so an English
tradesman ought to understand all the languages of trade, within the
circumference of his own country, at least, and particularly of such as
he may, by any of the consequences of his commerce, come to be any way
concerned with.
Especially, it is his business to acquaint himself with the terms and
trading style, as I call it, of those trades which he buys of, as to
those he sells to; supposing he sells to those who sell again, it is
their business to understand him, not his to understand them: and if he
finds they do not understand him, he will not fail to make their
ignorance be his advantage, unless he is honester and more conscientious
in his dealings than most of the tradesmen of this age seem to be.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] [_Sammel_ is a term of art the brickmakers use for those bricks
which are not well burnt, and which generally look of a pale red colour,
and as fair as the other, but are soft.]