OF THE TRADESMAN ACQUAINTING HIMSELF WITH ALL BUSINESS IN GENERAL
It is the judgment of some experienced tradesmen, that no man ought to
go from one business to another, and launch out of the trade or
employment he was bred to: _Tractent fabrilia fabri_--'Every man to his
own business;' and, they tell us, men never thrive when they do so.
I will not enter into that dispute here. I know some good and
encouraging examples of the contrary, and which stand as remarkable
instances, or as exceptions to the general rule: but let that be as it
will, sometimes providence eminently calls upon men out of one employ
into another, out of a shop into a warehouse, out of a warehouse into a
shop, out of a single hand into a partnership, and the like; and they
trade one time here, another time there, and with very good success too.
But I say, be that as it will, a tradesman ought so far to acquaint
himself with business, that he should not be at a loss to turn his hand
to this or that trade, as occasion presents, whether in or out of the
way of his ordinary dealing, as we have often seen done in London and
other places, and sometimes with good success.
This acquainting himself with business does not intimate that he should
learn every trade, or enter into the mystery of every employment. That
cannot well be; but that he should have a true notion of business in
general, and a knowledge how and in what manner it is carried on; that
he should know where every manufacture is made, and how bought at first
hand; that he should know which are the proper markets, and what the
particular kinds of goods to exchange at those markets; that he should
know the manner how every manufacture is managed, and the method of
their sale.
It cannot be expected that he should have judgment in the choice of all
kinds of goods, though in a great many he may have judgment too: but
there is a general understanding in trade, which every tradesman both
may and ought to arrive to; and this perfectly qualifies him to engage
in any new undertaking, and to embark with other persons better
qualified than himself in any new trade, which he was not in before; in
which, though he may not have a particular knowledge and judgment in the
goods they are to deal in or to make, yet, having the benefit of the
knowledge his new partner is master of, and being himself apt to take
in all additional lights, he soon becomes experienced, and the knowledge
of all the other parts of business qualifies him to be a sufficient
partner. For example--A.B. was bred a dry-salter, and he goes in partner
with with C.D., a scarlet-dyer, called a bow-dyer, at Wandsworth.
As a salter, A.B. has had experience enough in the materials for dyeing,
as well scarlets as all other colours, and understands very well the
buying of cochineal, indigo, galls, shumach, logwood, fustick, madder,
and the like; so that he does his part very well. C.D. is an experienced
scarlet-dyer; but now, doubling their stock, they fall into a larger
work, and they dye bays and stuffs, and other goods, into differing
colours, as occasion requires; and this brings them to an equality in
the business, and by hiring good experienced servants, they go on very
well together.
The like happens often when a tradesman turns his hand from one trade to
another; and when he embarks, either in partnership or out of it, in any
new business, it is supposed he seldom changes hands in such a manner
without some such suitable person to join with, or that he has some
experienced head workman to direct him, which, if that workman proves
honest, is as well as a partner. On the other hand, his own application
and indefatigable industry supply the want of judgment. Thus, I have
known several tradesmen turn their hands from one business to another,
or from one trade entirely to another, and very often with good success.
For example, I have seen a confectioner turn a sugar-baker; another a
distiller; an apothecary turn chemist, and not a few turn physicians,
and prove very good physicians too; but that is a step beyond what I am
speaking of.
But my argument turns upon this--that a tradesman ought to be able to
turn his hand to any thing; that is to say, to lay down one trade and
take up another, if occasion leads him to it, and if he sees an evident
view of profit and advantage in it; and this is only done by his having
a general knowledge of trade, so as to have a capacity of judging: and
by but just looking upon what is offered or proposed, he sees as much at
first view as others do by long inquiry, and with the judgment of many
advisers.
When I am thus speaking of the tradesman's being capable of making
judgment of things, it occurs, with a force not to be resisted, that I
should add, he is hereby fenced against bubbles and projects, and
against those fatal people called projectors, who are, indeed, among
tradesmen, as birds of prey are among the innocent fowls--devourers and
destroyers. A tradesman cannot be too well armed, nor too much
cautioned, against those sort of people; they are constantly surrounded
with them, and are as much in jeopardy from them, as a man in a crowd is
of having his pocket picked--nay, almost as a man is when in a crowd of
pickpockets.
Nothing secures the tradesman against those men so well as his being
thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the
delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and
to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his
specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they
are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will;
to make allowances for all his fine flourishes and outsides, and then to
judge for himself. A projector is to a tradesman a kind of incendiary;
he is in a constant plot to blow him up, or set fire to him; for
projects are generally as fatal to a tradesman as fire in a magazine of
gunpowder.
The honest tradesman is always in danger, and cannot be too wary; and
therefore to fortify his judgment, that he may be able to guard against
such people as these, is one of the most necessary things I can do for
him.
In order, then, to direct the tradesman how to furnish himself thus with
a needful stock of trading knowledge, first, I shall propose to him to
converse with tradesmen chiefly: he that will be a tradesman should
confine himself within his own sphere: never was the Gazette so full of
the advertisements of commissions of bankrupt as since our shopkeepers
are so much engaged in parties, formed into clubs to hear news, and read
journals and politics; in short, when tradesmen turn statesmen, they
should either shut up their shops, or hire somebody else to look after
them.
The known story of the upholsterer is very instructive,[10] who, in his
abundant concern for the public, ran himself out of his business into a
jail; and even when he was in prison, could not sleep for the concern he
had for the liberties of his dear country: the man was a good patriot,
but a bad shopkeeper; and, indeed, should rather have shut up his shop,
and got a commission in the army, and then he had served his country in
the way of his calling. But I may speak to this more in its turn.
My present subject is not the negative, what he should not do, but the
affirmative, what he should do; I say, he should take all occasions to
converse within the circuit of his own sphere, that is, dwell upon the
subject of trade in his conversation, and sort with and converse among
tradesmen as much as he can; as writing teaches to write--_scribendo
discis scribere_--so conversing among tradesmen will make him a
tradesman. I need not explain this so critically as to tell you I do not
mean he should confine or restrain himself entirely from all manner of
conversation but among his own class: I shall speak to that in its place
also. A tradesman may on occasion keep company with gentlemen as well
as other people; nor is a trading man, if he is a man of sense,
unsuitable or unprofitable for a gentleman to converse with, as occasion
requires; and you will often find, that not private gentlemen only, but
even ministers of state, privy-councillors, members of parliament, and
persons of all ranks in the government, find it for their purpose to
converse with tradesmen, and are not ashamed to acknowledge, that a
tradesman is sometimes qualified to inform them in the most difficult
and intricate, as well as the most urgent, affairs of government; and
this has been the reason why so many tradesmen have been advanced to
honours and dignities above their ordinary rank, as Sir Charles
Duncombe, a goldsmith; Sir Henry Furnese, who was originally a retail
hosier; Sir Charles Cook, late one of the board of trade, a merchant;
Sir Josiah Child, originally a very mean tradesman; the late Mr Lowndes,
bred a scrivener; and many others, too many to name.
But these are instances of men called out of their lower sphere for
their eminent usefulness, and their known capacities, being first known
to be diligent and industrious men in their private and lower spheres;
such advancements make good the words of the wise man--'Seest thou a man
diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand
before mean men.[11]
In the mean time, the tradesman's proper business is in his shop or
warehouse, and among his own class or rank of people; there he sees how
other men go on, and there he learns how to go on himself; there he sees
how other men thrive, and learns to thrive himself; there he hears all
the trading news--as for state news and politics, it is none of his
business; there he learns how to buy, and there he gets oftentimes
opportunities to sell; there he hears of all the disasters in trade, who
breaks, and why; what brought such and such a man to misfortunes and
disasters; and sees the various ways how men go down in the world, as
well as the arts and management, by which others from nothing arise to
wealth and estates.
Here he sees the Scripture itself thwarted, and his neighbour tradesman,
a wholesale haberdasher, in spite of a good understanding, in spite of a
good beginning, and in spite of the most indefatigable industry, sink in
his circumstances, lose his credit, then his stock, and then break and
become bankrupt, while the man takes more pains to be poor than others
do to grow rich.
There, on the other hand, he sees G.D., a plodding, weak-headed, but
laborious wretch, of a confined genius, and that cannot look a quarter
of a mile from his shop-door into the world, and beginning with little
or nothing, yet rises apace in the mere road of business, in which he
goes on like the miller's horse, who, being tied to the post, is turned
round by the very wheel which he turns round himself; and this fellow
shall get money insensibly, and grow rich even he knows not how, and no
body else knows why.
Here he sees F.M. ruined by too much trade, and there he sees M.F.
starved for want of trade; and from all these observations he may learn
something useful to himself, and fit to guide his own measures, that he
may not fall into the same mischiefs which he sees others sink under,
and that he may take the advantage of that prudence which others rise
by.
All these things will naturally occur to him, in his conversing among
his fellow-tradesmen. A settled little society of trading people, who
understand business, and are carrying on trade in the same manner with
himself, no matter whether they are of the very same trades or no, and
perhaps better not of the same--such a society, I say, shall, if due
observations are made from it, teach the tradesman more than his
apprenticeship; for there he learned the operation, here he learns the
progression; his apprenticeship is his grammar-school, this is his
university; behind his master's counter, or in his warehouse, he learned
the first rudiments of trade, but here he learns the trading sciences;
here he comes to learn the _arcana_, speak the language, understand the
meaning of every thing, of which before he only learned the beginning:
the apprenticeship inducts him, and leads him as the nurse the child;
this finishes him; there he learned the beginning of trade, here he sees
it in its full extent; in a word, there he learned to trade, here he is
made a complete tradesman.
Let no young tradesman object, that, in the conversation I speak of,
there are so many gross things said, and so many ridiculous things
argued upon, there being always a great many weak empty heads among the
shopkeeping trading world: this may be granted without any impeachment
of what I have advanced--for where shall a man converse, and find no
fools in the society?--and where shall he hear the weightiest things
debated, and not a great many empty weak things offered, out of which
nothing can be learned, and from which nothing can be deduced?--for 'out
of nothing, nothing can come.'
But, notwithstanding, let me still insist upon it to the tradesman to
keep company with tradesmen; let the fool run on in his own way; let the
talkative green-apron rattle in his own way; let the manufacturer and
his factor squabble and brangle; the grave self-conceited puppy, who was
born a boy, and will die before he is a man, chatter and say a great
deal of nothing, and talk his neighbours to death--out of every one you
will learn something--they are all tradesmen, and there is always
something for a young tradesman to learn from them. If, understanding
but a little French, you were to converse every day a little among some
Frenchmen in your neighbourhood, and suppose those Frenchmen, you thus
kept company with, were every one of them fools, mere ignorant, empty,
foolish fellows, there might be nothing learnt from their sense, but you
would still learn French from them, if it was no more than the tone and
accent, and the ordinary words usual in conversation.
Thus, among your silly empty tradesmen, let them be as foolish and empty
other ways as you can suggest, though you can learn no philosophy from
them, you may learn many things in trade from them, and something from
every one; for though it is not absolutely necessary that every
tradesman should be a philosopher, yet every tradesman, in his way,
knows something that even a philosopher may learn from.
I knew a philosopher that was excellently skilled in the noble science
or study of astronomy, who told me he had some years studied for some
simile, or proper allusion, to explain to his scholars the phenomena of
the sun's motion round its own axis, and could never happen upon one to
his mind, till by accident he saw his maid Betty trundling her mop:
surprised with the exactness of the motion to describe the thing he
wanted, he goes into his study, calls his pupils about him, and tells
them that Betty, who herself knew nothing of the matter, could show them
the sun revolving about itself in a more lively manner than ever he
could. Accordingly, Betty was called, and bidden bring out her mop,
when, placing his scholars in a due-position, opposite not to the face
of the maid, but to her left side, so that they could see the end of the
mop, when it whirled round upon her arm. They took it immediately--there
was the broad-headed nail in the centre, which was as the body of the
sun, and the thrums whisking round, flinging the water about every way
by innumerable little streams, describing exactly the rays of the sun,
darting light from the centre to the whole system.
If ignorant Betty, by the natural consequences of her operation,
instructed the astronomer, why may not the meanest shoemaker or pedlar,
by the ordinary sagacity of his trading wit, though it may be indeed
very ordinary, coarse, and unlooked for, communicate something, give
some useful hint, dart some sudden thought into the mind of the
observing tradesman, which he shall make his use of, and apply to his
own advantage in trade, when, at the same time, he that gives such hint
shall himself, like Betty and her mop, know nothing of the matter?
Every tradesman is supposed to manage his business his own way, and,
generally speaking, most tradesmen have some ways peculiar and
particular to themselves, which they either derived from the masters
who taught them, or from the experience of things, or from something in
the course of their business, which had not happened to them before.
And those little _nostrums_ are oftentime very properly and with
advantage communicated from one to another; one tradesman finds out a
nearer way of buying than another, another finds a vent for what is
bought beyond what his neighbour knows of, and these, in time, come to
be learned of them by their ordinary conversation.
I am not for confining the tradesman from keeping better company, as
occasion and leisure requires; I allow the tradesman to act the
gentleman sometimes, and that even for conversation, at least if his
understanding and capacity make him suitable company to them, but still
his business is among those of his own rank. The conversation of
gentlemen, and what they call keeping good company, may be used as a
diversion, or as an excursion, but his stated society must be with his
neighbours, and people in trade; men of business are companions for men
of business; with gentlemen he may converse pleasantly, but here he
converses profitably; tradesmen are always profitable to one another; as
they always gain by trading together, so they never lose by conversing
together; if they do not get money, they gain knowledge in business,
improve their experience, and see farther and farther into the world.
A man of but an ordinary penetration will improve himself by conversing
in matters of trade with men of trade; by the experience of the old
tradesmen they learn caution and prudence, and by the rashness and the
miscarriages of the young, they learn what are the mischiefs that
themselves may be exposed to.
Again, in conversing with men of trade, they get trade; men first talk
together, then deal together--many a good bargain is made, and many a
pound gained, where nothing was expected, by mere casual coming to talk
together, without knowing any thing of the matter before they met. The
tradesmen's meetings are like the merchants' exchange, where they
manage, negociate, and, indeed, beget business with one another.
Let no tradesman mistake me in this part; I am not encouraging them to
leave their shops and warehouses, to go to taverns and ale-houses, and
spend their time there in unnecessary prattle, which, indeed, is nothing
but sotting and drinking; this is not meeting to do business, but to
neglect business. Of which I shall speak fully afterwards.
But the tradesmen conversing with one another, which I mean, is the
taking suitable occasions to discourse with their fellow tradesmen,
meeting them in the way of their business, and improving their spare
hours together. To leave their shops, and quit their counters, in the
proper seasons for their attendance there, would be a preposterous
negligence, would be going out of business to gain business, and would
be cheating themselves, instead of improving themselves. The proper
hours of business are sacred to the shop and the warehouse. He that goes
out of the order of trade, let the pretence of business be what it will,
loses his business, not increases it; and will, if continued, lose the
credit of his conduct in business also.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] [The story of the political upholsterer forms the subject of
several amusing papers by Addison in the _Tatler_.]
[11] [To stand in the presence of a prince is the highest mark of honour
in the east, as to sit is with us.]