THE PRICE OF A HINT.
PROBABLY there is no useful principle to which there are so many exceptions as the economical principle that cost of production, as modified by the state of demand and the state of supply, determines the value of an article. In the first place, a very great number of buyers know nothing about either the cost of production of the things they buy, or the state of the supply of those things. When a tailor tells us what a snit of clothes is to cost, how many of us have the least notion of the cost to him of the cloth which will be needful, and of the amount of the wages which it will be necessary to pay to transform that cloth into a finished suit? When we ask the price of a dinner- service, which of us has the remotest notion of the true outlay on the making of that dinner-service ? What we rely on is the competition of the shopkeepers for purchasers, and some vague notion as to the price we have been asked, or have paid, for similar 'articles at other shops. Supposing the trade to be in any way in a compact as to the profits they shall secure, or the vendor of the article in question to have a plausible excuse for saying that what he has to sell is unique, and cannot be found at all elsewhere, the pur- chaser has no more real check on the price demanded than he would have on the price asked on the confines of the backwoods, to use De Quincey's famous illustration, for the only musical-box to be had between those backwoods and the nearest great city. Except in relation to the commonest articles of furniture and clothes, we suspect that really rich buyers seldom know whether they are being cheated or not. They often pay for the trouble of not inquiring further, at least as much as they pay by way of remuneration for the vendor's outlay. It is the tradesman only who knows the real cost of the less common articles of luxury,—not the buyer, who only knows whether he thinks it worth his while to give so much, not in the least whether by taking a little pains he could not get it for much less. You pay a good deal for the honour and advantage of buying a thing from a celebrated tradesman ; you pay a good deal more for the honour and advantage of buying it in a splendid shop and street ; and you pay very likely a good deal more, as the case of " Pool v. Brooks " shows, for the honour and advantage of having had your name suggested to the noted tradesman as that of a possible customer, by some other gentleman who is on the look-out for hints which -are worth money. In the case we have referred to, a jury gave 1400 on Tuesday to Mr. Pool, who, by his own admission, had done nothing in the world but call on Mr. Brooks, a picture- dealer, tell him that he knew of a rich man, with a house in Picca- dilly and another in the country, who was likely, if Mr. Brooks pro- perly attracted the attention of the lady, to become agood customer, and had there and then received a promise that if the suggestion -came to anything, he (Mr. Pool) should have a good commission on all the pictures sold to the rich man the mention of whose name was thus made into a very profitable transaction. The real -man in question, Mr. Gerard Leigh, seems to have been so well known, that it can hardly have been more than a pure accident that Mr. Brooks, the picture-dealer, first thought of him as a possible customer, if he did first think of him as a possible customer, on Mr. Pool's suggestion. And Mr. Brooks's alleged promise to pay a commission to the auggestor of this happy thought on all the pictures which might be sold, was, of course, a purely voluntary affair of his own, just as much as if he had promised a butler five hundred a year for services which he might easily have obtained for one-eighth part of the money. But supposing the account given of the original conversation by Mr. Pool and the witness who confirmed it, Mr. Shepherd, be accurate,—which one would not hastily determine, in the absence of the picture-dealer himself in Bombay,—nothing illustrates more quaintly the excessive elasticity of price' in dealing with a rich man, than this voluntary promise to pay for a hint by a com- mission on all the transactions to which that hint might lead. It is pretty clear, we suppose that the hint did not in any way in- crease the cost of production of the pictures ; it is equally clear that it did not diminish the supply, or increase the demand more than Mr. Gerard Leigh's own appearance in Mr. Brooks's place of business would have done ; and yet it must have been quite easy for Mr. Brooks either to add the cost of Mr. Pool's commission on to the price of the pictures sold, or else to take it out of the margin of excessive profit which he would have gained bad there been no intermediary ; otherwise be could never have volunteered the generous offer to Mr. Pool which he is alleged to have made. The price of the pictures to be sold was apparently elastic to so large an extent that a large commission,—a commission which a jury assesses as worth £400,—could be paid out of the sales of two or three years' pictures, without raising any difficulty about price at all. We have heard before of commissions for bring- ing a tradesman a customer, but we never heard before of a com- mission for suggesting the name of a customer to whom the trades- man is expected to make all the advances for himself. indeed, there is something peculiarly cynical in charging a man extra for what he buys, in order to find wages for the person who first sug- gested that he might be bothered into buying. The next step will be to supply beggars with promising names for the object of their importunities, on condition that they importune well enough to get a fee for the discriminating giver of the advice as well as a gratuity for themselves out of the persons impor- tuned. We suppose, indeed, that though Mr. Pool's remunera- tion was better worth having, it was remuneration for the same 'kind of service as that which people demand who offer in the Times to suggest for a dozen stamps a pleasant and profitable occupation which it is easy to learn. Still, in these matters, amount is everything ; and if it be really possible to earn upwards of a hundred a year for three years by going into a shop, and imparting a name judiciously selected from "The Court Guide," with the addition of a little superficial information as to the tastes of the lady of the house mentioned, we shall have a rush of candidates into so easy and lucrative a position.
No doubt a hint towards any useful achievement is always -worth something. You may call a riding or swimming- =aster's instruction little more than a series of hints as to the best way of holding your arms and legs in riding and swimming, and every one is quite willing to pay something in moderation for such hints. But in these cases you get a great many useful hints for five shillings; while in the case before us Mr. Brooks got only one useful hint for his fee of £400, and that a hint which, with a little trouble, he might have elaborated out of his own wits and his own "Court Guide." If it be said that the value of the hint depends on what the hint leads to, we should demur to that, Hints on swimming may lead to the saving of a life and, perhaps, of many other lives very profitable to him who saves them, but no swimming master charges extra on that account. Mr. Pool's hint, considered in relation to the trouble and ingenuity of the man who gave it, was perhaps worth five shillings, though it may have been worth a good deal more to Mr. Brooks, if Mr. Brooks really got a very profitable customer whom he would not otherwise have got, out of it. Still the offer to pay him by a com- mission on the profitable consequences of the hint was a lavishly imprudent one, which we cannot recommend other tradesmen to imitate.
It is to us rather alarming to hear that five per cent. is the least commission recognised by tradesmen, according, that is, to the evidence as regard4the Picture Trade, though it was admitted that even five-per-cent. commissions usually involve really bringing and introducing a customer, and not merely naming him. Still the very least you are likely to find added to the price demanded as a mode of repaying the services of a mediator is a shilling in the pound, while two shillings in the pound appears to be a commoner rate of remuneration. Certainly the profession of the touter for custom is a very highly paid one, at rates of this kind. If shopmen in mercery shops, who are the cleverest of all touters, were paid at the same rate, they would soon get rich ; but if they are ever paid by a commission on the purchases at all, it must be by a very much smaller one ; and it is_difficult to see why commissions in the wine or picture business should be so high, unless it is that in those businesses the prices charged are so little checked by any competent comparison'jwith other prices, that the addition of large sums to the cost;of the wares does not at all diminish the business done. If we are really to pay such prices as these for hints, the sooner the business of giving them becomes a regular profession, so that the charges may be diminished by a brisk competition, the better it will be for our purses. For, unfortunately, it cannot be assumed that because we do not go to the dealer with any recommendation in our pockets, there- fore we do not pay as much as we should if we did. We take the truth to be that, at least in relation to these fancy articles, the price is fixed so as to cover a good commission, if there be any one to claim it, and if not, the dealer takes it for himself. So that not only the Mr. Gerard Leighs of society, but the poorer fellow-customers of Mr. Gerard Leigh, bear the cost of the system of commissions, whether there be any one to claim the commission or not.
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