Tradesmen
SIR CHARTRES BIRON delivered himself recently of a somewhat cutting reference to booksellers as mere " tradesmen." This description loses its edge, however, if we remember that we are not Victorians.. We have different social values and even a peer runs a shop to-day without losing caste. In, fact, this is precisely where the Georgian Age has progressed furthest. Fifty years ago a man was " something in the City." He dared not be more precise in good Society—at any rate, if he wished to remain in it.
Then there was the nice distinction between wholesale and retail. If you sold ribbons by the hundredweight your wife could still hold her head high, but sell them by the yard and you and your family were beyond the pale.
All this is . sheer humbug. As a book-salesman I am grateful to Sir Chartres for this candour—of course nearly all of us are tradesmen and proud of our trade. It is a goodly company and includes Benvenuto Cellini, Rubens, Sheridan, and Wren. They were all tradesmen as well as artists, skilled sellers of their wares. For it is not essential that a tradesman should sell other people's goods. Every time an artist executes a commission to paint a portrait he is doing a deal. He is not a whit the worse a painter because he accepts a high fee for his work. A barrister spends many years read- ing dull tomes and listening to dull pleadings not simply for the love of the Law but with fat fees in prospect. He barters his knowledge of cases and of human nature for the biggest cheque obtainable. The market-place is not localized in the City. It is like the motto of the Gunners—Ubique.
Mr. Arnold Bennett pointed out the other day in the Evening Standard the futility of Art for Art's sake- as applied to literature. It almost invariably produces the dilettante—a person feeble in performance but big in promise.
Naturally, the man whose work does not command a large return has to indemnify himself somehow, and he usually does it by a sneer. He looks down on Edgar Wallace and Charlie Chaplin. They have staggering incomes, he has not. Therefore, they are tradesmen, low money-grabbers, debasing the currency of Art for the sake of current coin. It is highly probable that his less successful rivals said the same of Pindar when he composed verses in honour of Athens—the hereditary enemy. He was well paid, and that was the fellow's crime. A poet ought to have his eyes fixed on the Muse and not on the main chance. Still, even a poet must eat, and the bread tastes sweeter when he has earned it himself and not had it doled out either by the State or some private patron.
It has been objected that we are a nation of shop- keepers, but it was a Frenchman who invented the phrase, and the French are perhaps the most businesslike nation in Europe. It was really a compliment from one who knew the worth of a good shopkeeper. We ought to be proud, when we remember what the English traders like Gresham, Drake, and Raleigh did in the course of their trading, to belong to the same' order of merchant adventurers. For trade is an adventure, a splendid adventure, even in a suburban high street. It demands vision, courage, and imagination. A- trader is not a hireling, nor a rond de cuir. He does not sit under a harrow, but stands facing life as fighter. He has to match his wits against other fighters and keep his end up against all comers.
There were many grocers' apprentices in Glasgow in the later years of Queen Victoria, but they did not all become Sir Thomas Liptons, and many have had bicycle shops in the Midlands, but do not now own the Morris works at Cowley; 'We were; as children, thrilled by Dick Whittington's career. In his day even soldiers were tradesmen. It is intolerable conceit on the part of the brewers to refer to themselves as " the trade." We who support the fountain-pen industry have as much right as they to share in that honour. Indeed, the writers are perhaps the most " universal " of all " pro- viders." We are the clearing-house of all the trades. From the bucket-shop prospectus to the King's Speech we ply our trade. The written word is the trader's most potent weapon, and without it everything would stagnate.
• Every man worth his salt is disposing of his own or someone else's wares to bring in that salt, or else it has no more savour than Dead Sea fruit.
We are grateful to London's senior magistrate for reminding us that we are a trading nation, nay more, a community of trading nations; and the qualities which make a successful tradesman also made the British Empire. G. MURRAY WILSON, Capt.
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