THE OLD AND THE NEW SHOPKEEPER.

THE fashion of signs over shops is gone by, but the shops thems selves are signs—of the times ; and very significant of the altered state of trade ; which, assuming we are "a nation of shopkeepers," has a material bearing on the national character. The change in the system of shopkeeping is too remarkable to have escaped the notice of the most casual observer : we need not invoke the shades of our ancestors to bear witness to a metamorphosis that is sufficiently, evident to the present generation. Here and there may be seen some landmark of the old channel in which trade used to flow : at the door of some unostentatious shop, with well- filled shelves and a scanty array of articles in the window, exhi- bited rather as signs than as samples of the wares sold, may be seen on a fine day a sedate-looking sexagenarian, in drab knee- shorts, white neckcloth, and powdered hair, standing "at the re- ceipt of custom :" this is a shopkeeper of the old school—who is content with the fair profit of the retailer, and at stated periods lays in a fresh stock from the wholesale warehouse of such goods as he knows will suit his customers, and in quantities suited to the pretty regular demands of his connexion. The sight of a ticket in his window would be almost as great a shock as reading his name in the Gazette, and he resents a "plea of abatement" in his pricos as an insult : he gravely shakes his respectable head at the mention of "cheap shops," and regards with contempt, made bitter by loss of custom, the flaunting display of his opposite neighbour, who is one of the new school, and quizzes old "slow- coach" in return.

The shopkeeper of the present day is, in fact, both wholesale dealer and retailer : his speculations are often of such magnitude and risk, that even the merchant of former times, who could no more be induced to trade beyond his capital than to increase it by gambling, would hardly venture on. The business of the shop- keeper now is, not merely to supply the wants of the public, but to create fresh ones : he goes beyond the axiom of political econo- mists, "demand creates supply," and has made the discovery that "supply creates demand." "A glut in the market" used to imply stagnation ; now it is the cause of circulation: the over-stocked warehouse forces a vent in the shop. The more the trader has, the more he will sell ; for the more he shows, the more people will want. "I must sell," says the shopman ; "we must buy," re- spond the customers.

This new principle in trade, like all great discoveries, was made probably by chance, and is acted upon mechanically, without being recognized ; but it is the mainspring of the operations of the re- tailers. Instinct has devised a system that the sage most deeply versed in human nature could not have surpassed in efficiency. Quantity, not cheapness, is the bait: the price is only the hook that secures the gudgeon. Look at the linendrapers' shops, and see the piles of goods—quantities of a single sort—displayed in the windows : at one place you lose yourself among a crowd of cloaks at another pillars of Irish linen seem to sustain the ceiling, at a third the walls are hung with shawls, a fourth is festooned with ribands ; furs, to supply which a forest must have been depopu- lated, are heaped up in a fifth, and so on : " 100,000 pieces of diaper" is placarded in a shop, and forthwith diaper is in demand as if it were flour in a time of famine. We verily believe, if a shopkeeper were to fill his window with " mosquito-nets " at some price with an odd halfpenny as a sign of cheapness, he would sell

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he very hawkers adopt the universal principle on a small

scale : one day you shall see a man with an assortment of two-foot rules another with copper coal-scuttles for dolls : the most " un- wantable" things, if shown in sufficient quantities, and put forth as cheap, never fail to find purchasers. Autolycus, had he lived in this day, would have filled his pack with one article alone. What it is does not signify : " blacking " and " razor-strops " have been the most successful—why, no one can guess ; if some adven- turer were to chalk the walls with " fly-cages," or "vinegar," he might make a fortune by the sale. It is scarcely to be questioned that the number and splendour of the gin-palaces have made many dram-drinkers : and here too observe the leading features of attraction,—immense barrels, (whether real or not is immate- rial,) giving the idea of quantity; and light and splendour, convey- ing the notion of wealth. One would think the squalid wretches who seek such transient relief from misery, would dislike this ostentatious contrast with their rags and filth : no, the show is associated with prosperity and abundance, and they like to be connected with them, however indirectly.

For costly articles of luxury, attainable only by the wealthy few, such as plate, watches, and jewellery, SAVORY has caused an im- mense demand by advertising ; and Par.i.a.rr is following the same plan with cut-glass : not only do they divert the trade from other channels to them, but they create purchasers who never felt the want of these commodities before. From the highest to the lowest —from " gin" and " blacking " to "plate" and "glass "—the rule obtains.

What other trades do with written puffs, the linendrapers ac- complish with oral persuasion ; and the extent to which the seduc- tive eloquence of' the shopman prevails, is almost incredible. The "drapers' assistants," as they style themselves, are at present "agitating" for earlier hours of closing the shops,—seven o'clock in the four winter months, eight in the two of spring and autumn, and nine in the four summer months, are what they propose, with an hour or two later on Saturday nights: and these hours, it seems, are the same that were spontaneously agreed upon by the ' employers " themselves, thirteen years ago. Yet the demand is resisted as impracticable, by a majority of the "employers," and eight even is by many considered too early. Here we have a proof of the altered state of things in a few years. The assistants seem,‘however, bent on carrying their point, and are proceeding in a most business-like way. Their letters and speeches, that have been reported at great length in the News these few weeks past, are amusingly grandiloquent,—as if, instead of a body of shopmen asking for earlier hours, they were an enslaved people struggling for liberty ; but their best orators speak to the point, and with force and even elegance in some instances : they beat the Common Council hollow. Here is a body of several thousand salesmen, who are constantly and systematically exert- ing their utmost ingenuity in persuading people—mostly women, whom their insinuating manners are calculated to prevail with in matters of dress—to buy what they don't want ; their eloquence being backed by the irresistible though mute appeal of enormous quantities of goods and " unheard of cheapness." From their own statements, we learn that truth is a commodity they reject ; but they are permitted, and upon occasion required, to draw upon a boundless stock of invention ; the supply being limited only by the customer's gullibility and their own powers of face. Nor are they rigidly confined to the straight rule of fair dealing in other respects: for it is not deemed essential that an obstinate purchaser, who unreasonably insists on having an article that is ticketed as a lure, should be gratified, if he can be persuaded that a pretended article is the real one ; or, failing that, if' a bad commodity can afterwards be substituted for the good one he has bought, by some sleight of band. These are powerful aids to the eloquence of the counter, doubtless—almost as irresistible as the pistol of the robber or the fingers of the pickpocket : more- over, a strong incentive of a negative kind is held out to the salesman's oratorical powers—loss of situation invariably follow- ing a failure in securing a purchaser. Still the fascinations of these chevaliers d'industrie are not to be undervalued. We have read of highwaymen who plundered a carriage with the utmost delicacy and politeness, and swindlers are invariably renowned for "gentlemanly" manners; but neither class have

ever been able to convince their victims of their own disinterest- edness, or to reconcile them to the operation : whereas the wield-

ers of the yard-measure have address enough to satisfy the purchaser whom they trepan with the terms of the bargain ; and if they "swear black is white" for the purpose, it is but doing for their employers what some Whig-Radical politicians volunteered for their Ministerial masters. If there should be a strike among the linendrapers' shopmen, we can only say that they would turn these accomplishments to poor account were they to fail in setting up in trade on the capital of their "wits,"—unless, indeed, any unlucky wight should be burdened with a conscience ; and that, after a practice of a few months in a ticket-shop, is not very likely.

The same authorities inform us that the "buyers " are no less accomplished than the sellers, though having to do with men as cunning as themselves : it is "diamond cut diamond." Such is the philanthropy of some of these "buyers," that on gang to look at the stock of a bankrupt in posse, and finding it too small for their purpose, they will assist the poor man to procure an extension of credit to an amount sufficiently large, and then generously give him the third of the cost price of his stock, and thus enable him to offer to his creditors a dividend on a very hand- some amount, and so " break " with distinction. Yet these same large dealers in "tremendous sacrifices" and " alarming failures,' are quite alive to the gain resulting from cutting off half a yard from a "dross " length, or even a retrenchment of one or two com- panies in a regiment of pins : the purchaser scarcely feels it— hut to them it makes the difference between loss and gain in selling at a fractional profit ; the seller thus gets a reputation for cheapness, and both parties are satisfied.

This improved system of doing business, it is obvious, must re- quire the shopman to be " wide awake," though the customer be not ; and, as it. is rather troublesome to convince people against the evidence of their senses, the operation of selling by the new system must require all the mental and corporeal energies of the salesman : we think, theref)re, that the earlier hours desiderated by the " assistants " are expedient. One of the most successful practitioners of the new system, indeed, admits that after ten o'clock his young men are jaded and not lit fur much; and that very little profit results from keeping open after that time. It is satisfactory to have this opinion from authority ; for we began to think that the linendrapers' shops would continue open all night at last : indeed nothing but the want of custom induces them to close at all.

Reverting to the principle of attraction that governs the forcing system of trade, we are aware of instances of its operation in Paris also ; where, if money be less plentiful, love of dress is certainly a more universal passion. The boutiques of the Palais Royal, though too small (as are most of the Parisian shops) to allow of the expanse of plate glass that fronts the shawl-warehouses of our Regent Street and St. Paul's, are set out with dazzling richness both of quantity and quality ; exhibiting an alluring array of waistcoats or dressing-gowns, superb enough to captivate Mantalini himself:

and on the Boulevards, where space is available, may be sail the " Magasin de Deuil," its ample windows filled wholly with articles

of mourning apparel — the shopmen no doubt attired en suite, wearing faces of interesting paleness, and flourishing alternately cambric handkerchiefs and yard-measures tipped with crape knots. The puffing of our ContiLental nciAllbours is of a more spirituel and sentimental character : for example, instead of christening

their shops " Austerlitz " and " Wagram," as we do ours" Water- loo " and " Navarino," they dedicate theirs " A Norma: "a Jane

Grey," "A Notre Dame de Lorcate," Sze.: and as the fon»ze bour- geoise plays off all the artillery of her charms to send home a packet of gloves, doubtless the Count Calieots are not deficient in esprit—a polite phrase foi cleverness that hits the mark between the wind and water of law and morality.

To sum up the comparison. As regards the shopkeeper, the risk and the return under the Lew system are much larger, and the scale both of profit and morality much lower than in the old: the customer generally buys more, and at a cheaper rate, than before, but pays a good deal of money for things of little or no use, and finds the cheaper article the worse bargain.