THE IRISH PROVINCIAL SHOPKEEPER.
ITO THE EDITOR 01 THE " SPECTATOR." J
Sm,—I have just read Mr. Birmingham's letter in the Spectator of January 4th. I do not attempt to answer it, but should like to deal with one point. According to Mr. Birmingham, the greatest evil in Ireland is done by the pro- vincial shopkeeper. He says:—
" He supplies the farmer with flour, American bacon, tea, artificial manure, and seed, all on credit. He purchases from the farmer eggs, butter, and potatoes, and the price is entered in his books against the farmer's debt. He lends the farmer money at unknown rates of interest. He supplies the farmer with the drink in which each bargain in buying or selling is sealed. When the time comes, he sells tickets to America to the farmer's sons and daughters. As trader, usurer, publican, and emigration agent he makes a fourfold profit," &c., &c.
As this is a point which is very much insisted upon also by most of the Co-operative lecturers on agricultural economics
through the country, and tends to do harm to a class of men who certainly do not earn their living with the ease that such
fourfold profit should ensure, I shall be grateful for space to make a modest defence.
The shopkeeper is obliged to supply all the things mentioned
—and many more—on credit, and in many cases he is never paid. The strongest point in favour of Co-operative Societies is their rule of no credit. If shopkeepers could establish that law in trading, it would be very much simpler for them. Apart altogether from the risk of bad debts, bookkeeping is a serious item in their expenses. As long as the customer's credit is good it is all right, but in the case of many small farmers and working men it is very different. If seeds and manures could not be got on credit, they could not be got at all. And should the season prove bad, the shopkeeper suffers with the farmer, and suffers more, for while he is expected to, and needs must, give the farmer
time, be has his own bills to meet be the seasons what they will. In many cases it is to the shopkeeper a man comes for a
small or large temporary loan, and the interest is truly un- known, for none is charged. Then in the case of the illness of the wage-earner again, it is the shopkeeper who has to give food, &c., on credit,—and only those who have experienced it can realise what it means to try to keep within bounds accounts of poor, unfortunate people who are almost starving, but who, one knows, will never be able to pay a big bill if it is run up. A wealthy philanthropist is the only person who could run a country shop happily in Ireland. The shopkeeper needs all the help he can get by acting as emigration agent or anything else that adds to his precarious income. Very few of them succeed in making more than a modest competence, and considering their many worries and losses and long hours (twelve hours a day at least, no holidays except Christmas Day, even their Sundays very often encroached upon when Simple medicines are wanted for cattle), it is quite a hard enough life without being pilloried as a band of robbers. Honour to Sir Horace Plunkett and all those who desire to help Ireland. But because of a few unscrupulous traders it is hardly fair to attack a body of men who are singularly unable to defend themselves.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ONE OF THEM.
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