THESE HARD TIMES !
EVERYBODY says these are very hard times, and from one point of view, at least, everybody is right. These are very hard times for the well-to-do, and for those who depend in any degree on their well-to-doishness. It is true that many of the usual signals of public distress are wanting ; that the revenue does not decline seriously ; that there is no cry for public economy ; that the average of pauperism is exceptionally low ; that wages, though receding, especially in the iron and coal trades, are not abnormally bad ; that the people waste quite as much as usual on their drink ; and that bread is exceedingly cheap, in spite of a coming harvest which the corn speculators believe can hardly yield a full average supply. It is true also that luxury seems to be as rampant as ever, that any amount of money is forthcoming for old china, for pictures with approved pedigrees, and for "bits of land ;" and that capital, usually so difficult to hire, is now to be rented at rates which it is hardly worth bankers' while to take. But still, there is very great distress among large sections of the people, and it is worth while to notice where that distress appears to be principally felt. The cry, general and bitter though it is, does not come up from " the poor," or from the handicraftsmen, or from the little shopkeepers—except in Wales, where, owing to the condition of the mining industries, the position of the grocers, small butchers, and other purveyors to the poor, is becoming deplorable—but from the comfortable, and the classes whom they usually maintain. We are not about to enter into the political economy of the question, or reinvestigate phenomena which are pnrzling men of great experience and reputation, but we may, we think, take one statement as true without dis- cussion. The country has not lost very much productive capital, but it has lost for the moment part of its power of getting dividends on that capital, of obtaining high interest upon each hundred pounds. The country has not lost, for example, any very serious sum by recent repudiations, two-thirds of the money having come back in discounts, excess interest, "drawings," and other advantages, but an extraordinary number of persons have lost pleasant additions to their regular income. If you are earning or receiving from property £500 a year, you are not ruined by the loss of £1,000 invested in " Turks," but the loss of the £120 a year those " Turks " yielded is the loss of nearly a clear fourth of your spending power, and of more than half your power of spend- ing on unnecessary things. The margin has been cut away, and it takes a little time even in well-managed households to readjust expenditure to the new condition of the treasury. The number of people who find themselves, crippled in this way is extraordinary, not because an extraordinary number of people held "Turks" and the like—though the number was great—but because three times as many have taken fright, sold all securities yielding large interest—generally to foreigners, as in the case of Egyptian and Russian Stocks—and sought refuge in the "sweet simplicity of three per cent." in preference shares, houses, and other forms of investment which some years ago were pro- nounced " old-fashioned." They will not be injured, but benefited in the long-run, by the conversion ; but at present it cripples their means, and induces them to adopt every available ' form of economy. They suffer just as the Anglo-Indians do, in the terrible temporary fine they are just now paying on their remittances, and which has this week increased till it represents an income-tax of four shillings in the pound. The same process is repeated in every form of trade. The smaller capitalists are not exactly losing their money, but they are losing the usual interest on their money, are compelled to submit to lower prices and give longer credit, and contract their dealings until the interest for the year sinks from the normal 10 per cent., which safe trading ought to yield, to six or five. A man who has £50,000 in business, and makes 5 per cent. in a bad year, is not ruined, or anything like it; but if he has been accus- tomed to make ten he feels very poor, and for many of the pur- poses of life he is poor, as poor as if he had sustained a great loss of capital.
Every man who uses his money to lend, whether by in- vesting in bank shares or dealing in Lombard Street, is feel- ing this, this year ; most men feel it who are in trade of the larger sort, and it is especially felt among a class which ordi- narily spends a good deal,—the great distributors, or owners of large shops. Every man in all these classes, unless reckless or silly, when aware of this loss of income, tries to save, and of course begins saving by dispensing, first, with things he does not particularly want, and next, with things the want of which will not break up his esatablishment. He does not buy that pic- ture which he fancied, he thinks the drawing-room furniture will do for another year, he is quite annoyed that he should be using a second carriage, he can do very well without any goldsmith's goods, and as for increasing his establishment, that is not to be thought of. The consequence of this view, when widely diffused, is that whole branches of business usually quite safe suddenly collapse. Their owners have not lost their capital, nor are they worried with bad debts, but they have suddenly lost the use of their machinery. The jobmasters of London, for instance, feel a year like this perhaps more than any traders—more than the jewellers, or the picture-dealers, or the florists, who have much of their support from the people whose wealth is only affected by agrarian calamity or heavy national taxation. Thousands of horses, useful only for showy work, are now "eating their heads off" in jobmasters' stables, while the coach-builders declare that the world seems to them to be suddenly bent on making cabmen's fortunes. Two thousand coachmen are said to be on the books of a single
firm as "wanting employ." The furniture-dealers protest that they can sell nothing except the most ordinary goods, while the letters of furnished houses groan that half London is on their hands, and but for fear of ruining trade, they would take any prices they could get. They will not, and they do not, seriously reduce prices, but they go without the commissions which make up their profits. Of course, with such retrenchments, coachmen, " season butlers," grooms, and all those servants who are maintained rather for show than for convenience, are thrown out of employ, and fall frequently into utter destitution, no class of men being so helpless against a whole year of " hard times," which they cannot meet by accepting any reductions of wages. It is not that they are exceptionally improvident, but that people who do not want coachmen, or grooms, or ornamental footmen, do not want them at all, and would not take them if they offered to forego wages. With these "ministers of luxury," for whose fate economists do not care, but who can be pinched by hunger as much as agricultural labourers, suffer another class, supposed to be more estimable. Clerks, we mean clerks proper— clerks who mean to live by clerking, if there is such an occupation—are suffering most lamentably. They do not get good salaries at the best of times ; they are apt to be either very domestic or very fond of amusement, and their capacity for saving anything worth retaining is extremely small. They are dismissed in shoals at a time, and as they can, for the most part, do nothing with their hands, their condition in many places is most pitiable. They cannot borrow, they cannot find odd jobs, and they cannot obtain parish relief. How they come to be dismissed in such numbers is to outsiders something of a problem, but we suppose they are in good times rather over-numerous, employers try in bad times to save their wages by " doubling up " duties, and every bankruptcy throws a number of them into the market. At all events, there is the fact that in a year like this " clerks are a drug," and they suffer as only decent people accustomed to wear black coats and ignorant of manual labour can suffer,—suffer at least as much as governesses and sempstresses, though they do not obtain the same amount of pity. So, also, though in a lesser degree, do certain classes of shopkeepers, whose businesses one would suppose to be necessary, and beyond the reach of any ordinary period of depression. The statement is so odd, that knowing nothing of the working of the trade, we repeat it with some hesitation, but we are assured, on perfectly compe- tent authority, that no retail business suffers from a period of depression so quickly or so severely as that of the hatter. One would imagine that a hatter was as safe as a tailor, that he would sell his hats at all times, though he might, in a time like this, have to wait a little for his money, but we are assured it is not so. The hatter's is essentially a ready-money trade, and it is de- pendent not so much upon the consumption of hats, as upon people's ideas as to the shabbiness of their hats, which ideas vary as spare cash is plentiful or scarce. Nobody wears a hat out as he wears a shoe out, and nobody waits as long as he might to buy a new hat. The consequence is, that most well-to-do people could do very well with half the hats they buy, and whenever they are retrenching, they abstain from that particular purchase, till a hatter may find himself left for six months without any custom at all. Tailors suffer also, but it is rather from postponed pay- ment than want of orders ; while shoemakers only feel the pres- sure if their prices are so high that the customer can resort with- out trouble to a cheaper shop, to return disgusted when the pressure has passed away. After the hatters come, we believe, the distributing booksellers, whose business is often cut to pieces by a season of pressure upon the classes who usually have money to spare. It is a curious fact, when the cultivation of the age is remembered, that the English are not a book-buying people. They are supposed to read, but they do not buy books. Outside a small class, it is very rare to find a family with five hundred books in the house, while men making thousands a year would think it a gross extravagance to spend a guinea a week on books. It is possible, experienced librarians tell us, to keep a library fully abreast of English literature for £300 a year, but the number of individuals who attempt to do it is inconceivably small. Book- buying is considered a luxury, it is one of the luxuries first retrenched, and a year of depression means to all but first- class firms a year without a profit. There are, of course, numer- ous other trades—for instance, watchmakers, sellers of fancy goods, and fruiterers of the expensive kind, who also suffer severely in some degree, and the aggregate of their complaints, which are quite real and true, make up a cry not unimpressive in its depth and volume. The country, as a whole, is not suffering dangerously, or even severely ; but the comfortable classes are worried, and all those whose living depends on the expenditure of surplus income are growing wretchedly despondent. Another year of insecurity, distrust, and low dividends will produce as much misery in England as a bad harvest did in the olden time, though it wilt not produce deaths by starvation or riotings in the streets.
Previous page
