TEMPER IN TRADE.
NOTHING is more curious, in this dispute between the Stores and the Shops, than the amount of temper which the advocates of either side import into the controversy, and the quantity of nonsense in which they consequently indulge. The Shopkeepers seem to be the worst, for at their meeting on Mon- day they made the mistake of formulating their complaints in a set of speeches and resolutions, but the Housewives are not very far behind them. As a matter of fact, most women who deal with the Stores deal with them because they perceive, or think, that they thereby save some money. They know quite well that the articles they get are either what they would get at the shops, or just a little inferior ; that the trouble involved in going to the Stores is considerable, that the loss of time is great, and that th3y give up the conveniences of wide choice, of the "call for orders," and of the nominally free delivery. Nevertheless, they go to the Stores, because money is valuable, and a reputation for economical manage- ment is pleasant, and the husband is rather stingy, or a little pressed ; and the trouble is of a kind they think nothing of, being shop- ping, after all, and the difficulty of delivery can be managed, and the articles supplied are good enough to pass with a few defensive words, and "quite good enough, my dear, for our ex- travagant servants !" But they will very rarely admit that the motive is purely economy, and very often are moved by impulses with which economy has little to do. "I have quarrelled with my tradespeople, and so I go to the Stores." "I never know, if the tradesmen call, who is or is not in the kitchen, and so I go to the Stores." "My servants have too much to say to the shops, and so I go to the Stores." It never occurs to such good managers to think that if they would take the same personal trouble in going to the shops that they take in going to the Stores, most of the grievances of which they complain would at once be remedied. The Shopkeepers will not offer them vails, any more than the Stores will, nor can the cook and housemaid follow them to flirt in the shops, any more than in the Stores. These arguments are, how- ever, reasonable, compared with others which are often employed. Many women, and for that matter, many men too, have a curious kind of spite at tradesmen, and especially small tradesmen, for making money, and a latent notion that prices ought to be in some way arranged so that the purchasers shall have some other veto upon the matter than merely rejecting or neglecting the goods. They want to hiss, instead of leaving the theatre. Men do not care if their wine-merchant grows rich, indeed rather approve that evidence that he sells good wine, and neither men nor women are provoked if huge shopkeepers, like Shoolbred, or Marshall and Snelgrove, or Meeking, die millionaires ; but if the nearest tradesman makes money, there is a chorus of complaint and a distinct sense of annoyance, because "he must have made it out of them." High charges are treated not as blunders, but as positive offences, as if the tradesman had contracted to take a shilling and were ask- ing eighteenpence. The notion that a tradesman with no mono- poly has a right to charge what he pleases, if he only states his charge beforehand, and gives the quality he says he gives, is one which it seems impossible to instil, and one which in the case of the indispensable tradesmen elicits in conversation open resentment. We do not exaggerate when we say that in a large number of middle-class households in London butchers are positively hated for their charges, and that the appearance of any one of them in the Gazette would be received as at once a pleasant item of news, and a proof that his prices were exorbitant. They are regarded as usurers are,—as extortioners, who have no right to charge what they like, evil persons, who live and thrive on the necessities of their fellow-creatures. We verily believe that if an Aristocratic Butchers' Store were opened in West London to- morrow, and sold second-class meat at ordinary prices, hundreds of housewives, accustomed to first-class meat, would buy their meat there, "just to read those butchers a lesson!" The busi- ness of providing for a house is regarded not as an ordinary bit of work, to be performed on business principles, but as a regu-
lated social war, in which an enemy has to be defeated, in which it is quite legitimate to hate that enemy, and in which the Store is a kind of elephantine ally. All this while, the very women who grow so hot over their grievances know perfectly well that the competition amongst tradesmen is of the bitterest kind ; that not one in ten has such a reputation that he can stand on his
name, and "make his own charges ;" that the whole class has been dragooned into a demeanour expressing a servility visible in no other class, and that there is no reasonable form of service which a ready-money customer, who will wait to be served, say, a tenth of the time he waits at the Stores, will not to a certainty
secure.
The tradesmen are just as unreasonable, and much more foolish in their way of proclaiming it. We read the speeches made and resolutions passed at the Westminster meeting on Mon- day from end to end, with a single feeling of astonishment that decent men, presumably of standing among their followers, and managing their own businesses with credit, could allow irritation to make them so exceedingly silly. From first to last, the speakers produced but one argument with any reason in it at all, and that was that a single co-operative store, the Civil Service Supply Association, did not pay Income-tax, and should be made to pay it. It was admitted that all the others paid it, but this one, it was stated, did not, owing, we presume, either to its abstaining from profit or investing profit in stock, and this grievance was repeated and descanted on over and over again. Of course it is a griev- ance, and one that should be instantly remedied, but it was scarcely sufficient to justify the anger which breathes in every one of the speeches. The speakers quite foamed as they denounced the Civil Servants, who, they say, draw their pay from the trades- men, do no work, get superannuation allowances too early, and then compete with the tradesmen in their own market. Do the trades- men really mean that the Civil Servants should not invest their spare cash, when they have any, in Joint-Stock undertakings? Not a bit of it, for it was explicitly stated, without dissent from the meeting, that if the Stores were made Joint-Stock concerns, there would be nothing to complain of ! That means, we suppose, that the tradesmen could then buy the shares, for in any other sense the remark is nonsensical. The Stores are Joint-Stock concerns already, and some of them Joint-Stock concerns with unlimited liability, too, as in some evil day their shareholders may possibly find out. Or do they mean that it is wrong for Civil Servants to employ their leisure in overlooking the accounts of such concerns ? Apparently they do, for they want Parlia- ment to stop it, and even to increase the hours of labour and the amount of work of the Civil Servants, with that especial view. We will say nothing of the certainty that such a
rule would compel the State to pay better wages, and there- fore pro taut° to tax the tradesmen more, and just ask
the complainants a single question,—Will they submit to
the same rule themselves ? They say they have not enough to do, and that one reason why the Stores make money is that their shopmen have never "to kick their heels," being employed from morning to night ; and they ought, therefore, on their own principles, to have longer hours and more work. Will they support a Bill enforcing that, and com- pelling every tradesman or shopman not at work to copy out the Times' advertisements, and forbidding him to use his leisure for any money-making purpose ? We know they will not, and in what respect has a man who sells his labour to them through the State less right to his liberty than a man who sells his labour to them direct? If any proof were wanting that the
speakers were influenced by anger rather than reason, it would be found in this,—that their objection extended to manage- ment by retired Civilians and Army officers. Do they really mean to say that every holder of a life-annuity in England should be debarred from opening a shop ? Because a " superannuated " Civilian or a retired General is neither more nor less than a life annuitant, who bought his annuity with his work, instead of with
his cash ; or, to put it in another way, who paid for his annuity every
year the difference between his market-value and his wages, in- stead of paying one lump-sum. The argument is perfectly foolish, as foolish as that of the tradesman who wrote to all the dignified clergy to say that if the Clergy started a Clerical Store the trades- men would no longer go to church. We are not exaggerating in the least. Here is the letter, though, as we do not want to de- prive the writer of clerical or any other custom, we do not give the name :—
" Is it possible that the Clergy of the Church of England are about to alienate themselves from the great trading portions of their congrega- tions by establishing a Clerical Co•operative Store (which appears to be now on foot)? If so, do they expect their collections or offertories to be kept up to the necessary standard ? Who will provide the requisite funds for the many good and charitable institutions connected with the Church? Surely they must have lost sight of that important item, as it cannot be supposed the tradesmen thus injured in their various busi- nesses will continue their subscriptions (in fact, they will not be able to). Besides, will it not tend to sow seeds of discord, and so prevent many of them from attending church at all? I, as a churchwarden of
four years' experience, feel that it will. In fact, I believe such action will prove extremely detrimental, both from a religions and social point of view."
Does the writer of that circular bargain with God to wor- ship him on condition of ten per cent? The tradesmen appear, above all, provoked that the Stores should be called "Civil- Service Stores," and "Army and Navy Stores," alleging that such grand names give prestige to such undertakings, and should be put a stop to. How many of themselves take the greatest names in England, and write up "Northumberland House," or "Devonshire House," or " Abergavenny House," over their doors, as if their shops were kept by Percies, or Cavendishes, or Nevilles ? Is that practice—quite unobjection- able, and a survival of the old practice of putting up signs—to be put a stop to also ? Or is everybody, except a retired General, to be entitled to call himself an "Army and Navy shopman 2" We think we may assure the tradesmen that the prestige of Civilians in dealing in raisins, and of the Army and Navy in selling scrub-brushes, is not great enough to make their rivals in those occupations seriously uneasy. Or if they are uneasy, let them adopt the same device. Let them all subscribe, and start the " Only Orthodox Ecclesiastical Store," and sell everything, from cassocks to mouse-traps, and we venture to say clergymen and their wives will buy their goods just as readily, if they are cheap and good, as if the shareholders were all Bishops and Deans, as if Pre- bendaries served the counter, and Minor Canons drove all the delivering-carts. The good housewives who make the fortune of tradesmen sometimes talk a great deal of nonsense, but they will not buy dear tape because a retired Commissioner will earn a farthing by it, or take bad tea because a General signs the prospectus of the big shop which sells it. The remedy for the tradesmen lies there,—in starting Stores of their own, under any name they can devise, say, the "United Anti-Civil Service, Army, Navy, and Church Mammoth Stores," and not in Parliament, which will no more interfere with Co-operation than with commerce, or with the Civil-Service Supply Association than with the Fore- Street Warehouse. The shopkeepers were so angry that they talked of the " middle-classes " as if they had never beard of "the Monarch and the Multitude," and threatened the Civilians with Parliamentary vengeance as if we were still living under a £10 suffrage. If we had been, they might perhaps have passed a Tradesmen Protection Act, binding all servants of the Crown by oath never to deal at a shop not owned by an individual, and perhaps the First Lord of the Admiralty would have attended their meeting ; but as it is, they are only asserting rather foolishly the Englishman's right to grumble, whenever the money does not come in.
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