OF EXTRAVAGANT AND EXPENSIVE LIVING;
ANOTHER STEP TO A TRADESMAN’S DISASTER
Hitherto I have written of tradesmen
ruined by lawful and innocent diversions; and, indeed,
these are some of the most dangerous pits for a tradesman
to fall into, because men are so apt to be insensible
of the danger: a ship may as well be lost in
a calm smooth sea, and an easy fair gale of wind,
as in a storm, if they have no pilot, or the pilot
be ignorant or unwary; and disasters of that nature
happen as frequently as any others, and are as fatal.
When rocks are apparent, and the pilot, bold and wilful,
runs directly upon them, without fear or wit, we know
the fate of the ship it must perish, and
all that are in it will inevitably be lost; but in
a smooth sea, a bold shore, an easy gale, the unseen
rocks or shoals are the only dangers, and nothing can
hazard them but the skilfulness of the pilot:
and thus it is in trade. Open debaucheries and
extravagances, and a profusion of expense, as
well as a general contempt of business, these are
open and current roads to a tradesman’s destruction;
but a silent going on, in pursuit of innocent pleasures,
a smooth and calm, but sure neglect of his shop, and
time, and business, will as effectually and as surely
ruin the tradesman as the other; and though the means
are not so scandalous, the effect is as certain.
But I proceed to the other.
Next to immoderate pleasures, the
tradesman ought to be warned against immoderate expense.
This is a terrible article, and more particularly so
to the tradesman, as custom has now, as it were on
purpose for their undoing, introduced a general habit
of, and as it were a general inclination among all
sorts of people to, an expensive way of living; to
which might be added a kind of necessity of it; for
that even with the greatest prudence and frugality
a man cannot now support a family with the ordinary
expense, which the same family might have been maintained
with some few years ago: there is now (1) a weight
of taxes upon almost all the necessaries of life,
bread and flesh excepted, as coals, salt, malt, candles,
soap, leather, hops, wine, fruit, and all foreign
consumptions; (2) a load of pride upon the temper of
the nation, which, in spite of taxes and the unusual
dearess of every thing, yet prompts people to a profusion
in their expenses.
This is not so properly called a tax
upon the tradesmen; I think rather, it may be called
a plague upon them: for there is, first,
the dearness of every necessary thing to make living
expensive; and secondly, an unconquerable aversion
to any restraint; so that the poor will be like the
rich, and the rich like the great, and the great like
the greatest and thus the world runs on
to a kind of distraction at this time: where
it will end, time must discover.
Now, the tradesman I speak of, if
he will thrive, he must resolve to begin as he can
go on; and if he does so, in a word, he must resolve
to live more under restraint than ever tradesmen of
his class used to do; for every necessary thing being,
as I have said, grown dearer than before, he must
entirely omit all the enjoyment of the unnecessaries
which he might have allowed himself before, or perhaps
be obliged to an expense beyond the income of his
trade: and in either of these cases he has a
great hardship upon him.
When I talk of immoderate expenses,
I must be understood not yet to mean the extravagances
of wickedness and debaucheries; there are so many
sober extravagances, and so many grave sedate
ways for a tradesman’s ruin, and they are so
much more dangerous than those hair-brained desperate
ways of gaming and debauchery, that I think it is the
best service I can do the tradesmen to lay before
them those sunk rocks (as the seamen call them), those
secret dangers in the first place, that they may know
how to avoid them; and as for the other common ways,
common discretion will supply them with caution for
those, and their senses will be their protection.
The dangers to the tradesmen whom
I am directing myself to, are from lawful things,
and such as before are called innocent; for I am speaking
to the sober part of tradesmen, who yet are often ruined
and overthrown in trade; and perhaps as many such
miscarry, as of the mad and extravagant, particularly
because their number far exceeds them. Expensive
living is a kind of slow fever; it is not so open,
so threatening and dangerous, as the ordinary distemper
which goes by that name, but it preys upon the spirits,
and, when its degrees are increased to a height, is
as fatal and as sure to kill as the other: it
is a secret enemy, that feeds upon the vitals; and
when it has gone its full length, and the languishing
tradesman is weakened in his solid part, I mean his
stock, then it overwhelms him at once.
Expensive living feeds upon the life
and blood of the tradesman, for it eats into the two
most essential branches of his trade, namely, his
credit and his cash; the first is its triumph, and
the last is its food: nothing goes out to cherish
the exorbitance, but the immediate money; expenses
seldom go on trust, they are generally supplied and
supported with ready money, whatever are not.
This expensive way of living consists
in several things, which are all indeed in their degree
ruinous to the tradesman; such as
1. Expensive house-keeping,
or family extravagance.
2. Expensive dressing,
or the extravagance of fine clothes.
3. Expensive company,
or keeping company above himself.
4. Expensive équipages,
making a show and ostentation of
figure in the world.
I might take them all in bulk, and
say, what has a young tradesman to do with these?
and yet where is there a tradesman now to be found,
who is not more or less guilty? It is, as I have
said, the general vice of the times; the whole nation
are more or less in the crime; what with necessity
and inclination, where is the man or the family that
lives as such families used to live?
In short, good husbandry and frugality
is quite out of fashion, and he that goes about to
set up for the practice of it, must mortify every
thing about him that has the least tincture of frugality;
it is the mode to live high, to spend more than we
get, to neglect trade, contemn care and concern, and
go on without forecast, or without consideration; and,
in consequence, it is the mode to go on to extremity,
to break, become bankrupt and beggars, and so going
off the trading stage, leave it open for others to
come after us, and do the same.
To begin with house-keeping.
I have already hinted, that every thing belonging
to the family subsistence bears a higher price than
usual, I may say, than ever; at the same time I can
neither undertake to prove that there is more got
by selling, or more ways to get it, I mean to a tradesman,
than there was formerly; the consequence then must
be, that the tradesmen do not grow rich faster than
formerly; at least we may venture to say this of tradesmen
and their families, comparing them with former times,
namely, that there is not more got, and I am satisfied
there is less laid up, than was then; or, if you will
have it, that tradesmen get less and spend more than
they ever did. How they should be richer than
they were in those times, is very hard to say.
That all things are dearer than formerly
to a house-keeper, needs little demonstration; the
taxes necessarily infer it from the weight of them,
and the many things charged; for, besides the things
enumerated above, we find all articles of foreign
importation are increased by the high duties laid
on them; such as linen, especially fine linen; silk,
especially foreign wrought silk: every thing eatable,
drinkable, and wearable, are made heavy to us by high
and exorbitant customs and excises, as brandies, tobacco,
sugar; deals and timber for building; oil, wine, spice,
raw silks, calico, chocolate, coffee, tea; on some
of these the duties are more than doubled: and
yet that which is most observable is, that such is
the expensive humour of the times, that not a family,
no, hardly of the meanest tradesman, but treat their
friends with wine, or punch, or fine ale; and have
their parlours set off with the tea-table and the
chocolate-pot treats and liquors all exotic,
foreign and new among tradesmen, and terrible articles
in their modern expenses; which have nothing to be
said for them, either as to the expense of them, or
the helps to health which they boast of: on the
contrary, they procure us rheumatic bodies and consumptive
purses, and can no way pass with me for necessaries;
but being needless, they add to the expense, by sending
us to the doctors and apothecaries to cure the breaches
which they make in our health, and are themselves the
very worst sort of superfluities.
But I come back to necessaries; and
even in them, family-expenses are extremely risen,
provisions are higher rated no provisions
that I know of, except only bread, mutton, and fish,
but are made dearer than ever house-rent,
in almost all the cities and towns of note in England,
is excessively and extremely dearer, and that in spite
of such innumerable buildings as we see almost everywhere
raised up, as well in the country as in London, and
the parts adjacent.
Add to the rents of houses, the wages
of servants. A tradesman, be he ever so much
inclined to good husbandry, cannot always do his kitchen-work
himself, suppose him a bachelor, or can his wife, suppose
him married, and suppose her to have brought him any
portion, be his bedfellow and his cook too. These
maid-servants, then, are to be considered, and are
an exceeding tax upon house-keepers; those who were
formerly hired at three pounds to four pounds a-year
wages, now demand five, six and eight pounds a-year;
nor do they double anything upon us but their wages
and their pride; for, instead of doing more work for
their advance of wages, they do less: and the
ordinary work of families cannot now be performed
by the same number of maids, which, in short, is a
tax upon the upper sort of tradesmen, and contributes
very often to their disasters, by the extravagant
keeping three or four maid-servants in a house, nay,
sometimes five, where two formerly were thought sufficient.
This very extravagance is such, that talking lately
with a man very well experienced in this matter, he
told me he had been making his calculations on that
very particular, and he found by computation, that
the number of servants kept by all sorts of people,
tradesmen as well as others, was so much increased,
that there are in London, and the towns within ten
miles of it, take it every way, above a hundred thousand
more maid-servants and footmen, at this time in place,
than used to be in the same compass of ground thirty
years ago; and that their wages amounted to above
forty shillings a-head per annum, more than the wages
of the like number of servants did amount to at the
same length of time past; the advance to the whole
body amounting to no less than two hundred thousand
pounds a-year.
Indeed, it is not easy to guess what
the expense of wages to servants amounts to in a year,
in this nation; and consequently we cannot easily
determine what the increase of that expense amounts
to in England, but certainly it must rise to many
hundred thousand pounds a-year in the whole.
The tradesmen bear their share of
this expense, and indeed too great a share, very ordinary
tradesmen in London keeping at least two maids, and
some more, and some a footman or two besides; for it
is an ordinary thing to see the tradesmen and shopkeepers
of London keep footmen, as well as the gentlemen:
witness the infinite number of blue liveries, which
are so common now that they are called the tradesmen’s
liveries; and few gentlemen care to give blue to their
servants for that very reason.
In proportion to their servants, the
tradesmen now keep their tables, which are also advanced
in their proportion of expense to other things:
indeed, the citizen’s and tradesmen’s tables
are now the emblems, not of plenty, but of luxury,
not of good house-keeping, but of profusion, and that
of the highest kind of extravagance; insomuch, that
it was the opinion of a gentleman who had been not
a traveller only, but a nice observer of such things
abroad, that there is at this time more waste of provisions
in England than in any other nation in the world, of
equal extent of ground; and that England consumes
for their whole subsistence more flesh than half Europe
besides; that the beggars of London, and within ten
miles round it, eat more white bread than the whole
kingdom of Scotland, and the like.
But this is an observation only, though
I believe it is very just; I am bringing it in here
only as an example of the dreadful profusion of this
age, and how an extravagant way of expensive living,
perfectly negligent of all degrees of frugality or
good husbandry, is the reigning vice of the people.
I could enlarge upon it, and very much to the purpose
here, but I shall have occasion to speak of it again.
The tradesman, whom I am speaking
to by way of direction, will not, I hope, think this
the way for him to thrive, or find it for his convenience
to fall in with this common height of living presently,
in his beginning; if he comes gradually into it after
he has gotten something considerable to lay by, I
say, if he does it then, it is early enough, and he
may be said to be insensibly drawn into it by the
necessity of the times; because, forsooth, it is a
received notion, ’We must be like other folks:’
I say, if he does fall into it then, when he will
pretend he cannot help it, it is better than worse,
and if he can afford it, well and good; but to begin
thus, to set up at this rate, when he first looks
into the world, I can only say this, he that begins
in such a manner, it will not be difficult to guess
where he will end; for a tradesman’s pride certainly
precedes his destruction, and an expensive living
goes before his fall.
We are speaking now to a tradesman,
who, it is supposed, must live by his business, a
young man who sets up a shop, or warehouse, and expects
to get money; one that would be a rich tradesman, rather
than a poor, fine, gay man; a grave citizen, not a
peacock’s feather; for he that sets up for a
Sir Fopling Flutter, instead of a complete tradesman,
is not to be thought capable of relishing this discourse;
neither does this discourse relish him; for such men
seem to be among the incurables, and are rather fit
for an hospital of fools (so the French call our Bedlam)
than to undertake trade, and enter upon business.
Trade is not a ball, where people
appear in masque, and act a part to make sport; where
they strive to seem what they really are not, and to
think themselves best dressed when they are least known:
but it is a plain visible scene of honest life, shown
best in its native appearance, without disguise; supported
by prudence and frugality; and like strong, stiff,
clay land, grows fruitful only by good husbandry, culture,
and manuring.
A tradesman dressed up fine, with
his long wig and sword, may go to the ball when he
pleases, for he is already dressed up in the habit;
like a piece of counterfeit money, he is brass washed
over with silver, and no tradesman will take him for
current; with money in his hand, indeed, he may go
to the merchant’s warehouse and buy any thing,
but no body will deal with him without it: he
may write upon his edged hat, as a certain tradesman,
after having been once broke and set up again, ’I
neither give nor take credit:’ and as others
set up in their shops, ’No trust by retail,’
so he may say, ‘No trust by wholesale.’
In short, thus equipped, he is truly a tradesman in
masquerade, and must pass for such wherever he is
known. How long it may be before his dress and
he may suit, it not hard to guess.
Some will have it that this expensive
way of living began among the tradesmen first, that
is to say, among the citizens of London; and that
their eager resolved pursuit of that empty and meanest
kind of pride, called imitation, namely, to look like
the gentry, and appear above themselves, drew them
into it. It has indeed been a fatal custom, but
it has been too long a city vanity. If men of
quality lived like themselves, men of no quality would
strive to live not like themselves: if those
had plenty, these would have profusion; if those had
enough, these would have excess; if those had what
was good, these would have what was rare and exotic;
I mean as to season, and consequently dear. And
this is one of the ways that have worn out so many
tradesmen before their time.
This extravagance, wherever it began,
had its first rise among those sorts of tradesmen,
who, scorning the society of their shops and customers,
applied themselves to rambling to courts and plays;
kept company above themselves, and spent their hours
in such company as lives always above them; this could
not but bring great expense along with it, and that
expense would not be confined to the bare keeping such
company abroad, but soon showed itself in a living
like them at home, whether the tradesmen could support
it or no.
Keeping high company abroad certainly
brings on visitings and high treatings at home; and
these are attended with costly furniture, rich clothes,
and dainty tables. How these things agree with
a tradesman’s income, it is easy to suggest;
and that, in short, these measures have sent so many
tradesmen to the Mint and to the Fleet, where I am
witness to it that they have still carried on their
expensive living till they have come at last to starving
and misery; but have been so used to it, they could
not abate it, or at least not quite leave it off, though
they wanted the money to pay for it.
Nor is the expensive dressing a little
tax upon tradesmen, as it is now come up to an excess
not formerly known to tradesmen; and though it is
true that this particularly respects the ladies (for
the tradesmen’s wives now claim that title,
as they do by their dress claim the appearance), yet
to do justice to them, and not to load the women with
the reproach, as if it were wholly theirs, it must
be acknowledged the men have their share in dress,
as the times go now, though, it is true, not so antic
and gay as in former days; but do we not see fine wigs,
fine Holland shirts of six to seven shillings an ell,
and perhaps laced also, all lately brought down to
the level of the apron, and become the common wear
of tradesmen nay, I may say, of tradesmen’s
apprentices and that in such a manner as
was never known in England before?
If the tradesman is thriving, and
can support this and his credit too, that makes the
case differ, though even then it cannot be said to
be suitable; but for a tradesman to begin thus, is
very imprudent, because the expense of this, as I
said before, drains the very life-blood of his trade,
taking away his ready money only, and making no return,
but the worst of return, poverty and reproach; and,
in case of miscarriage, infinite scandal and offence.
I am loth to make any part of my writing
a satire upon the women; nor, indeed, does the extravagance
either of dress or house-keeping, lie all, or always,
at the door of the tradesmen’s wives the
husband is often the prompter of it; at least he does
not let his wife into the detail of his circumstances,
he does not make her mistress of her own condition,
but either flatters her with notions of his wealth,
his profits, and his flourishing circumstances, and
so the innocent woman spends high and lives great,
believing that she is in a condition to afford it,
and that her husband approves of it; at least, he
does not offer to retrench or restrain her, but lets
her go on, and indeed goes on with her, to the ruin
of both.
I cannot but mention one thing here
(though I purpose to give you one discourse on that
subject by itself), namely, the great and indispensable
obligation there is upon a tradesman always to acquaint
his wife with the truth of his circumstances, and not
to let her run on in ignorance, till she falls with
him down the precipice of an unavoidable ruin a
thing no prudent woman would do, and therefore will
never take amiss a husband’s plainness in that
particular case. But I reserve this to another
place, because I am rather directing my discourse
at this time to the tradesman at his beginning, and,
as it may be supposed, unmarried.
Next to the expensive dressing, I
place the expensive keeping company, as one thing
fatal to a tradesman, and which, if he would be a complete
tradesman, he should avoid with the utmost diligence.
It is an agreeable thing to be seen in good company;
for a man to see himself courted and valued, and his
company desired by men of fashion and distinction,
is very pleasing to any young tradesman, and it is
really a snare which a young tradesman, if he be a
man of sense, can very hardly resist. There is
in itself indeed nothing that can be objected against,
or is not very agreeable to the nature of man, and
that not to his vicious part merely, but even to his
best faculties; for who would not value himself upon
being, as above, rendered acceptable to men both in
station and figure above themselves? and it is really
a piece of excellent advice which a learned man gave
to his son, always to keep company with men above
himself, not with men below himself.
But take me now to be talking, as
I really am, not to the man merely, but to his circumstances,
if he were a man of fortune, and had the view of great
things before him, it would hold good; but if he is
a young tradesman, such as I am now speaking of, who
is newly entered into business, and must depend upon
his said business for his subsistence and support,
and hopes to raise himself by it I say,
if I am talking to such a one, I must say to him,
that keeping company as above, with men superior to
himself in knowledge, in figure, and estate, is not
his business; for, first, as such conversation must
necessarily take up a great deal of his time, so it
ordinarily must occasion a great expense of money,
and both destructive of his prosperity; nay, sometimes
the first may be as fatal to him as the last, and
it is oftentimes true in that sense of trade, that
while by keeping company he is drawn out of his business,
his absence from his shop or warehouse is the most
fatal to him; and while he spends one crown in the
tavern, he spends forty crowns’ worth of his
time; and with this difference, too, which renders
it the worse to the tradesman, namely, that the money
may be recovered, and gotten up again, but the time
cannot. For example
1. Perhaps in that very juncture
a person comes to his warehouse. Suppose the
tradesman to be a warehouse-keeper, who trades by
commission, and this person, being a clothier in the
country, comes to offer him his business, the commission
of which might have been worth to him thirty to forty
or fifty pounds per annum; but finding him abroad,
or rather, not finding him at home and in his business,
goes to another, and fixes with him at once.
I once knew a dealer lose such an occasion as this,
for an afternoon’s pleasure, he being gone a-fishing
into Hackney-marsh. This loss can never be restored,
this expense of time was a fatal expense of money;
and no tradesman will deny but they find many such
things as this happen in the course of trade, either
to themselves or others.
2. Another tradesman is invited
to dinner by his great friend; for I am now speaking
chiefly upon the subject of keeping high company, and
what the tradesman sometimes suffers by it; it is
true, that there he finds a most noble entertainment,
the person of quality, and that professes a friendship
for him, treats him with infinite respect, is fond
of him, makes him welcome as a prince for
I am speaking of the acquaintance as really valuable
and good in itself but then, see it in its
consequences. The tradesman on this occasion misses
his ’Change, that is, omits going to the Exchange
for that one day only, and not being found there,
a merchant with whom he was in treaty for a large parcel
of foreign goods, which would have been to his advantage
to have bought, sells them to another more diligent
man in the same way; and when he comes home, he finds,
to his great mortification, that he has lost a bargain
that would have been worth a hundred pounds buying;
and now being in want of the goods, he is forced to
entreat his neighbour who bought them to part with
some of them at a considerable advance of price, and
esteem it a favour too. Who now paid dearest for
the visit to a person of figure? the gentleman,
who perhaps spent twenty shillings extraordinary to
give him a handsome dinner, or the tradesman who lost
a bargain worth a hundred pounds buying to go to eat
it?
3. Another tradesman goes to
’Change in the ordinary course of his business,
intending to speak with some of the merchants, his
customers, as is usual, and get orders for goods,
or perhaps an appointment to come to his warehouse
to buy; but a snare of the like kind falls in his way,
and a couple of friends, who perhaps have little or
no business, at least with him, lay hold of him, and
they agree to go off Change to the tavern together.
By complying with this invitation, he omits speaking
to some of those merchants, as above, who, though
he knew nothing of their minds, yet it had been his
business to have shown himself to them, and have put
himself in the way of their call; but omitting this,
he goes and drinks a bottle of wine, as above, and
though he stays but an hour, or, as we say, but a
little while, yet unluckily, in that interim, the
merchant, not seeing him on the Exchange, calls at
his warehouse as he goes from the Exchange, but not
finding him there either, he goes to another warehouse,
and gives his orders to the value of L300 or L400,
to a more diligent neighbour of the same business;
by which he (the warehouse-keeper) not only loses
the profit of selling that parcel, or serving that
order, but the merchant is shown the way to his neighbour’s
warehouse, who, being more diligent than himself, fails
not to cultivate his interest, obliges him with selling
low, even to little or no gain, for the first parcel;
and so the unhappy tradesman loses not his selling
that parcel only, but loses the very customer, which
was, as it were, his peculiar property before.
All these things, and many more such,
are the consequences of a tradesman’s absence
from his business; and I therefore say, the expense
of time on such light occasions as these, is one of
the worst sorts of extravagance, and the most fatal
to the tradesman, because really he knows not what
he loses.
Above all things, the tradesman should
take care not to be absent in the season of business,
as I have mentioned above; for the warehouse-keeper
to be absent from ’Change, which is his market,
or from his warehouse, at the times when the merchants
generally go about to buy, he had better be absent
all the rest of the day.
I know nothing is more frequent, than
for the tradesman, when company invites, or an excursion
from business presses, to say, ’Well, come, I
have nothing to do; there is no business to hinder,
there is nothing neglected, I have no letters to write;’
and the like; and away he goes to take the air for
the afternoon, or to sit and enjoy himself with a
friend all of them things innocent and lawful
in themselves; but here is the crisis of a tradesman’s
prosperity. In that very moment business presents,
a valuable customer comes to buy, an unexpected bargain
offers to be sold; another calls to pay money; and
the like: nay, I would almost say, but that I
am loth to concern the devil in more evils than he
is guilty of that the devil frequently draws
a man out of his business when something extraordinary
is just at hand for his advantage.
But not, as I have said, to charge
the devil with what he is not guilty of, the tradesman
is generally his own tempter; his head runs off from
his business by a secret indolence; company, and the
pleasure of being well received among gentlemen, is
a cursed snare to a young tradesman, and carries him
away from his business, for the mere vanity of being
caressed and complimented by men who mean no ill, and
perhaps know not the mischief they do to the man they
show respect to; and this the young tradesman cannot
resist, and that is in time his undoing.
The tradesman’s pleasure should
be in his business, his companions should be his books;
and if he has a family, he makes his excursions up
stairs, and no farther; when he is there, a bell or
a call brings him down; and while he is in his parlour,
his shop or his warehouse never misses him; his customers
never go away unserved, his letters never come in
and are unanswered. None of my cautions aim at
restraining a tradesman from diverting himself, as
we call it, with his fireside, or keeping company
with his wife and children: there are so few tradesmen
ruin themselves that way, and so few ill consequences
happen upon an uxorious temper, that I will not so
much as rank it with the rest; nor can it be justly
called one of the occasions of a tradesman’s
disasters; on the contrary, it is too often that the
want of a due complacency there, the want of taking
delight there, estranges the man from not his parlour
only, but his warehouse and shop, and every part of
business that ought to engross both his mind and his
time. That tradesman who does not delight in
his family, will never long delight in his business;
for, as one great end of an honest tradesman’s
diligence is the support of his family, and the providing
for the comfortable subsistence of his wife and children,
so the very sight of, and above all, his tender and
affectionate care for his wife and children, is the
spur of his diligence; that is, it puts an edge upon
his mind, and makes him hunt the world for business,
as hounds hunt the woods for their game. When
he is dispirited, or discouraged by crosses and disappointments,
and ready to lie down and despair, the very sight
of his family rouses him again, and he flies to his
business with a new vigour; ’I must follow my
business,’ says he, ’or we must all starve,
my poor children must perish;’ in a word, he
that is not animated to diligence by the very sight
and thought of his wife and children being brought
to misery and distress, is a kind of a deaf adder
that no music will charm, or a Turkish mute that no
pity can move: in a word, he is a creature not
to be called human, a wretch hardened against all
the passions and affections that nature has furnished
to other animals; and as there is no rhetoric of use
to such a kind of man as that, so I am not talking
to such a one, he must go among the incurables; for,
where nature cannot work, what can argument assist?