Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

The day has gone by when mere sagacity, dexterity, and tact would qualify a man to be a first-rate merchant. A knowledge of geography, political economy, the manners and customs of foreign countries, and a hundred other things, is indispensable; and heaven-born genius in turned-down collars is at a discount. The times demand men of large, liberal, energetic soul; and the man who insists upon doing business in the oldfashioned, jog-trot, humdrum way is as much out of place as he who insists on travelling with an ox-team instead of by railway, or upon getting news by the old stage-coach instead of by the lightning telegraph. Under these circumstances, who can wonder that so many men who plunge into business without talents, training, or knowledge, fail to get on?

[ocr errors]

Among the causes of mercantile failures there are some which are beyond the control of the merchant, and of these none is more disastrous than bad and unstable legislation. It is notorious that in no country in the world is legislation so changeful and vacillating as in the United States. Felix Grundy used to say, somewhat irreverently, that everything is foreknown but the verdict of a petit jury. He might have said with more plausibility, "except the next acts of Congress.' Scarcely have our merchants and manufacturers adjusted their business to one policy respecting the tariff or the currency, than another policy is announced at Washington, and they find themselves making or selling goods at a ruinous loss. The conflicting views which have prevailed at different times regarding a National Bank, the Sub-Treasury System, Hard Currency, the Return to Specie Payments, the Protective System, have led to incessant changes in legislation, and made it impossible for the shrewdest merchant to forecast the future. Each political party undoes the legislation of its predecessor, and the result of this perpetual tinkering of the laws is that hundreds of capitalists are deterred from embarking in trade, while thousands who venture on its fickle sea are wrecked by financial hurricanes against which no human prudence can guard.

Still another cause of failures in business, and one the importance of which has been, perhaps, underestimated, is the robbery by clerks of their employers. Cases of this kind are becoming more and more common in this country, and unless something is done to arrest it, the cancer will soon have eaten into the very vitals of our mercantile society. How many establishments, doing a vast business, and seemingly prosperous, are rotten at the foundation in consequence of incessant, systematic peculation by clerks, it is impossible to estimate; but in almost every city sudden and startling failures ever and anon occur, whose secret cause is known to have been this, and this only. Confidential clerks in banking-houses in New York, who have maintained for years a stainless reputation for integrity, have been suddenly found to have robbed their employers of thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. A case occurred some time ago in Chicago, where a young man was found to have embezzled from his employer for years, stealing not only money, but goods, on system, converting them into cash, and making regular deposits of the latter in a bank. In this case the thefts were practised with such adroitness and skill, and the whole physiognomy and demeanor of the thief, who was a clergyman's son, were so prepossessing and calculated to allay suspicion had he been suspected, that it is no wonder he baffled the ingenuity of his victim. But generally merchants and shopkeepers have themselves largely to blame when they are victimized.

Sometimes they half pay a clerk, calculating with great nicety the smallest pittance on which he can keep from starving, and then wonder that, in accepting such a situation, he should have calculated on making up the balance of fair wages from the pickings of the money-drawer. Then, again, a smart, showy appearance, a superficial varnish of politeness and a flood of small talk, are too often the ready passports to posts of trust and honor. Who can wonder that merchants are so often deceived, when they look less to the inner than to the outer man, less to the moral character of their employees than to the quality of their broadcloth or the graces of their manner, and

never for an instant think of testing their honesty? The most desirable young men for clerks are not always the most prepossessing at first. There is an urbanity, the result of good principles and good-breeding, which is instantly recognized by the practised eye, and which is rarely found dissociated from good sense and sterling integrity. This kind of politeness is not put on and off like a cloak, nor is it characterized by any of the dazzling fripperies of demeanor which distinguish the "swells" just referred to. Let employers learn to distinguish between the real article and the counterfeit; let them take no young man into their employment about whose antecedents they are not fully posted; let them pay fair, even liberal, salaries; and especially let them, so far as they can do so without establishing a system of espionage, which is always despicable, acquaint themselves with the conduct and pursuits of their officials outside of the salesroom or counting-house, and they will not only save themselves from the loss of many dollars, perhaps from bankruptcy, but will prevent many a young man, trembling on the brink of temptation, from going headlong to ruin.

Finally, in addition to the causes of bankruptcy which we have mentioned might be added bad personal habits, such as intemperance, lack of punctuality, etc.; the expenditure of capital in costly fixtures and expensive ornaments, "a device of rich old traders to monopolize a business by throwing obstacles in the way of men with limited capital"; a lack of attention: to details; and many others upon which we have not space to dwell. But farther back - behind boundless credits, overtrading, speculation, luxurious living, and all the other causes which we have named or might name - is to be found the primary cause of mercantile failures, all these secondary ones being but the effect of elements lying deeper in the popular character. Mammon-worship, devotion to "the almighty dollar," the intense, all-devouring ambition to be the Napoleon of the mart, the man who owns a greater amount of real estate, bank and railroad stocks, and solid cash or mortgages, than any other man on 'Change; the impatience to attain to

wealth by a few brilliant and daring strokes, instead of by tedious processes of labor and economy, by a few gigantic bounds, instead of by a slow and tedious up-hill journey; the subordination of health and happiness, the highest interests of body and soul, to money, money, MONEY, which is made the end instead of the means of existence, this is the root from which spring not merely the marvellous activity, but the giant vices, of the American mercantile character. The race after riches in this country is not a healthy, bracing race, but a steeplechase, a headlong, maddening rush. It is the rush of a forlorn hope to an "imminent deadly breach," to a breach in the citadel of Mammon with its defences of thick competition, mounds of bankruptcy, pitfalls of speculation, and files of bad debts, besieged by a magazine of capital, with the large artillery of wholesale business and the small guns of retail. The end and aim of each, captains and privates, is to be the first to mount the breach and plant his victorious standard on the walls. Away with the cold dictates of virtue and prudence and honor! Fling honesty to the winds. Extend no helping hand to your comrades sinking by your side. Think only of your own safety, and less of that than of the glorious end you have in view. Press on with all your energies, though the balls rain thick and fast about your ears. Stop not to stanch your wounds. Make a bridge, if necessary, of your dead and dying companions, and when you have carried the stronghold of Mammon, plant your flag on its topmost battlement, look around with a smile of triumphant satisfaction, and say, "I'm a rich man !"

CHAPTER XX.

OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.

Steads not, to work on the clean jump,

Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump. - R. W. EMERSON.

The deepest-rooted cause of American disease is that overworking of the brain and over-excitement of the nervous system, which are the necessary consequences of their intense activity. Hence nervous dyspepsia, with consumption, insanity, and all its brood of fell disorders in its train. In a word, the American works himself to death. JAMES STIRLING.

The body has its claims, — it is a good servant; treat it well, and it will do your work; . . . . attend to its wants and requirements, listen kindly and patiently to its hints, occasionally forestall its necessities by a little indulgence, and your consideration will be repaid with interest. But task it and pine it and suffocate it, make it a slave instead of a servant, it may not complain much, but, like the weary camel in the desert, it will lie down and die. CHARLES ELAM, A Physician's Problems.

A

N able London journal* has an article on the subject of Drudgery, in which it protests against the modern and absurd notion that work is an intrinsic good, or what moralista call an end. The modern revival of the dogma of the nobleness of work it thinks was well, but it has been pushed too far. The worship of work for its own sake it pronounces mere fetichism, and almost as pernicious an extreme as the antiquated and now comparatively unfashionable worship of idleness.

We deeply sympathize with this protest, which was never more urgently needed than at this hour. Everywhere men are killing themselves by overwork, by intense, exhausting labor of hand and brain; and the remonstrance has come not a moment too soon. The life of the present day is lived at feverheat. There is a fierce struggle going on in all the departments of labor, and the mental wear and tear is enormous. Life, in all of the professions, is literally a battle, and men are falling

*The Saturday Review.

[ocr errors]
« ZurückWeiter »