[First published in The Westminster Review for April 1859.]
We are not about to repeat, under the above title, the often-told tale of adulterations: albeit, were it our object to deal with this familiar topic, there are not wanting fresh materials. It is rather the less-observed and less-known dishonesties of trade, to which we would here draw attention. The same lack of conscientiousness which shows itself in the mixing of starch with cocoa, in the dilution of butter with lard, in the colouring of confectionery with chromate of lead and arsenite of copper, must of course come out in more concealed forms; and these are nearly, if not quite, as numerous and as mischievous.
It is not true, as many suppose, that only the lower classes of the commercial world are guilty of fraudulent dealing. Those above them are to a great extent blameworthy. On the average, men who deal in bales and tons differ but little in morality from men who deal in yards and pounds. Illicit practices of every form and shade, from venial deception up to all but direct theft, may be brought home to the higher grades of our commercial world. Tricks innumerable, lies acted or uttered, elaborately-devised frauds, are prevalent: {114} many of them established as “customs of the trade;” nay, not only established, but defended.
Passing over, then, the much-reprobated shopkeepers, of whose delinquencies most people know something, let us turn our attention to the delinquencies of the classes above them in the mercantile scale.
The business of wholesale houses—in the clothing-trades at least—is chiefly managed by a class of men called “buyers.” Each wholesale establishment is usually divided into several departments; and at the head of each department is placed one of these functionaries. A buyer is a partially-independent sub-trader. At the beginning of the year he is debited with a certain share of the capital of his employers. With this capital he trades. From the makers he orders for his department such goods as he thinks will find a market; and for the goods thus bought he obtains as large a sale as he can among the retailers of his connexion. The accounts show at the end of the year what profit has been made on the capital over which he has command; and, according to the result, his engagement is continued—perhaps at an increased salary—or he is discharged.
Under such circumstances, bribery would hardly be expected. Yet we learn, on unquestionable authority, that buyers habitually bribe and are bribed. Giving presents, as a means of obtaining custom, is an established practice between them and all with whom they have dealings. Their connexions among retailers they extend by treating and favours; and they are themselves influenced in their purchases by like means. It might be presumed that self-interest would in both cases negative this. But apparently, no very obvious sacrifice results from yielding to such influences. When, as usually happens, there are many manufacturers producing articles of like goodness at the same prices, or many buyers between whose commodities and whose terms there is little room for choice, there exists no {115} motive to purchase of one rather than another; and then the temptation to take some immediate bonus turns the scale. Whatever be the cause, however, the fact is testified to us alike in London and the provinces. By manufacturers, buyers are sumptuously entertained for days together, and are plied throughout the year with hampers of game, turkeys, dozens of wine, etc.: nay, they receive actual money-bribes; sometimes, as we hear from a manufacturer, in the shape of bank-notes, but more commonly in the shape of discounts on the amounts of their purchases. The extreme prevalence—universality we might say—of this system, is proved by the evidence of one who, disgusted as he is, finds himself inextricably entangled in it. He confessed to us that all his transactions were thus tainted. “Each of the buyers with whom I deal,” he said, “expects an occasional bonus in one form or other. Some require the bribe to be wrapped up; and some take it without disguise. To an offer of money, this one replies—‘Oh, I don’t like that sort of thing,’ but nevertheless, does not object to money’s-worth; while my friend So-and-so, who promises to bring me a large trade this season, will, I very well know, look for one per cent. discount in cash. The thing is not to be avoided. I could name sundry buyers who look askance at me, and never will inspect my goods; and I have no doubt about the cause—I have not bought their patronage.” And then our informant appealed to another of the trade, who agreed in the assertion that in London their business could not be done on any other terms. So greedy do some of these buyers become, that their perquisites absorb a great part of the profits, and make it a question whether it is worth while to continue the dealing with them. Next, as above hinted, there comes a like history of transactions between buyers and retailers—the bribed being now the bribers. One of those above referred to as habitually expecting douceurs, said to the giver of them, whose testimony we have just repeated—“I’ve spent pounds and pounds over —— {116} (naming a large tailor), and now I think I have gained him over.” To which confession this buyer added the complaint, that his house did not make him any allowance for sums thus disbursed.
Under the buyer, who has absolute control of his own department in a wholesale house, come sundry assistants, who transact the business with retail traders; much as retail trader’s assistants transact the business with the general public. These higher-class assistants, working under the same pressure as the lower, are similarly unscrupulous. Liable to prompt dismissal as they are for failure in selling; gaining higher positions as they do in proportion to the quantities of goods they dispose of at profitable rates; and finding that no objections are made to any dishonest artifices they use, but rather that they are applauded for them; these young men display a scarcely credible demoralization. As we learn from those who have been of them, their duplicity is unceasing—they speak almost continuous falsehood; and their tricks range from the simplest to the most Machiavellian. Take a few samples. When dealing with a retailer, it is an habitual practice to bear in mind the character of his business; and to delude him respecting articles of which he has least experience. If his shop is in a neighbourhood where the sales are chiefly of inferior goods (a fact ascertained from the traveller), it is inferred that, having a comparatively small demand for superior goods, he is a bad judge of them; and advantage is taken of his ignorance. Again, it is usual purposely to present samples of cloths, silks, etc., in such order as to disqualify the perceptions. As, when tasting different foods or wines, the palate is disabled by something strongly flavoured, from appreciating the more delicate flavour of another thing afterwards taken; so with the other organs of sense, a temporary disability follows an excessive stimulation. This holds not only with the eyes in judging of colours, but also, as we are told by one who has been in the trade, it holds with the fingers in judging of textures; and cunning {117} salesmen are in the habit of thus partially paralysing the customers’ perceptions, and then selling second-rate articles as first-rate ones. Another common manœuvre is that of raising a false belief of cheapness. Suppose a tailor is laying in a stock of broad cloths. He is offered a bargain. Three pieces are put before him—two of good quality, at, perhaps, 14s. per yard; and one of much inferior quality, at 8s. per yard. These pieces have been purposely a little tumbled and creased, to give an apparent reason for a pretended sacrifice upon them. And the tailor is then told that he may have these nominally-damaged cloths as “a job lot,” at 12s. per yard. Misled by the appearances into a belief of the professed sacrifice; impressed, moreover, by the fact that two of the pieces are really worth considerably more than the price asked; and not sufficiently bearing in mind that the great inferiority of the third just balances this; the tailor probably buys; and he goes away with the comfortable conviction that he has made a specially-advantageous purchase, when he has really paid the full price for every yard. A still more subtle trick has been described to us by one who himself made use of it, when engaged in one of these wholesale-houses—a trick so successful that he was often sent for to sell to customers who could be induced to buy by none other of the assistants, and who ever afterwards would buy only of him. His policy was to seem extremely simple and honest, and, during the first few purchases, to exhibit his honesty by pointing out defects in the things he was selling; and then, having gained the customer’s confidence, he proceeded to pass off upon him inferior goods at superior prices. These are a few out of the various manœuvres in constant practice. Of course there is a running accompaniment of falsehoods, uttered as well as acted. It is expected of the assistant that he will say whatever is needed to effect a sale. “Any fool can sell what is wanted,” said a master in reproaching a shopman for not having persuaded a customer to buy something quite unlike that which he asked {118} for. And the unscrupulous mendacity thus required by employers, and encouraged by example, grows to a height of depravity that has been described to us in words too strong to be repeated. Our informant was obliged to relinquish his position in one of these establishments, because he could not lower himself to the required depth of degradation. “You don’t lie as though you believe what you say,” observed one of his fellow-assistants. And this was uttered as a reproach!
As those subordinates who have fewest qualms of conscience are those who succeed the best, are soonest promoted to more remunerative posts, and have therefore the greatest chances of establishing businesses of their own; it may be inferred that the morality of the heads of these establishments, is much on a par with that of their employés. The habitual malpractices of wholesale houses, confirm this inference. Not only, as we have just seen, are assistants under a pressure impelling them to deceive purchasers respecting the qualities of the goods they buy, but purchasers are also deceived in respect to the quantities; and that, not by an occasional unauthorized trick, but by an organized system, for which the firm itself is responsible. The general practice is to make up goods, or to have them made up, in lengths that are shorter than they profess to be. A piece of calico nominally thirty-six yards long, never measures more than thirty-one yards—is understood throughout the trade to measure only so much. And the long-accumulating delinquencies which this custom indicates—the successive diminutions of length, each introduced by some adept in dishonesty, and then imitated by his competitors—are now being daily carried to a still greater extent, wherever they are not likely to be immediately detected. Articles that are sold in small bundles, knots, packets, or such forms as negative measurement at the time of sale, are habitually deficient in quantity. Silk-laces called six quarters, or fifty-four {119} inches, really measure four quarters, or thirty-six inches. Tapes were originally sold in grosses containing twelve knots of twelve yards each; but these twelve-yard-knots are now cut of all lengths, from eight yards down to five yards, and even less—the usual length being six yards. That is to say, the 144 yards which the gross once contained, has now in some cases dwindled down to 60 yards. In widths, as well as in lengths, this deception is practised. French cotton-braid, for instance (French only in name), is made of different widths; which are respectively marked 5, 7, 9, 11, etc.: each figure indicating the number of threads of cotton which the width includes, or rather should include, but does not. For those which should be marked 5 are marked 7; and those which should be marked 7 are marked 9: out of three samples from different houses shown to us by our informant, only one contained the alleged number of threads. Fringe, again, which is sold wrapped on card, will often be found two inches wide at the end exposed to view, but will diminish to one inch at the end next the card; or perhaps the first twenty yards will be good, and all the rest, hidden under it, will be bad. These frauds are committed unblushingly, and as a matter of business. We have ourselves read in an agent’s order-book, the details of an order, specifying the actual lengths of which the articles were to be cut, and the much greater lengths to be marked on the labels. And we have been told by a manufacturer who was required to make up tapes into lengths of fifteen yards, and label them “warranted 18 yards,” that when he did not label them falsely, his goods were sent back to him; and that the greatest concession he could obtain was to be allowed to send them without labels.
It is not to be supposed that in their dealings with manufacturers, these wholesale-houses adopt a code of morals differing much from that which regulates their dealings with retailers. The facts prove it to be much the {120} same. A buyer for instance (who exclusively conducts the purchases of a wholesale-house from manufacturers) will not unfrequently take from a first-class maker, a small supply of some new fabric, on the pattern of which much time and money have been spent; and this new-pattern fabric he will put into the hands of another maker, to have copied in large quantities. Some buyers, again, give their orders orally, that they may have the opportunity of afterwards repudiating them if they wish; and in a case narrated to us, where a manufacturer who had been thus deluded, wished on a subsequent occasion to guarantee himself by obtaining the buyer’s signature to his order, he was refused it. For other unjust acts of wholesale-houses, the heads of these establishments are, we presume, responsible. Small manufacturers working with insufficient capital, and in times of depression not having the wherewith to meet their engagements, are often obliged to become dependants on the wholesale-houses with which they deal; and are then cruelly taken advantage of. One who has thus committed himself, has either to sell his accumulated stock at a great sacrifice—thirty to forty per cent. below its value—or else to mortgage it; and when the wholesale-house becomes the mortgagee, the manufacturer has little chance of escape. He is obliged to work at the wholesale-dealer’s terms; and ruin almost certainly follows. This is especially the case in the silk-hosiery business. As was said to us by one of the larger silk-hosiers, who had watched the destruction of many of his smaller brethren—“They may be spared for a time as a cat spares a mouse; but they are sure to be eaten up in the end.” And we can the more readily credit this statement from having found that a like policy is pursued by some provincial curriers in their dealings with small shoe-makers; and also by hop-merchants and maltsters in their dealings with small publicans. We read that in Hindostan the ryots, when crops fall short, borrow from the Jews to buy seed; and {121} once in their clutches are doomed. It seems that our commercial world can furnish parallels.
Of another class of wholesale-traders—those who supply grocers with foreign and colonial produce—we may say that though, in consequence of the nature of their business, their malpractices are less numerous and multiform, as well as less glaring, they bear the same stamp as the foregoing. Unless it is to be supposed that sugar and spices are moral antiseptics as well as physical ones, it must be expected that wholesale dealers in them will transgress much as other wholesale dealers do, in those directions where the facilities are greatest. And the truth is that, both in the qualities and quantities of the articles they sell, they take advantage of the retailers. The descriptions they give of their commodities are habitually misrepresentations. Samples sent round to their customers are characterized as first-rate when they are really second-rate. The travellers are expected to endorse these untrue statements; and unless the grocer has adequate keenness and extensive knowledge, he is more or less deceived. In some cases, indeed, no skill will save him. There are frauds that have grown up little by little into customs of the trade, which the retailer must submit to. In the purchase of sugar, for example, he is imposed on in respect alike of the goodness and the weight. The history of the dishonesty is this. Originally the tare allowed by the merchant on each hogshead, was 14 per cent. of the gross weight. The actual weight of the wood of which the hogshead was made, was at that time about 12 per cent. of the gross weight. And thus the trade-allowance left a profit of 2 per cent. to the buyer. Gradually, however, the hogshead has grown thicker and heavier; until now, instead of amounting to 12 per cent. of the gross weight, it amounts to 17 per cent. As the allowance of 14 per cent. still continues, the result is that the retail grocer loses 3 per cent.: to the extent of 3 per cent. he buys wood {122} in place of sugar. In the quality of the sugar, he is deluded by the practice of giving him a sample from the best part of the hogshead. During its voyage from Jamaica or elsewhere, the contents of a hogshead undergo a slow drainage. The molasses, of which more or less is always present, filters from the uppermost part of the mass of sugar to the lowermost part; and this lowermost part, technically known as the “foots,” is of darker colour and smaller value. The quantity of it contained in a hogshead varies greatly; and the retailer, receiving a false sample, has to guess what the quantity of “foots” may be; and, to his cost, often under-estimates it. As will be seen from the following letter, copied from the Public Ledger for the 20th Oct., 1858, these grievances, more severe even than we have represented them, are now exciting an agitation.