Business requires a cool head; competition has its limits, beyond which yawns the bottomless pit of ruin. Jones lost his temper, and with it his judgment. Not satisfied with the faint change for the better, produced by the first measure, he impatiently resolved "to settle that Saunders," by a second and still bolder stroke. He filled his shop-windows with placards, on which prices were marked, with notes of admiration. He pressed into his service a dozen of little boys, whose sole business was to slip bills under doors, and to throw them down areas, or to force them into the hands of unconscious passengers; and he crowned an these arts by selling under prime cost.
The customers could not resist this tender appeal to their feelings; they came back one and all—the Teapot once more was full—the two Teapots was deserted; and Richard Jones was triumphant.
We profess no particular regard for Joseph Saunders; but we cannot deny that he played his cruel game skilfully and well. He did not bring down his prices one farthing. Without emotion he saw his shop forsaken—he knew his own strength; he knew, too, the weakness of his enemy.
"Oh! It's that dodge you are after," he thought, thrusting his tongue in his cheek. "Well, then, it has beggared many a man before you; and we shall see how long you'll keep it up—that's all."
And to whosoever liked to hear, Saunders declared that Mr. Jones was selling at loss, and that he (Saunders) could not afford to do so; and was sorry the old man would be so obstinate. "Where was the use, when he could not go on?"
Nothing did Jones more harm than this assertion, and the knowledge that it was a literal truth; for though people worship cheapness, that goddess of modern commerce, it is only on condition that she shall be a reality, not a fiction; that she shall rest on the solid basis of gains, howsoever small; not on the sand foundation of loss, that certain forerunner of failure. Jones could not, of course, long keep up the plan of selling under cost; he was obliged to give it up. With it, ceased his fallacious and momentary prosperity.
"I thought so," soliloquized Saunders.
Reader, if you think that we mean to cast a stone at the great shop, you are mistaken. We deal not with pitiless political economy, with its laws, with their workings. The great shop must prosper; 'tis in the nature of things; and the little shop must perish—'tis in their nature too. We but lament this sad truth, that on God's earth, which God made for all, there should be so little room for the poor man; for his pride, his ambition, his desires, which he has in common with the rich man; we but deplore what all, alas! know too well; that the crown of creation, a soul, a man by God's Almighty mind, fashioned and called forth into being, by Christ's priceless blood purchased and redeemed to Heaven, should be a thing of so little worth—ay, so much, so very much less worth than some money, in this strange world of ours.
Few pitied Richard Jones in his fall. His little ambition was remembered as a crime; for success had not crowned it. His little vanities were so many deadly sins; for gold did not hide or excuse them. To the dregs, the unhappy man drank the latter draught which rises to the lips of the fallen, when they see the world deserting them to worship a rival. A usurper had invaded his narrow realm, and crushed him; his little story was a true page from that great book of History, which we need not read to know how power decays, or to learn of man's fickleness, and fortune's frowns. Alas! History, if we did but know it, lies around us, as mankind lives in the meanest wretch we meet, and perchance despise.
It is a bitter thing to behold our own ruin; it is a cruel thing to look on powerless and despairing; and both now fell to the lot of Richard Jones. He had ventured all, and lost all. He was doomed—he knew it; every one knew it. But, alas! the cup of his woes was not full.