Book-keeping and the making out of accounts requires ability in calculation. Indeed, no one can succeed in getting a character for business capacity who has not all the rules of arithmetic at her fingers’ ends. The use of “Ready Reckoners,” “Interest Tables,” or such-like compilations, often saves, however, a great deal of trouble, even when people are quick at figures. Some pretend they can do without such helps, but they would be better to use them. We ought to avail ourselves of all the help we can get, and it is absurd to take roundabout ways of doing things when short cuts will answer the same purpose.
Besides understanding about the right method of keeping books and making out accounts, the thorough business woman will know well about the art of buying. Here we see how a knowledge of business ways may assist in the upbuilding of happy homes. One who understands the art of buying will return triumphant from marketing expeditions, and when she goes shopping there will be no fear of her wasting the contents of the family purse.
The good buyer does not spend much time in going her rounds. She has made herself familiar beforehand with the qualities of things, the methods by which they are adulterated, and the seasons when they are cheapest, and if the goods shown her are not what she wants, she says so, and no persuasive tongue can induce her to take them. “Much comment on the part of the seller,” says an American writer, “she regards as an incentive to be wary; and all pretences to confidential favours, unless proved to be such by undoubted documentary evidence, as a reproach to her understanding.”
She makes it a rule to deal with respectable people only, knowing that by that course she is best served, and you never find her very sharp-set on bargains. She knows better.
On the subject of bargains Mr. Charles Dickens, in his “Dictionary of London,” has some wise remarks. They specially refer to the metropolis, but they are applicable to all large towns over the country. Everywhere skilfully-baited traps are set for the unwary, though it is in London that the traps catch most victims and rogues reap the best harvest.
Bargains, Mr. Dickens points out, are to be met with, of course, but only by those who know very well what they are about. The numerous “bankrupts’ stocks,” “tremendous sacrifices,” and so forth, are just so many hooks on which to catch simpletons.
“One of the commonest tricks of all is that of putting in the window, say, a handsome mantle, worth eight or ten guineas, and labelled, say, £3 15s., and keeping inside for sale others made up in precisely the same style, but of utterly worthless material. If they decline to sell you the actual thing out of the window, be sure that the whole affair is a swindle. See, too, that in taking it from the window they do not drop it behind the counter and substitute one of the others—an ingenious little bit of juggling not very difficult of performance.
“Another very taking device is the attaching to each article a price label in black ink, elaborately altered in red to one twenty or five and twenty per cent. less. This has a very ingenuous air. But when the price has been—as it commonly has—raised thirty or forty per cent. before the first black ink marking, the economy is not large.
“Of course, if you do buy anything out of one of these shops, you will take it with you. If you have it sent, be particularly careful not to pay for it until it arrives, and not then till you have thoroughly examined it.
“When a shop of this kind sends you ‘patterns,’ you will usually find a request attached not to cut them. Always carefully disregard this, keeping a small piece for comparison.