The Complete English Tradesman

The Complete English Tradesman

The Complete English Tradesman is a manual of instruction addressed to young men entering trade, written by an author who presents himself as an experienced merchant drawing on his own observations and encounters. It opens by advising apprentices, once past their early years of servitude, to use the later part of their indentures purposefully: to gain a discerning judgment of the wares they will deal in, to become acquainted with their master's customers and chapmen, to learn the method of keeping books, and to understand the practice of buying, since neglecting these lessons during apprenticeship leaves a young tradesman permanently disadvantaged. The author illustrates the danger of poor judgment in goods with his own story of nearly being cheated by a brandy merchant abroad, who tried to substitute mixed spirits for genuine brandy after judging the narrator, wrongly, to be inexperienced. Much of the work concerns correspondence: tradesmen's letters should be plain, concise, and free of bombastic or affected language, illustrated by contrasting a flowery, useless letter from a young tradesman with a clear, businesslike one, and by comparing an obscure, ambiguous merchant's letter from Hull with properly explicit orders exchanged between a warehouseman and a clothier at Devizes. At the same time, the author insists a tradesman must master the particular "terms of art" and trading language of every business he deals with—illustrating this with anecdotes of a brickmaker and "spanish" (ashes used in bricks, confused with molasses used by brewers), a jockey's trade language, a gardener cheating an ignorant buyer of a "run" auricula, and gardeners and brickmakers who deceive customers who show no knowledge of the goods. The author strongly recommends that tradesmen confine their society chiefly to other tradesmen rather than gentlemen or political company, arguing that such conversation, even among unremarkable men, teaches useful trading knowledge by observation of others' successes and failures—citing the ruin of a "political upholsterer" who neglected his shop for public affairs, and the parable of a philosopher who learned an astronomical illustration from his maid Betty's mop. Diligence is presented as essential, with Solomon's proverbs cited repeatedly on the sluggard and the diligent hand. Neglect of the shop is condemned through the image of an idle mercer's shop haunted by thieves versus one enlivened by a diligent master, and through sayings like "drive your trade or it will drive you" and "keep me and I will keep thee." The author cautions that necessary duties—rest, religion, and business—must not be allowed to jostle one another out of place, giving examples of tradesmen ruined by misapplied piety: a shopkeeper whose long family prayers shut out customers, a husband who forgot to fetch a midwife because he stopped at a sermon, and a habitual sermon-hunter who lost his trade; though the author notes vice and extravagance ruin far more tradesmen than excess religion does. A major section addresses over-trading as a chief cause of ruin, divided into trading beyond one's stock and giving too much credit; the author explains how imbalance between credit taken and credit given can destroy even a tradesman whose assets exceed his debts, citing losses suffered by creditors of the government during the recent war when tallies had to be sold at steep discounts. He also warns against projects, remote adventures, and too many "irons in the fire," which drain a tradesman's ready money and credit. On bankruptcy, the author contrasts the older, more terrible consequences of "breaking" with the more merciful modern commission-of-bankrupt law, arguing that this mercy gives no real encouragement to negligence, and urging any tradesman who sees his stock is truly exhausted to stop and surrender to creditors honestly and in time, rather than struggling on dishonestly until nothing is left to pay them—since early, honest breaking preserves reputation and creditor goodwill, while delay breeds both financial and moral ruin. Further advice concerns the practical management of retail business: choosing a shop's location within the customary trading streets, keeping a well-sorted rather than overstocked shop, and above all cultivating limitless patience and courtesy toward customers, however impertinent, illustrated at length by a dialogue in which two ladies deliberately try to provoke a mercer and his partner with hours of trouble and no purchase, only to be won over by the tradesmen's unfailing civility and ultimately become steady customers. The concluding chapters warn against two further dangers disguised as "innocent" behavior: excessive pleasures and diversions (riding, sport, socializing) that draw a tradesman from his shop at critical moments and cost him bargains and customers, and immoderate expensive living—in housekeeping, dress, high company, and equipage—driven by the fashionable extravagance of the age and rising costs of taxed goods and servants' wages. Finally, the author cautions against early marriage before a tradesman is established, arguing it burdens him with expense before his stock can bear it, and presents a lengthy dialogue between a troubled husband and his wife, who, upon learning his declining circumstances, willingly agrees to retrench their household rather than let him fail in silence—concluding that a wife should never be blamed for a husband's ruin if he has not honestly disclosed his affairs to her in time. The text as given breaks off within this discussion of the husband's melancholy and the wife's proposed economies.

By Daniel Defoe · First published 1735 · Genre: Non-fiction, Guidebook, Historical · 25 chapters · 140,092 words

First lines

The first part of a trader's beginning is ordinarily when he is very young, I mean, when he goes as an apprentice, and the notions of trade are scarcely got into his head; for boys go apprentices while they are but boys; to talk to them in their first three or four years signifies nothing; they are rather then to be taught submission to families, and subjection to their masters, and dutiful attendance in their shops or warehouses; and this is not our present business.

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tradesman · commerce · economics · business · entrepreneurship · manual skills · craftsmanship · self-sufficiency · work ethic · social class · 18th century · British literature

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