cess, not to say his very existence, depends upon his paying no
profit possible to be avoided,--no profit, at all events, not certainly
paid by some sharp neighbor who is competing with him for the same
trade?

"But is there anything in all this," you are asking, "to preclude the
jobber's telling the truth?" Nothing. "Anything to preclude strict
honesty?" Nothing. "Why, then, do the questions you have quoted
continually recur?"

I answer: In order to get his share of the best custom in his line, the
dry-goods jobber has taken a store in the best position in town, at a
rent of from three to fifty thousand dollars a year; has hired men and
boys at all prices, from fifty dollars to five thousand,--and enough of
these to result in an aggregate of from five to fifty thousand dollars
a year for help, without which his business cannot be done. Add to
this the usual average for store-expenses of every name, and for
the family-expenses of two, five, or seven partners, and you find a
dry-goods firm under the necessity of getting out of their year's sales
somewhere from fifteen to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars profit,
before they shall have saved one cent to meet the losses of an
unfavorable season.

Now, though there is nothing even in all these urgencies to justify a
single lie or fraud, there is much to sharpen a man's wits to secure the
sale of his goods,--much to educate him in all manner of expedients to
baffle the inquiries of customers who would be offended, if they could
discover that he ever charged them the profit without which he could
never meet his expenses. And the jobber's problem is complicated by the
folly, universally prevalent among buyers, of expecting some partiality
or peculiarity of favor over their neighbors who are just as good as
themselves. Every dry-goods jobber knows that his customer's foolish
hope and expectation often demand three absurdities of him: first, the
assurance that he has the advantage over all other jobbers in a better
stock of goods, better bought; secondly, that he has a peculiar
friendship for himself; and thirdly, that, though of other men he must
needs get a profit, in his special instance he shall ask little or
none; and that, such is his regard for him, it is a matter of no moment
whether he live in Lowell or Louisiana, in New Bedford or Nebraska, or
whether he pay New England bank-notes within thirty days, or wild-cat
money and wild lands, which may be converted into c