“Oh, plenty.”

“Well, how many?”

“Fifteen bales.”

“Well, I’ll take them.”

“Come in and buy something more.”

“No, nothing more to-day.”

There was a loss of seventy-five dollars, and he did not dare buy more.

It will be obvious that the selling a part of one’s goods at less than cost enhances the necessity of getting a profit on the rest.  But how to do this, under the sharp scrutiny of a buyer who knows that his own success, 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 cash, with more or less expense and loss, somewhere between nine months and nine-and-twenty years.