Now, though this does not at all exempt the servant or apprentice from taking care of himself, and to qualify himself for business while he is an apprentice, yet it is evident that it is no furtherance to apprentices; the liberties they take towards the conclusion of their time, are so much employed to worse purposes, that apprentices do not come out of their times better finished for business and trade than they did formerly, but much the worse:  and though it is not the proper business and design of this work to enlarge on the injustice done both to master and servant by this change of custom, yet to bring it to my present purpose, it carries this force with it, namely, that the advice to apprentices to endeavour to finish themselves for business during the time of the indenture, is so much the more needful and seasonable.

Nor is this advice for the service of the master, but of the apprentice; for if the apprentice neglects this advice, if he omits to qualify himself for business as above, if he neither will acquaint himself with the customers, nor the books, nor with the buying part, nor gain judgment in the wares he is to deal in, the loss is his own, not his master’s—­and, indeed, he may be said to have served not himself, but his master—­and both his money and his seven years are all thrown away.

FOOTNOTES: 

[6] [Individuals dealt with.]

[7] [It would be hard to doubt that Defore was sincere in this pleading of the rights of the apprentice; but its morality is certainly far from clear.  The master may have gained customers with difficulty, by the exercise of much ingenuity, patience, and industry, or through some peculiar merit of his own.  Indeed, it is always to be presumed that a tradesman’s customers are attached to him from some of these causes.  Of course, it would be hard if his apprentices, instead of collecting customers for themselves by the same means, seduced away those of his master.  The true and direct object of an apprenticeship is to acquire a trade, not to acquire customers.]

CHAPTER II

THE TRADESMAN’S WRITING LETTERS

As plainness, and a free unconstrained way of speaking, is the beauty and excellence of speech, so an easy free concise way of writing is the best style for a tradesman.  He that affects a rumbling and bombast style, and fills his letters with long harangues, compliments, and flourishes, should turn poet instead of tradesman, and set up for a wit, not a shopkeeper.  Hark how such a young tradesman writes, out of the country, to his wholesale-man in London, upon his first setting up.