“Money don’t come in hand-over-fist, as it ought to come,” remarked Grasp, of the flourishing firm of Grasp & Co., Merchant Tailors, of Boston, to the junior partner of the establishment.  “The nimble sixpence is better than the slow shilling, you know.  We must make our shears eat up cloth a little faster, or we sha’n’t clear ten thousand dollars this year by one-third of the sum.”

“Although that would be a pretty decent business these times.”

“I don’t call any business a decent one that can be bettered,” replied Grasp, contemptuously.

“But can ours be bettered?”

“Certainly!”

“How?”

“By selling more goods.”

“How are we to do that?”

“By putting down the prices, and then making a confounded noise about it.  Do you understand?”

“I do.  But our prices are very low now.”

“True.  But we may reduce them still further, and, by so doing, increase our sales to an extent that will make our business net us beyond the present income quite handsomely.  But, to do this, we must cut down the prices now paid for making up our clothes.  In this way, we shall be able to greatly increase our sales, with but a slight reduction upon our present rates of profit.”

“But will our workmen stand it?  Our needlewomen, particularly, work very low now.”

“They’ll have to stand it!” replied Grasp; “most of them are glad to get work at any price.  Women, with half a dozen hungry mouths around them, don’t stand long to higgle about a few cents in a garment, when there are so many willing to step in and take their places.  Besides, what are three or four cents to them on a vest, or pair of pants, or jacket?  The difference in a week is small and will not be missed—­or, at the worst, will only require them to economize with a little steadier hand; while upon the thousands of garments we dispose of here, and send away to other markets, it will make a most important aggregate on the right side of profit and loss.”

“There is no doubt of that,” replied the partner, the idea of the aggregate of three or four cents on each garment occupying his mind, and obscuring completely, for a time, every other idea.  “Well, I’m with you,” he said, after a little while, “in any scheme for increasing profits.  Getting along at the rate of only some two or three thousand a year is rather slow work.  Why, there’s Tights, Screw, & Co., see how they’re cutting into the trade, and carrying every thing before them.  Tights told me that they cleared twenty thousand dollars last year.”

“No doubt of it.  And I’ll make our house do the same before three years roll over, or I’m no prophet.”

“If we are going to play this cutting-down game, we had better begin at once.”