HOW MERCHANTS ARE DEMORALIZED.
By Henry Ward Beecher
These merchants, these men that sell goods—how many pretenses they weave! What poor articles, with what a good face, do they palm off on their customers! How they suppress the truth! How they indulge in over praising or under valuing, as the case may be! How much there is of systematic commercial deceit, and wrong-doing through it. But do not slander the merchant. I think it is the front part of the counter that corrupts the back part. Now and then, in the mercantile business, just as in any other relation, there are men who incline to fraud, to guile; but, ordinarily, men that sell are perverted by the men that buy. You go forth hunting for a merchant out of whom you can get a “bargain.” What is a bargain? A true bargain is that transacted in which you render an equivalent for what you get—in which you give that which is worth as much as that which you receive. But what you call a bargain, is going out and finding some one with whom you can trade so that you can come home conscious that you have got five times as much as you have given. And strange as it may seem, men take pride in this thing! It is part purpose and part excitement. For instance, you go into the store of a man who keeps musical instruments for sale. He has an old violin. It is cracked, and has been mended. You take it and go to the light, and looking down through the opening, you see “Amati, 1695.” You say to the man, “How much is this?” He says, “Twenty dollars.” You buy it. Only twenty dollars. You go home with your “Amati,” and say, “This violin is worth five hundred dollars, and I would not take two hundred in gold for it!” “How much did it cost you?” “Guess.” And you sit expectant, like one waiting for his crown! At last you say, “I only gave twenty dollars for it.” “No, you don’t mean that?” “It is a fact; that is all it cost me.” And how happy you are! And you show the violin all the rest of your life, congratulating yourself that it is worth four or five hundred dollars, and that you got it for twenty. That is to say, you stole all the difference between what you gave for it and what it is worth; and God will judge you so!—Henry Ward Beecher.