Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
CONFESSIONS OF A TRADESMAN
CONFESSIONS OF
A TRADESMAN
BY
FRANK T. BULLEN
AUTHOR OF
"WITH CHRIST AT SEA," "THE CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT"
ETC.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMVIII
Printed in 1908
To
THE SMALL TRADESMEN
OF LONDON
PREFACE
It is a particular, and not altogether pleasant, feature of literarywork in Britain that should an author make a certain amount of successwith a book on one particular topic, it is thenceforward tacitlyassumed that he must stick to that topic, assaying no other on painof being mercilessly taken to task by the critics. Or what is worse,damned with faint praise. With this knowledge very vividly impressedupon me, I have hitherto refrained from writing upon a subject withwhich I have most intimate and painful acquaintance, and one thatshould appeal to a far wider circle of readers than any of my previousbooks have done. It is the subject of the small, struggling tradesmanor shop-keeper.
I may, I trust, be permitted to remind my good friends, the public,to whom I owe so great a debt, that prior to going to sea I was, assome writers love to say, not entirely unconnected with trade, havingfor two or three years been employed with varying degrees of unsuccessby small tradesmen as an errand[Pg viii] boy, etc. In this wise (although Ifeel sure that none of my employers would have suspected me of it), Iabsorbed some germs of a commercial spirit, did at any rate acquire therudiments of trade, although in most irregular and entirely erraticways.
During my sea-career, these germs lay entirely dormant, unfruitful;but they were undoubtedly tenacious of life, as we learn that diseasegerms always are; and so, when I forsook the sea upon an offer of a jobashore, a fitting environment aroused them, and they sprang into activelife. Not of course immediately, a period of incubation was needed.It was readily forthcoming. At the age of twenty-five, I deliberatelyturned my back upon a profession that then offered me nothing betterthan mate of a tramp at £6 per month, and accepted a berth in a publicoffice ashore at £2 per week, having a wife and one child, and no stickof furniture for a home.
Is it necessary to say that never having known any training in thrift,having indeed belonged to the least provident of all our notablyimprovident workers, I soon found the shoe pinching, soon discoveredthat forty shillings a week was devoid of elasticity, especiallywhen curbed by payments to be made for furniture purchased on thevery unsatisfactory "hire system"? Perhaps not, but in any case itwas this,...