Closed shop

“ Meantime, the shop was still without customers, that is, except a few housewives of the neighbourhood who were passing through the almost deserted galleries. At the door the time-keeper had just closed his book, and was making out a separate list of the late arrivals. The salesmen on their side were taking possession of their departments, which had been swept and brushed by the assistants before their arrival. Each young man put away his hat and over-coat as he arrived, stifling a yawn, still half asleep as he did so. ”

“ Commerce is crippled; the towns lately thronged with merchants and customers are now mourning their desolation in the midst of closed shops and silent manufactories. Meanwhile, the inhabitants, ground down by ceaseless exactions, are crying out at the immense sums which are being squandered for nought, or applied to purposes for which they were never intended. ”

“ But at this early hour very few people entered, a few customers pressed for time, housewives of the neighbourhood, women desirous of avoiding the afternoon crush. Behind the stuffs which decorated the shop, one could divine that it was empty, under arms and waiting for customers, with its waxed floors and its counters overflowing with goods. ”

“ The little shops pull at one's heart, so simple is their merchandise. A little window beckons us through which we peer with misted eyes. For narrow shops are often kind to tiny folk scarce counter-high. Above a shop, behind a blind, I've heard a little baby cry. Above a shop, I've often seen a mother's anxious face appear. How many customers have been? The closing hour is drawing near. Great shops, like temples dedicate to merchandise from every mart, are over-lords of their own fate—but little shops tug at the heart! ”

“ Now the shopmen began to feel queer, and one by one the aldermen toddled to their beds. In time everybody was laid up, and no one was left to do the work of the town. All the shops, theatres, markets, and railway stations were closed, and the streets quite deserted except for the doctor and the puff baker, each trying to undo the work of the other. ”

“ In front is the brick sidewalk, the cobbled street, the bit of open space with Harrier's junk-shop on the right corner; and then the warehouses on either side, all leading down to the slip, Doty's Slip, which is flanked by noble wharves, with huge piles leaning awry and very slippery. The warehouses are roomy and full of queer smells, as if the varied merchandize of fifty years had left something for its old friends, the warehouses, to remember it by. ”

“ As a place grew, and enervating luxury set in, the grocery store slowly supplanted the blacksmith’s shop, because people found a nail keg, or a box of crackers, more comfortable to sit on than the limited seats at their disposal in a smithy; moreover, in winter the store, with its red-hot box stove, was a place of warmth and joy, but the reveling in such an atmosphere of comfort meant that the members of the club had to live close at hand, for no man would brave the storms of a Canadian winter night, and journey a mile or two through the snow, to enjoy even the pleasures of the store. ”

“ In the first place, the Act puts a stop to the absurdity of shops remaining open to all hours of the night, keeping assistants tied to their work when they ought to be resting or taking recreation; but compulsory closing of shops at any hour is not insisted on unless under certain conditions, each trade being allowed to settle its closing hour by a vote of the majority of those engaged in the trade. Shop-assistants are not allowed to work more than fifty-two hours a week or more than nine hours a day, with some exceptions. All shops must be kept clean and must be well ventilated. ”

“ Of the shops of the 12,000 artisans about 10,000 were to be closed indefinitely and 2,000 were to be kept open. 4,000 of the 5,000 retail stores should be closed and 1,000 should be kept open, that is, were to be Aryanized. ”

“ It is not enough that trucks and ash-barrels have provided four distinct lines of shops that are not down on the insurance maps, to accommodate the crowds. Here have the very hallways been made into shops. Three feet wide by four deep, they have just room for one, the shop-keeper, who, himself within, does his business outside, his wares displayed on a board hung across what was once the hall door. Back of the rear wall of this unique shop a hole has been punched from the hall into the alley and the tenants go that way. ”

“ Yet he has at his office the census of all these plantations, besides a written statement prepared by Mr. Soule of the amount bought at these stores within the last six months and the lists of purchases over five dollars at a time (we have to keep these lists, as one condition of keeping store) .
Besides restricting the quantity of goods, all the stores are to be closed except those at R.'s and Folsom's. I may sell what I have on hand, but not take in anything more. Ignorance, stupidity, and conceit. ”

“ We sell only by the dozen and to dealers uptown.”
“Over there is the tailor shop. We clean the clothes which come in, sew on the buttons, press them and make them look as good as possible. We are wholesalers only. We sell old things by the dozen just as factory owners sell new things in large quantities only. But there are many shops on Baxter Street which cater to private customers. This part of the city is frequented by “down-and-outers,” men who come from no one knows where. They stay a while; they sleep wherever they are undisturbed, they hang out in our saloons and then they disappear. ”

“ In fact, the shops seem to be convenient places opened to enable their owners to causer with the greatest possible number of their neighbours and other people, rather than places for the receipt of custom and serious making of money. I doubt if any man is a worse hand at shopping than I, and yet I can go boldly into any shop here, and turn over the articles, and chaffer over them, and then go out without buying, and yet feel that I have conferred a benefit rather than otherwise on the proprietor of the establishment. ”

“ The village was crowded with houses, yet there was not a man to be seen. Line upon line of shops in the bazaar, row upon row of booths in the mart, hundreds of earthen houses interspersed with stone mansions high and low in every quarter. But today all was silent. In the bazaar the shops are closed, and where the shopkeeper has fled no man can tell. It is market day today, but in the mart there is no buying and selling. It is the beggars' day but the beggars are not out. ”

“ The forlorn aspect of the ruined shop told the gloomy facts with unmistakable clearness. So few assistants, so pitiably few customers, such a beggarly array of goods! Those shelves have all been dressed with dummies; those rolls of rich silk are composed of a wooden block, some paper, and half a yard of soiled material; within those huge presses you will find only darkness. Emptiness, desolation, death! ”

“ We have all heard of institutions called "stores"; but still it is a pity to carp at a pretty picture drawn by a literary artist. I know that rebellious tradesmen in many of the shires use violent language as they describe the huge packing-cases which are deposited at various mansions by the railway vans. I know also that the regulation saddler who airs his apron at the door of his shop on market-days will inform the stranger that the gentry get saddles, harness, and everything else nowadays from the abominable "stores" ”

“ We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. ”

“ In the first place, there ought always to be a crush at the entrance, so that the people in the street should mistake it for a riot; and he obtained this crush by placing a lot of bargains at the doors, shelves and baskets overflowing with very low-priced articles; so that the common people crowded there, stopping up the doorway, making the shop look as if it were crammed with customers, when it was often only half full. Then, in the galleries, he had the art of concealing the departments in which business was slack ”

“ His shop is not filled with impatient customers like a shop in London on Saturday night, but with patient customers like a shop in the country on Saturday morning, for the good old housewives only go shopping once a week, and consider it too serious and sacred a business to be lightly hurried over.
Everything is full. The inns fill the farmers as the farmers fill the inns—​the yards are full of carts, the stables full of horses, heads are full of business, hands full of wares, hearts full of hope or joy or discontent. ”

“ The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. ”

“ Do you think if we asked for a day we would get it? You know, the store is closed to-day; they might not like to lose another."
"Of course, they wouldn't like it, but that don't make any difference," said young Denton, grandly. "What was Jack Forbes's funeral to you clerks, anyway? The closing to-day was only a bluff—one of the bluffs that all stores put up to keep the good opinion of the public. Now, this affair is entirely different. ”

“ Every shop removes its shutters in the morning, and as there are usually no windows, the effect is that of moving through an immense bazaar, in which every known trade is being carried on, while the wares are being sold at an adjoining counter. ”

“ When a thing is well enough, let it alone.
The other visit was to my husband’s warehouse in Virginia Street. It had been closed for the day, and being entirely a business street was absolutely empty. I stood upon the stone door steps, worn away in the center to a mere flag, and I looked at the row of windows covered with dust and cobwebs, just as Robert and his predecessors had kept them, as emblematical of a large, steady business, not requiring blazoning of any kind. ”

“ The back shop, according to the profession, serves as a store, a laboratory, or a dining-room; the gallery is, properly speaking, nothing more than a warehouse for the shop, containing a reserve of the articles sold, which are arranged in it with great order; the two little rooms adjoining, usually encumbered with chests and bales, afford an asylum during the night to two or three shopmen, while the terrace is used for airing goods that have been a long time warehoused, to beat stuffs, and, in the case of the druggists, to dry plants. ”

“ In a silent shop, where the sugar seemed to shrink away in the casks, where the tea-chests looked hollow, where dust gathered on the counter, on the shelves, in the corners, everywhere; where all looked blasted and withered by the deadly upas tree opposite, you might have seen a haggard man who stood there day after day, waiting for customers that came not, and who from behind his shop windows drearily watched the opposite shop, always full; thriving, fattening on his ruin ”

“ Such ribbons and shawls! and two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce. As to the proprietor, he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the ‘Co.’ We saw all this with sorrow; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was doomed—and so it was. ”

“ The shops were all closed when we entered on Saturday afternoon, the 13th; on Monday some of them opened, and by Wednesday the Banks had resumed business, the newspapers were published, and the merchants were ready to declare goods at the Custom House, the tram cars were running and the retail shops were all open and doing a large business. ”

“ Although all the public offices, Government and mercantile, are absolutely closed for twelve days, agents of Manchester and Glasgow firms must open their places of business on this particular day, which to native merchants and dealers is an auspicious day when large bargains of Piece Goods for present and forward delivery are made. ”

“ The plate glass windows of every store lay in thousands of pieces below their sashes, and the entire stock of merchandise whether furniture or drapery, groceries or dairy products, had been hurled through them into the middle of the thoroughfare. Above these were piled pell-mell bedding and chairs, wardrobes and wash basins, all splintered and broken—the whole making the most pitiable conglomeration I ever hope to witness. ”

“ Watchmen should report at the store each night, and as soon as the store is closed examine the leaving register, to see that each department has signed for everything having been left in perfect order. ”

“ Time your shopping that you may not help to crowd business at the closing hour. If the shop closes at five, leave several minutes before the hour. As a matter of fact it is only to the shopper that the shop closes at the stated hour; some of the hardest work of the day comes after hours. ”

“ Sometimes three or four persons will crowd into this box called a shop. The bazaar is a noisy as well as a crowded place, for to the buzz of talk and the cries of the itinerant venders is added the clang of the goldsmiths' hammers; it winds down into the recesses of decaying houses and emerges in another direction. ”