Scalping

“ But all the same, I felt the bad luck all through that shilling and all over it. I laughed at myself for the idea, but I couldn't get rid of it; so I put the coin in my waistcoat pocket instead of the till, and decided to keep it twenty-four hours and see what happened. That's a fair test, Misterrammer, ain't it? Well, since then one of my best regular customers has died, a man that owed me two ten has gone bankrupt, a horse I had backed ran absolute last, and that damned boy has broken another gas-globe. You can't get away from that, can you? ”

“ When a purchase is made the teeth are examined, to see that they are neither few nor discoloured. At the same time the more hidden parts of the body are carefully inspected, and if a mole, excrescence, wound, or other latent defect is discovered, the bargain is rescinded. But notwithstanding these investigations the cunning slave-dealers and brokers succeed in cheating the buyers; for when they have valuable boys and girls, they do not at once produce them, but first fatten them, clothe them in silk, and put powder and rouge on their cheeks, so as to sell them at a better price. ”

“ Then, when he is in his most despondent vein, comes the moment for the opportunist, and there are twenty-four pence in every shilling.
The auction-rooms among ourselves and abroad, wherever there is a volume of business in coins (and in other second-hand commodities) , appear to be vehicles, however, more and more for a systematic organisation, by which the dealer sells his goods under the hammer instead of over the counter. ”

“ If a man struck out the eye of another and blinded him, he was obliged to make satisfaction with fifty shillings, and one who was in a troublesome mood and had plenty of loose cash to dispose of, might break a neighbour's rib for three shillings, and dislocate his shoulder for twenty. According to the decrees of the Witan, a fine of one shilling was enacted for crushing the finger-nail of a neighbour, but if the thumb-nail had suffered, three shillings was its value. ”

“ Come! Do you say a pound? Not you, for you haven’t got it. Do you say ten shillings? Not you, for you owe more to the tallyman. Well then, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. I’ll heap ’em all on the footboard of the cart,—there they are! razors, flat watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and away for four shillings, and I’ll give you sixpence for your trouble!” This is me, the Cheap Jack. But on the Monday morning, in the same market-place, comes the Dear Jack on the hustings—his cart—and, what does he say? ”

“ It's not your cute folks, who screw, twist and twirl over a smooth fourpence, or skin a flea for its hide and tallow, and spoil a knife that cost a shilling,—that come out first best in the long run. Some folks have a weakness for beating down shop-keepers, or anybody else they deal with, and so far have we seen this infirmity carried, that we candidly believe we've known persons that would not stop short of cheapening the passage to kingdom come, if they thought a dollar and two cents might be saved in the fare! ”

“ In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. ”

“ If sales are slow, you must tickle your customer; hence the signs of the Middle Ages, hence the modern prospectus. I do not see a hair's-breadth of difference between attracting custom and forcing your goods upon the consumer. It may happen, it is sure to happen, it often happens, that a shopkeeper gets hold of damaged goods, for the seller always cheats the buyer. Go and ask the most upright folk in Paris—the best known men in business, that is—and they will all triumphantly tell you of dodges by which they passed off stock which they knew to be bad upon the public. ”

“ The buyers surged against the barricade of counters, shouting their orders, contesting the ground inch by inch as they fought for the value of a penny. And they emerged staggering under the weight of their plunder, laden like ants with food for hungry mouths—the insatiable maw of the people. ”

“ Continuation of the operations of money-jobbers Now let us suppose that the current price of silver bullion in the market is 65 pence the ounce, paid in lawful money, no matter of 566what weight, or of what metal. |Their rule for melting the coin.| Upon this the money-jobber falls to work. All shillings which are above 1⁄65 of a pound troy, he throws into his melting pot, and sells them as bullion, for 65d. per ounce; all those which are below that weight he carries to market, and buys bullion with them, at 65 pence per ounce. ”

“ Raising of Money is either the cutting the pound Troy of Standard Silver into more pieces then formerly, as into above sixty, whereas heretofore the same was made but into twenty, and yet both sorts called shillings, or else calling the money already made by higher names: The reasons or pretences given for such raising are these, viz. That the raising of Money will bring it in, and the material thereof more plentifully; for trial whereof suppose one shilling were proclaimed to be worth two, what other effect could this have, then the raising of all Commodities unto a double price? ”

“ I have known fruit vendors to lose a trade in trying to keep the odd cent in a quarter, arguing that a real is 61⁄4 cents in theory but only 6 in practice. Counterfeiting is the greatest industry in the republic outside of the lottery business. Paper money is rarely seen, and that makes the volume of silver enormous, and requires everybody to carry bags of it. If you paid a man a hundred dollars in quarters, he would test each one separately hunting for counterfeits, before he would accept payment, and the “ring” of money testing in the market is a regular Babel. ”

“ The price paid by the principal auctioneers for country work is nine shillings per day; that is, seven shillings for day's work, one shilling for lodging, and one for paste. Town work is five shillings a day, including paste.'
'Town work must be rather hot work,' said I, 'if there be many of those fighting scenes that beggar description, among the bill-stickers?'
'Well,' replied the King, 'I an't a stranger, I assure you, to black eyes; a bill-sticker ought to know how to handle his fists a bit. ”

“ You can be up by that time?' 'And who do you think is going to pay a shilling a-piece to go by the packet? Not I, nor you either,' said Mrs. Nicholson, in an angry tone. 'And as [Pg 277] for Mary Anne, she has more sense than to waste her money in that way.' I replied by saying, 'Oh, a shilling is not much; and as there is no other conveyance by which we can get, we have no alternative, as we cannot possibly walk it.'—'No,' said she, 'we cannot walk it, but there is a man who has a cart, and I am sure if we could get a dozen to go he would take us at threepence a-piece. ”

“ If your chits at one single shop run into large amounts, the collector generally brings along with him a coolie or a wheelbarrow with which to lug away the weight of dollars that you pour into his hands, and when two or three collectors come in together the office reminds one of a “money-’changer’s. Counterfeit [24] money is so prevalent that one after the other of your callers bites the silver or drops it on the floor to detect lead, and to listen to the resulting sound is not to feel complimented by their opinion of your integrity. ”

“ That between the dealers and the consumers, on the contrary, as it is generally carried on by retail, frequently requires but very small ones, a shilling, or even a halfpenny, being often sufficient. But small sums circulate much faster than large ones. A shilling changes masters more frequently than a guinea, and a halfpenny more frequently than a shilling. Though the annual purchases of all the consumers, therefore, are at least equal in value to those of all the dealers, they can generally be transacted with a much smaller quantity of money ”

“ British calicoes, or prints, for example, which I sold by the case for eighty-five cents cash, at auction, were in every way inferior to our own, which were retailed before the Rebellion broke out for ten cents a yard. In fact, if we had known the real cost of production, it would have made but little difference; for long after all our foreign merchandise had fallen from thirty-three and a third to fifty per cent, some of our shrewdest calculators were utterly ruined by purchasing at much lower prices, on what they believed to be a rising market. ”

“ Pewter and brass ware for sale shall be of the quality of that of London and marked by its maker, on pain of forfeiture of such, and may be sold only at open fairs and markets or in the seller's home, or forfeit 200s. If such false ware is sold, its maker shall forfeit its value, one half to the king and one half to the searchers. Anyone using false weights of such wares shall forfeit 20s., one half to the king and one half to the suer, or if he cannot pay this fine, to be put in the stocks until market day and then be put in the pillory all the market time. ”

“ The shilling, consequently, being the twentieth part of this, was equivalent to 2s. 93⁄4d. of our present money; and the penny, being the twelfth part of the shilling, or the 240th part of the pound, was still of the same value as in the Saxon times, and contained an amount of silver equal to a trifle more than what might be purchased by 23⁄4d. of our money. But both the pound and the shilling were only money of account; there were no coins of these denominations. It is doubtful, also, if there were any coins of inferior value to the silver penny; no specimens of any such have been discovered. ”

“ That shilling would have been a bed and breakfast. I earned that shilling, and I never wanted it more in my life. What the dickens does a two-horse doctor do here, I wonder! I thought he was sent by Providence to give me a shilling, at first. Bah! Providence turned me up long ago. Let’s look at the card.’
He came out of the roadway, and stood under a lamp-post to read the name of his debtor. ”

“ The reason why people do not sell the old shillings by the pound, is only because they are not all of the same weight, although they be all of the same value in circulation; but they sell their bullion, as it were, against old worn shillings reduced 585to a mean proportion of value; which sale of bullion is virtually buying old shillings at market by weight. A man, therefore, who can with a pound of silver bullion buy the value of 65 old shillings, will certainly never employ it to buy 62 heavy ones from the mint, which are no where worth more, except in the melting pot. ”

“ Several of the inconveniences we have here enumerated, may appear trifling, and so they are found to be in countries where commerce is little known; but the operations of trade surpass in nicety the conceptions of any man but a merchant; and as a proof of this, it may be affirmed with truth, that one shilling can hardly lose a 542grain of its weight, either by fraud or circulation, without contributing by that circumstance, towards the diminution of the standard value of the money-unit, or pound sterling, over all England, as I hope to be able to shew both by reason and facts. ”

“ We are sending in our Carnations and Roses by the stacks, but there is no demand for them. The market is overstocked. Carnations sometimes drop as low as five dollars a thousand. Roses go in the same proportion. Now what do you retailers do about it? Do you ever think of relieving the market, of buying more than you actually need, and taking a chance? Does it ever occur to you that five dollars a thousand for Carnations does not pay for the labor of picking and packing them? You buy just what you need, at a bargain price; you take your flowers to your store, and sell them to the public at 75c. ”

“ Ladies of sweet disposition went about doing good among the poor—personally inquired into distress, relieved it by sending out a daughter or a son to a neighboring shop for change, and left five shillings for present necessities, walking off with fifteen. So openly—in spite of the gallows—was forgery carried on, that whoever chose to turn utterer found no difficulty in getting a stock-in-trade to commence with. ”

“ When Hamilton was buying scalps on the Ohio, and haggling with the Indians over the price to be paid for those of the women and the children, old Hiram Arnold walked into the conference: 'Scalp-buyer,' he said, 'buy my scalps; there are no little ones among them,' and he emptied out on to the table a bagful of scalps of the king's soldiers. ”

“ The “Spalding Policy” eliminates the jobber entirely, so far as Spalding Goods are concerned, and the retail dealer secures his supply of Spalding Athletic Goods direct from the manufacturer under a restricted retail price arrangement by which the retail dealer is assured a fair, legitimate and certain profit on all Spalding Athletic Goods, and the consumer is assured a Standard Quality and is protected from imposition. ”

“ So the crime that is bothering you arises through the low price of silver, and this suggests that it must be a case of illicit coinage, for there the low price of the metal comes in. You have, perhaps, found a more subtle illegitimate act going forward than heretofore. Someone is making your shillings and your half-crowns from real silver, instead of from baser metal, and yet there is a large profit which has not hitherto been possible through the high price of silver. ”