Street trade

“ The shopping, however, of the rich is one thing, and the shopping of the very poor is quite another. Most interesting, to those who care to study the book of human nature, are the "street-markets" of the people, those rows of noisy booths and barrows which have stood from time immemorial, by traditional right, in certain streets, and where jets of brilliant, flaring naptha-lights display the kaleidoscopic stock-in-trade. Among such streets are Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road; Leather Lane, Holborn; or, to descend to a yet lower social depth, Brick Lane, Spitalfields. ”

“ The wholesale price of the last “street lot,” was 3d. the gross, or 1⁄4d. the dozen. To clear 6d. a day in shirt buttons is “good work;” it is more frequently 4d.
Of the Street-Sellers of Walking-Sticks.
The walking-sticks sold in the streets of London are principally purchased at wholesale houses in Mint-street and Union-street, Borough, and their neighbourhoods. “There’s no street-trade,” said an intelligent man, “and I’ve tried most that’s been, or promised to be, a living in the streets, that is so tiresome as the walking-stick trade. There is nothing in which people are so particular. ”

“ The accounts of the street-trade in second-hand linens, however, need be but brief; for none of the callings I have now to notice supply a mode of subsistence to the street-sellers independently of other pursuits. They are resorted to whenever an opportunity or a prospect of remuneration presents itself by the class of general street-sellers, women as well as men—the women being the most numerous. The sale of these articles is on the Saturday and Monday nights, in the street-markets, and daily in Petticoat and Rosemary lanes. ”

“ There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually disappear. ”

“ The men in this trade I found generally to be intelligent. They have been, for the most part, engaged in some minor department of the book-selling or newspaper trade, in the regular way, and are unconnected with the street-sellers in other lines, of whose pursuits, habits, and characters, they seem to know nothing.
The street book-stalls are most frequent in the thoroughfares which are well-frequented, but which, as one man in the trade expressed himself, are not so “shoppy” as others—such as the City-road, the New-road, and the Old Kent-road. ”

“ Many things are also sold in the streets. The street traders carry a bamboo pole across the shoulder. From the ends of this pole they sling the baskets in which they carry their wares. Many workmen ply their trades in the open street, and you are sure to see quack doctors, letter-writers, and money-changers. ”

“ The precise extent of the proportion which the Street-Traders bear to the rest of the Metropolitan Population is the first point to be evolved; for the want, the ignorance, and the vice of a street-life being in a direct ratio to the numbers, it becomes of capital importance that we should know how many are seeking to pick up a livelihood in the public thoroughfares. ”

“ These streets of London, where the poor do their marketing, are, on Saturday night, gay with light and thronged with people. Because of the next day's rest, there is, until past midnight, an open market, which invades the pavement with costers' barrows heaped with fruit, butchers' stalls, booths of incongruous articles, kitchen utensils, old tools, all the bric-à-brac of the second-hand suburban shop; vehicular traffic is suspended; all barriers are encroached upon; everyone walks in the middle of the street. ”

“ There are many street-traders “in second-hand,” perhaps two-thirds of the whole number, who sell indiscriminately anything which they can buy, or what they hope to turn out an advantage; but even they prefer to deal more in one particular kind of merchandize than another, and this is most of all the case as concerns the street-sale of old boots and shoes. ”

“ The life of the street trader is a continual gamble, unredeemed by any steady work; it is undisciplined and casual, and exposed to all the temptations of the street at its worst. The great majority of the boys who sell papers drift away into crime or idleness or some form of living by their wits. ”

“ As shops follow the shifting currents of travel, rentals move with them, the value of retail land depending on the number of people passing, qualified by their purchasing power, the causes which bring them past the. property and their method of locomotion. This dependence of retail business on daily traffic is due to the operation of the laws of chance, by which of a given number of passers-by a certain proportion will become customers.
The mention of traffic within a city suggests the double* function of a city street as contrasted with the single function of a country road. ”

“ There are now not above six men (of the ordinary street-selling class) who carry on this trade regularly. Sometimes twelve stalls or barrows may be seen; sometimes one, and sometimes none. Calculating that each of the six dealers takes 12s. weekly, with a profit of 6s. or 7s., we find 187l. 4s. expended in this department of street-commerce. The principal place for the trade is in High-street, Whitechapel.
Of the Street-Sellers of Second-Hand Miscellaneous Articles. ”

“ Nothing can be truer in theory than the economical principle that banking is a trade and only a trade, and nothing can be more surely established by a larger experience than that a Government which interferes with any trade injures that trade. The best thing undeniably that a Government can do with the Money Market is to let it take care of itself. ”

“ Business men and well-to-do women in the shopping districts resemble people one may see in any other city, but away from the heart of town one encounters numerous farmers and their wives who have driven into town in their old buggies, farm wagons, or little motors to shop and trade, just as though Kansas City were some little county seat, instead of a city of the size of Edinburgh. ”

“ One or more get for a time a better business than the others, but no single bank permanently obtains an unquestioned predominance. None of them gets so much before the others that the others voluntarily place their reserves in its keeping. A republic with many competitors of a size or sizes suitable to the business, is the constitution of every trade if left to itself, and of banking as much as any other. A monarchy in any trade is a sign of some anomalous advantage, and of some intervention from without. ”

“ But these defects and others in the democratic structure of commerce are compensated by one great excellence. No country of great hereditary trade, no European country at least, was ever so little "sleepy," to use the only fit word, as England; no other was ever so prompt at once to seize new advantages. A country dependent mainly on great "merchant princes" will never be so prompt; their commerce perpetually slips more and more into a commerce of routine. A man of large wealth, however intelligent, always thinks, more or less—"I have a great income, and I want to keep it. ”

“ Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. ”

“ The streets are narrow, crooked, and dirty, imparting to the place the air of intricate bewilderment of some of the old European cities. Much of the trade is done in the streets, and entirely by women, who sit with their merchandize on the ground before them, and their gold-scales in their laps, waiting for customers. It would perhaps add to our manliness of character, if at least the minor departments of traffic were resigned to the weaker sex, among ourselves. ”

“ I am glad to see this man, whose business it is to sweep up the mud and dirt from the streets, and collect it in a cart. Surely, no part of London needs this work more than Thames Street and Billingsgate; for, even in a dry season, the narrowness of the streets, and great traffic of men and women, with fish in wet baskets, &c. keep the pavement constantly dirty. When the cart is well laden, he empties it into some waste place in the outskirts of the town, or delivers it at some wharf by the water-side; and as it proves a very rich manure, he finds it a profitable and useful occupation. ”

“ Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade. [Pg 303] Were cities able to talk with one another as men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever. ”

“ These paving stones are certainly the cheapest possible mode of keeping the roofs on the houses in such a windy region, but they look odd.
None of the streets, except one high up the hill, with a row of fine temples and temple grounds, call for any notice. Nearly every house is a shop; most of the shops supply only the ordinary articles consumed by a large and poor population; either real or imitated foreign goods abound in Main Street, and the only novelties are the furs, skins, and horns, which abound in shops devoted to their sale. ”

“ On principle, if there was a perfect division of labour, every industry would have to be perfectly prosperous in order that any one might be so. So far, therefore, from its being at all natural that trade should develop constantly, steadily, and equably, it is plain, without going farther, from theory as well as from experience, that there are inevitably periods of rapid dilatation, and as inevitably periods of contraction and of stagnation.
Nor is this the only changeable element in modern industrial societies. Credit—the disposition of one man to trust another—is singularly varying. ”

“ The street is roofed in overhead with long rafters and pieces of matting, through which a dusty sunbeam straggles here{4} and there, casting patches of light upon the moving crowd. The unpaved thoroughfare—a mere narrow lane, full of ruts and watered profusely twice or thrice a day—is lined with little wooden shop fronts, like open cabinets full of shelves, where the merchants sit cross-legged in the midst of their goods, looking out at the passers-by and smoking in silence. ”

“ The streets are well paved, and have broad trottoirs of hard red brick. The police regulations are excellent, and cleanliness is much attended to, the kennels being washed daily during the summer months, with water from the reservoirs. The markets, or shambles, extend half-a-mile in length, from the wharf up Market-street, in six divisions. In addition to the shambles, farmers' waggons, loaded with every kind of country produce for sale, line the street. ”

“ Had we been rich we would have blowed ourselves for fair. The display was too tempting. We walked to Fourth Street, which is the next one to Third, and then slowly sauntered up toward Market again. The blocks along Third and Fourth Streets were long ones, and from Market Street down to the railroad depot the distance is a mile or more. But we were not tired, so on we kept. Fourth Street was about like Third Street, and afforded many interesting sights. Billy and me liked everything we saw. When we finally reached Market Street again we crossed it and took in another quarter of the city. ”

“ Such being the case, it is evident that the number of mechanics in the streets must be daily augmenting, for, as I have before said, street-trading is the last shift of an unemployed artizan to keep himself and his family from the “Union.” ”

“ The mercantile community will have been unusually fortunate if during the period of rising prices it has not made great mistakes. Such a period naturally excites the sanguine and the ardent; they fancy that the prosperity they see will last always, that it is only the beginning of a greater prosperity. They altogether over-estimate the demand for the article they deal in, or the work they do. They all in their degree—and the ablest and the cleverest the most—work much more than they should, and trade far above their means. ”

“ Its essence is that a very large number of persons agree to trust a very few persons, or some one person. Banking would not be a profitable trade if bankers were not a small number, and depositors in comparison an immense number. But to get a great number of persons to do exactly the same thing is always very difficult, and nothing but a very palpable necessity will make them on a sudden begin to do it. ”

“ At these moments, therefore, the three agencies which, as has been explained, greatly develope trade, combine to develope it simultaneously.
The certain result is a bound of national prosperity; the country leaps forward as if by magic. But only part of that prosperity has a solid reason. As far as prosperity is based on a greater quantity of production, and that of the right articles—as far as it is based on the increased rapidity with which commodities of every kind reach those who want them—its basis is good. ”