A CONDENSED CHAPTER ON SUGAR.
We are perhaps possessed of a devil—the devil of unrest—but we propose to indulge in continued activity on the subject of sugar sales and the nonsense of losing money on them until wewear out a gross of the free sample pens which Esterbrook is distributing, or hail the coming in of a better system of doing business. Wisdom has cried in the atreets about this matter until her voice is all gone, and the Solomon count it as vanity to say more ; but it will not down, it is truth, and however much crushed to earth it will cer tainly rise again. How often it rises as a ghost at a meeting of creditors, or how frequently it skulks in at a grocer's death-bed, to whisper in his ear that his children are left without substance, we leave for other statisticians. Yet, if a moral must be had for our story, we shall not stop for live grocers, or dead grocers, but force all lines of argument into our service and fight it out like Grant, if it takes a whole presidential term to get our object.
In our issue of last week we scattered out ideas over the whole paper like pepper and bird shot. This week we condense them into a slug. But atop !—if you read further you are a fool—a self-convicted fool. Better lay the paper down than to read your own folly written in black and white before your open eyes. And then think of your parents and your grand parents (if they were in the trade) surely you will not wish to blacken their memories even though their sins are tumbling down on the heads of the third and fourth generation in the shape of customs of the trade. No, let the matter rest, and go on with your eyes shut and your ideas asleep rather than testify to the truth• against yourself and your forefathers.
But if you do read, you cannot escape conviction of your sins and you had best reform quickly and try to hasten a revival among your neighbors in the trade by sending them down to our office to subscribe at once.
Nearly half your purchases in value are sugars. The refiner says he lives on the simple interest on the investment he has made. Now, do you get interest on that half of your stock ? The job ber takes care to secure at least one-eighth cent per pound on his sugars in original packages ; d•you get this margin on your coun ter sales ? When sugars advance the jobber ten times out of a possible nine gets his eighth and the amount of the advance on all the sugars he holds. Do you secure any such margin on an ad vancing market ? The wholesaler sells you the sugar in a barrel which he gets without extra charge, and for which you get about 20 cents ; how much do you pay for one pound bags and twine ? The jobber charges hauling on your sugars, as he ought to do.
Do you follow his example and charge your customer for time, trouble and loss in putting up these profitless goods ? On Front Street or Water Street the scale turns once. How often does it turn on your counter ? Even in such a paper as ours jobbers and manufacturers are very close about their advertising expenditure. Do you think you can afford to sell half your stock at cost because it is an advertisement ? Your wholesaler hates to sell you sugars on credit because his margin at one-eighth is so close. Can you afford to credit your customer when nearly one-half his purchases show you no profit ? (Don't say you don't trust your goods out ; die honest if you are struck dumb in the effort. We know you only trust So and So, your relatives, &c., &c). You rejoice in a good margin on small fruits. Do you feel half so happy when the customer adds 10 cents worth of sugar to his 10 cents worth of grapes, and reduces your percentage as much below one-half your first ideas as the price of the sugar runs below its cost.
You ask a wider profit on fruits because they are perishable, do you realize how many pounds of sugar perish when it dries out ? Your customer puts your tea and coffee into the same cup with your sugar—why should you make fish of one and flesh of the other—get a profit on this and not on that ? Does the mixture of your wide margins on the tea (which he is ever angry at) and your comparatively more disastrous loss on the sugar (which he says is compensated for by sand, terra alba, and water) improve the flavor of the infusion ? But we are making merry at your expense when in reality it is a most serious subject ; one in which your solvency may be closely concerned, to say nothing of your personal contentment and the future support of y our family. Do you look at it aright ? Are you ready to remedy it ? Look back over your experience ; cal culate how much sugar, you • have lost—string, paper, and sugar altogether ; read our list of questions again as if it were your cat echism, and then if you can stand the loss of interest, the absence of profit, the nonparticipation in an advance, the paper, the time, the turn of the scale, the extravagance of using it as an adver tisement, the credits without margin and the waste in weight—if you can stand all these items—well, we can also.