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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 30

Further Advantages

Further Advantages.

There would be fewer bankruptcies. Most people have noticed a very common trait in human character which urges a man to purchase articles more freely when he is promised that long credit shall be given. Who has not been induced to buy something that either he does not want or cannot afford; and how many of us have never consented to purchase some article that could very well have been done without, simply because of an irresistible promise that there would be page 5 "no hurry for the money, you know?" Am I right in contending that the credit system is entirely to blame for such purchases being made? Is it not true that the thought that the money need not be forthcoming for weeks or months, induces numbers of people to enter into liabilities far beyond their means? to say "yes" when they should have said "no?"

I know that the experience of all my readers will prompt them to admit that if every purchase that is made under the sun were paid for in cash, or at any rate entered into with the knowledge that payment must be forthcoming within a short lapse of time men and women would stop to consider whether their means would permit of such an indulgence; with the result that a very large number of purchases would not be made. It may be argued that this would be a bad thing for the tradesman or merchant who would otherwise have sold these goods; and I can already fancy that these outspoken ideas will be resented in business quarters, since they have a tendency to promote caution and restrict reckless expenditure. But what benefit is there in selling goods if they are never to be paid for? Would the sound trader rather sell indiscriminately to all and every of those who condescend to take his stuff, and run a risk of a hundred to one of them never being paid? Or would he rather pass fewer entries, sell to fewer customers, and be sure of collecting certain money and reaping certain profits? The latter, assuredly, and it is the latter course that I am advocating, and which forms the heart and soul of this paper. So we are friends after all; and it is to be hoped that I shall not be again misunderstood. And it is only logical to conclude that if more caution and discrimination were exercised in the purchase of articles by the general public; and if the exercise of those faculties led men and women to habits of thrift; then everyone would learn to live within his means, and there would be no bankruptcies. Putting aside the expense that the country is put to over the official management of bankrupt estates; or if not the country, at any rate the creditors in those estates, the business world would be raised into a condition of soundness that it is at present difficult to imagine.