376 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



deed not to have learned something in these my best years. 

 Since then I have said again and again, and now repeat it, 

 there is no large class of laboring men who work so hard as 

 do the New York merchants, unless it be the merchants of 

 the other large cities. I do not say the clerks, but was there 

 ever one of them who did not aspire and strive to become 

 himself a merchant? It is this incessant strife to that end 

 that makes their life a struggle. No sooner are their services 

 sold for one year than they are constantly anxious to know 

 whether they can be negotiated for another year. The 

 clerk's salary is usually equal to his value and is generally 

 liberal. They dress well and are compelled to. Their com- 

 plexion and white hands are a perpetual delight to the coun- 

 try girls and the envy of every country lad, but let me tell 

 these same young farmers that I went from a farm to New 

 York when I was twenty years old, and I never knew 

 what it was to be tired out until I was on my feet from 

 morning until often late at night tramping on a floor two 

 hundred and seventy feet deep, to say nothing of the fre- 

 quent running up and down long flights of stairs. There 

 were no elevators in those days. This was a small store 

 compared with what exist now, though one of the largest 

 then. It v/as a relief to be sent out on an errand and to get 

 a rest on the sidewalk, yet now when I look back upon that 

 period in my life and contrast it with that of my employers 

 and with my own experience subsequently when I was also 

 an employer, I think my easiest days were when my work 

 was laid out for me. It is much harder to do a mercantile 

 business now than it was then. In fact, it is hardly possible 

 to do a small business successfully now in the cities. It must 

 be of enormous proportions to have a feir chance of moderate 

 success, and this entails its proportion of added cares and 

 strain upon the principals. 



The great bulk of merchandise is now sold on the road 

 by commercial travellers. To keep these expensive men at 

 work great duplicate stocks of goods have to be kept. The 

 best friend I have in the world is one who was a boy from 

 my own neighborhood. For more than forty years he has 

 been a successful manufacturing jewelry merchant in New 

 York City, and he tells me that the details and perplexities 



