LONG V. SHORT CREDIT.

If

THE prospects of British commerce are now much brighter than they were six months ago, and yet no one can say trade generally is as good as it should be. We are apt to forget that it takes some time for trade to get into a bad state, and quite as long to get right again. A succession of bad harvests has always been fatal to a prosperous commerce. agriculturists become poor, you at once diminish the spending power of the nation, and money flows into the wrong channels. A man must have bread, and meat, if possible; but clothing, in the way of boots, stockings, and broadcloth, he will try and do without, until the good time arrives, and, as a matter of

To the Editor of the Hosier and Glover. SIR,-These two important items are both much needed, and have been too long delayed. In 1870 I wrote to the Postmaster-General asking for a revision of our money order system, and in 1871 suggested "postal cheques" as being preferable to Mr. Green's (not Mr. Chetwynd's) idea of postal notes. The objection to postal notes is the same as to Bank of England notes-they cannot be sent safely in letters unless cut in half, or in registered letters (and notes for 5s., 10s., or 20s. will not enable a remittee to send the requisite sum unless supplemented by stamps), so that the "note" idea is unsafe, and would be a great temptation to postmen. What is really wanted is a less costly system of money orders. This would be secured by postal cheques made out in duplicate form by the copying process, all payable to order, but negotiable and crossed, so that, all being paid through bankers, they would be paid at the Bank of England, or at the Clearing House, and debited to the Postmaster-General's account. All the Postmaster would have to do would be to send to the head office the duplicates of the cheques issued daily. The cheques to be issued at the risk of payer, those under 40s. to have a penny stamp, over 40s. and under £5 a twopenny stamp, over £5 a threepenny stamp. By this method a great public boon would be conferred, and, in my opinion, a large profit made by the Post Office, the present system being most costly, every order issued, whether for £5 or £10, costing the department threepence.

As regards the cheaper transmission of parcels, I would rather the railway companies performed their own legitimate work. For some years I have written to the different companies, pointing out to them how our business is checked through the high charge for carriage of small parcels. It does seem incredible that the managers and directors of our railway companies should allow Sutton, Foster, the Globe, and others to undercharge them and take away their business, the companies doing the work, and being paid luggage rate, when, if their prices were reduced, they could have received the higher rate Sutton and others obtain, and which yield to these middle-men a large sum yearly. Their conduct is inexcusable; also that of the Post Office in their high charge for money orders (higher now for orders of 40s. and £5 than they have been since 1839), after Sir Rowland Hill having proved so clearly and successfully that the cost of letters-and the same applies to parcels-is the cost incurred in collecting and distributing of the same, and not for the transferring or conveying them from the one town to the other. The distance, whether five miles or 500, makes but little difference in the expense, whilst the increased business, and the saving of time by having one uniform charge for all parcels, according to weight, and all prepaid by stamps, would be immense. In fact, we want the companies to develop, and not, as hitherto, check, the small parcel traffic, and the increase in their revenue would astonish them, and convince them how suicidal to their own interests the present system is.-Yours faithfully, 77, St. Martin's-lane, W.C.

JAMES PLATT.

AMONG the list of candidates for senatorial honours we are happy to find that of Mr. Hogg, of the firm of Hogg, McIntyre and Co., Addle-street, who will contest the constituency of Derry at the forthcoming General Election. Mr. Hogg has a large manufactory at Derry, and has every chance of success.

working-men spend far too little on clothing, and sadly too much on eating and drinking.

Then people economise, even those who have no occasion, though economy is a most excellent virtue, it is a bad thing, as far as good trade is concerned. Real economy after all is wise spending, and if you expect to reap, you must sow. There are many other causes to account for a continued depression in trade, but the most important is the derangement of the system of credit, which underlies the whole fabric. When trade is good, credit is most easily obtained. When trade is bad everybody is suspicious of each other. At the same time such are the delicate complications of modern business that if the credit of one man is impaired the credit of every other man is injured also. There is a universal law of interdependence in the brotherhood of trade. There must be confidence up and down the scale of business, or there can be no satisfactory results.

In a somewhat different direction credit is abused very much by unwise transactions, if not recklessly trading, in a bad time. Orders are few, but everybody wants the few there are, even at little or no profit at all. Honest traders, who desire to pay twenty shillings in the pound, are chary in giving orders. Those who do not care whether they pay twenty shillings or "nothing at all" in the pound, are not so chary, and so the people who will do a trade, fall into a trap, and get some bad or doubtful accounts into their books.

Many a man, too, has been ruined in a time of bad trade by a system of forced credit. A shopkeeper of decent reputation, feeling the bad effects of the community having little to spend, gives an order, say for £40, to a traveller who has called. He, being anxious to keep up falling returns, sends the shopkeeper a parcel of £80, or double the order given. Not having the courage to straightway return the whole parcel, the shopkeeper, failing to sell off the larger parcel, gets into difficulties about paying for it. Too often he gets no mercy or extension of credit, and if he says he cannot pay he gets a writ. is not by any means an extreme case.

This

In fact, there is not discrimination enough in giving a man time. Many cases of bankruptcy have occurred through credit being withheld at the right time. Let a man honestly say, "If you give me time I will pay," and very frequently he will be disbelieved. On the other hand, an offer of a very few shillings in the pound will be gratefully accepted.

The reform of the credit system, like so many other reforms, requires no Act of Parliament. It must come from business people themselves. On the whole, credit, indeed, is far too cheap. Thackeray has shown us, in the wonderful career of Becky Sharpe, how people can live like lords on nothing a year. And, truth to say, the genius of Becky Sharpe has found abundant imitators. Some ingenious French writers have tried to make out that credit is really capital. And capital, indeed, it is to some people-all the capital they are likely to have. Many bad debts are made at all times by unprincipled people having the cleverness to open accounts with all sorts of tradesmen. When one source is stopped they easily find another, and so not unfairly divide their patronage-such as it is.

The Long Firm transactions, though worse, are the same in principle. In either case there is no intention to pay, unless forced to do so.

Long credit, again, is a great evil-an evil equally to the giver and receiver of it. Some firms have been ruined simply by this. At the present time the cause of the farmer struggling with bad crops excites our deepest pity, but it is notorious in