The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-12 00:00:00

4 VOICE FROM 71TE WAREHOUSR.

TO THE EDITOR OF Tilt: SUN.
SIR,--The col(11,lori of the recognizA " Lowlon
poor" has eN cited Mr. Peabody's munificent com-
passion ; will any one try to improve that of our
city's unrecognised poor—its slruggiing traders, a
very much larger class than is generally supposed,
and by whom an amount of suffering is often en-
dured, not the less keen because it makes no sign,
and which might be easily removed in a way that
would benefit both the helper and the helped ? This
class comprises intelligent, well-conducted citizens,
fit to occupy a fair position in society, which, in-
deed, some of them attain; they rent and keep in
sightly repair good and middle-class houses, and,
forming, as they do, a large proportion of the re-
spectable tax-paying population of London, they
are not unworthy, even as a matter of policy,
the consideration and help of their richer
brethren, the merchant princes, to whom they
are in many ways indirectly useful, and it is not
improbable that to supply their
,occasional wants
might even form as safe an investment as another
Turkish loan. Many of these men live with a
frugality that would be despised by a well-paid
artisan, and work for a number of hours that no
banker's clerk would submit to; yet, in spite of this
industry and economy, their lives sometimes pass
away drearily, in a miserable, continuous struggle
for ways and means; and why? Because they
know of no place in this great and rich city where,
on any emergency, they can obtain money at a rate
sufficiently moderate to leave them a fair share of
their profits, and so they fall into the hands of the
bill-discounters, for whose benefit, in too many
cases, they thenceforth trade, and not for their
own.

Take an example :—A small wholesale mer-
chant has a run of losses (heavy for him) which
sweep away more than all his working capital.
Worldly wisdom says, " Follow the example of
your debtors and become bankrupt yourself;" but
he is honest, industrious, and proud—perhaps even
proud of his name (commerce has sometimes even its
heraldry as well as rank) ; he resolves, therefore,
that no one else shall suffer for his losses ; he will
work himself clear, and will not have recourse to
what he esteems the disgraceful expedient of bank-
ruptcy.

This is his plan :—He will borrow for a few years
sufficient money at a fair rate of interest to enable
him to meet the demands brought on him by these
losses; be is clearing, say, £6OO per annum, and
has been spending hitherto perhaps nearly two-
thirds of it; this must no longer be the case; he
will retrench till he is free from debt, the summer
lodgings out of town shall be given up, and if his
wife will help him in the counting-house, &c., he
can dispense with a bookkeeper ; he calculates the
proposed savings, and has good reason to hope that
he will be free from debt in less than seven years
if they are carried out.

We will assume that our trader's wife agrees
cheerfully to his wishes ; perhaps she even suggests
one or two more economies—wine shall not be used
unless in cases of illness, meat suppers abolished
except on special occasions, and she will study how
to turn and re-trim dresses and bonnets, so as to
require very few new ones. Imagine all this done,
and let us see the result at the end of seven years.
If our trader obtained his loan with that all im-
portant condition, a fair rate of interest, it is long
since paid back. But how if he failed to get it ?
Suppose that, to meet the bills of his bankrupt
debtors as they became due, he has been forced to
the miserable expedient of getting money from the
discount houses, not the leading ones—his wants
are not large enough to make him an eligible cue-
tomer for them. Suppose him paying 12, 15, 20,
30, 40 per cent., what will then have been gained
by the additional labours so willingly undertaken,
the petty economies so hopefully planned? What
but this—to the billbroker the profit ;to the worker
a life of wearing misery, of fruitless efforts, ending
perhaps in reckless despondency and utter ruin.
Will this be held an extreme case Perhaps it
may be so, and yet very much of it is taken, briefly
and truly, from the bitter experiences of, Sir,

. ,
Yours, &c.,
THE WIFE OF A STRUGGLING TRADER..

April 8.