The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-02-21
VOL. XVIII. NO. 80.
Shopkeepers inkParis.

ShopkeeperS inAParis.
If any one wants, will not say to
live cheaply, but even to get his
moneys worth for what he spends,
Paris is no place to reside in at present
Under the empire, everything was dear,
but was, at the same time, the very
best that could be- had in Europe.
Under the republic, living, clothing,
and everything upon which men must
spend money, are much more expen-
sive, and the very worst of the kind.
The commercial rules of Paris shop
keepers seem to be that, after adding to
the prime cost of an article all the diff
ferent outlays of custom duty, freight,
insurance, rent, wages of shopmel, and
ten per cent. net profit, they then
double the sum total, and ask their GUS
toners that price. Rents, taxes, and
other expenses, are not small at the
| West End of London but the resident
in Paris who sends for what he requires
in the way of clothing to a retail shop
in Piccadilly or Regent Street, has the
goods sent by rail to Paris, and pays
duty on their arrival, will find that he
has spent fifty to sixty per cent. less
than if he purchased the same articles
on the boulevards or the Rue Richelieu.
And this is the system which not only
the few resident English in Paris, but
French families also, are adopting.
The few English tradesmen that are to
be found in the city are largely patron
lied by the upper classes of French
people; for they find them honest and
truthful-qualities which seem to be
unknown among the present race of
Partisan shopkeepers. And this dis
trust extends to all callings and trades.
1 met, the other day, a well-known
member of the Assembly, coming out
Spent & Phipppss, the house-agents in
the Rue de Rivoi.
"What on earth can you be wanting
here ?" asked him. "I thought that
none but English and Americans came
here for apartments"
"Mon cher" he replied, 81 seek
your countrymen to do my business for
me, because they are civil and honest
qualities which our French tradesmen
seem to have buried in the earth, and
forgotten where they hid them"
In sober truth, it is difficult to i'm
agine a greater contrast in every way
than that to be witnessed between Eng
lish and Partisan shopkeepers of the
present time. The former is n man
who works to live, and to put by some
thing for his family. He goes to his
business with will for a certain num-
Der of hours, but looks to the retire
ment of his own home in the evening,
as the reward of his days labor. The
latter never leaves his shop, day or
night even on Sunday he sticks to his
work, and keeps his place open, as if
frightened unto death that a few stray |
francs should escape him. To save the |
expense of a book-keeper, his wife |
takes her place all day long at the desk. |
To enable her to do do this, the one or |
two children they may have in the |
course of their married life are sent out |
into the country, to a wet-nurse, the |
moment they are born; and, save on |
very exceptional days, when the shop is |
closed for a few hours, she never sees |
them again until they are eighteen
months or two years old. One of the
leading medical men in Paris-a gen.
tleman whose name is well aud favor
ably known all over Europe
me, the other day, that, among the
women of the 6OurgeOisie class in Paris,
not three per cent. who became mothers
nursed their own children not more
than twenty per cent. even OF the most
and well-to-dO shopkeeping
classes had wet-nurses at home, on
account of the expense, but sent their
infants into the country to nurse and
that, of those thus sent into the coun-
try, more than seventy per cent. died
from neglect before they were sent
home again. All these facts are per-
fectly well known to the Parisians and
yet, among the middle classes, the
practice continues, simply because it is
cheaper and more economical that the
wife, as well as the husband, should
work in the shop or warehouse; for the
habit is as common among wholesale as
retail tradesmen. Many Englishmen
new to France admire very much the
custom of n smart, well-dressed wife
presiding over the book-keeper's de-
partment Of her husbands shop, little
of the home misery to help
less young children, which the custom
entails. But to class whose politics,
whose religion, whose existence, and
the very air they breathe, are summed
up in the word "money"-whose very
god is made up of the bank-notes they
and the investments in the
funds they are able to make-it would
be useless to attempt making them
aware of their folly and wickedness.-
BeLQrdUid.