When in the winter season I see skates prominently
exposed for sale in our shop windows I am reminded
of another of the odd or rather side industries of
Birmingham. I refer to the steel toy trade.
The word toy seems appropriate enough when applied
to skates and quoits, but seems a curious word to
designate such articles of distinct utility as hammers,
pincers, turnscrews, pliers, saws, and chisels, yet
these articles and many others of a similar kind are
included in the words “steel toys.”
This steel toy trade, if not a great industry in Birmingham,
is an old-established one, and has been carried on
for years by good well-known local names, such as
Richard Timmins and Sons, Messrs. Wynn and Co., and
others.
NEW AND OLD STYLE TRADING.
In an earlier part of these chapters I referred to
the new style of shopkeeping that has developed in
Birmingham with the growing size and importance of
the town and city. I now return to the subject
again for the purpose of showing that although Birmingham
seems to be much to the fore in the matter of up-to-time
shopkeeping, there are still a limited number of traders
and shopkeepers who keep pretty much to the old lines,
and evidently desire to carry on their businesses in
the way that their fathers did before them.
And in touching this question it is worth while considering
for a moment how differently two men or two firms
in the same trade will carry on their businesses,
and yet both succeed. To put it more plainly,
one firm will bombard the public with “fetching”
advertisements, and get business, so to speak, at
the bayonet’s point. Another firm in the
same line of trade lays siege to its customers in
a quiet, systematic way, does its best to prevent
any sorties in the direction of rival camps, and is
content to keep its connection well guarded and do
business in a quiet, undemonstrative way.
Of course the man who goes in for publicity—wide
publicity—and assaults the public with
“loud” advertisements in all directions,
drives the roaring trade, or the trade that roars
loudest. He gets larger returns, and if his business
is well managed he should secure larger profits.
Beside these trade Dives’s the humble, quiet,
unostentatious Lazarus seems quite out in the cold.
Not so, however. The latter picks up some good
crumbs, if not some pretty substantial crusts, which
he puts into his wallet with a gentle, unostentatious
satisfaction which quite contents him.
I could give chapter and verse for what I am now saying,
and without hesitation or difficulty could name two
firms in Birmingham that are carrying on the same
trade, making the same everyday articles of consumption;
yet, while the name of one firm is in everybody’s
mouth and is known to the ends of the earth, the name
of the other is hardly ever seen save upon the productions
they turn out. Yet I know for a fact that this
latter firm make some nice solid profits out of their
quiet business, though nothing perhaps at all comparable
with their more enterprising rival. It is a case
of thousands in one case and tens of thousands probably
in the other. But enterprise should, of course,
bring its own reward.
