Success in the jobbing-business makes such demand on talent and capacity as outsiders seldom dream of.  Half-a-dozen Secretaries of State, with a Governor and a President thrown in, would not suffice to constitute a first-class jobbing-firm.  The general or special incompetency of these distinguished functionaries in their several spheres may probably be covered by the capacity of their subordinates.  The President of these United States—­of late years, at all events—­is not supposed to be in a position to know whether the will is or is not “a self-determining power.”  But no jobbing-firm can thus cloak its deficiencies, or shirk its responsibilities.  Goods must be bought, and sold, and paid for; and a master-spirit in each department, capable of penetrating to every particular, and of controlling every subordinate, cannot be dispensed with.  He must know that every man to whom he delegates any portion of his work is competent and trustworthy.  He must be able to feel that the thing which he deputes to each will be as surely and as faithfully done as though done by his own hand.  No criticism is more common or more depreciatory than that “Such a one will not succeed, because he has surrounded himself with incompetent men.”

It is much to be regretted that it cannot be said, that no man can succeed in the jobbing-business who is not a model of courtesy.  Unhappily, our community has not yet reached that elevation.  But this may with truth be affirmed,—­that many a man fails for the want of courtesy, and for the want of that good-will to his fellows from which all real courtesy springs.  There is small chance for any man to succeed who does not command his own spirit.  There is no chance whatever for an indolent man; and, in the long run, little or no chance for the dishonest man.  The same must be said for the timid and for the rash man.  Nor can we offer any encouragement to the intermittent man.  From year’s end to year’s end, the dry-goods jobber finds himself necessitated to be studying his stock and his ledger.  He knows, that, while men sleep, the enemy will be sowing tares.  In his case, the flying moments are the enemy, and bad stock and bad debts are the tares.  To weed out each of these is his unceasing care.  And as both the one and the other are forever choking the streams of income which should supply the means of paying his own notes, his no less constant care is to provide such other conduits as shall insure him always a full basin at the bank.  Nobody but a jobber can know the vexation of a jobber who cannot find money to cash his notes when they are beginning to be thrown into the market at a price a shade lower than his neighbor’s notes are sold at.

In conclusion, a few material facts should be stated.

As a general proposition, it is not to be denied, that those who are in haste to get rich will find in the dry-goods jobbing-business many temptations and snares into which one may easily fall.  A young man who is not fortified by a faithful home-training, and by sound religious principle, will be likely enough to degenerate into a heartless money-maker.