Shoddy.

Bruce Herald, Volume X, Issue 946, 16 October 1877, Page 7

Shoddy.

(From c Saunders's News Letter.') The great question of the day is where to get things good. People are continually addressing one another anxiously, and saying : " Where do you get your tea, your wine, your tobacco, your furniture, your gloves, your socks, your umbrellas ?" As though every street is not crowded with

shops, every newspaper; crammed with advertisements, and traders only too anxious *To open accounts and deliver parcels. Still, ,■ the fact remains matcrfamiliasis never ..-bo happy as whenshe caii- obtain the direction of a new; shop, where she can get what she admired so much, last week at a friend's house; and'gentlemen "are the same about their cigars or their tailors. What is the meaning of this distrust in the public mind? Is it not the terrible prevalence of Bnoddtae3s in the commercial world that

provokes this uneasy desire for change on the part of the customer 1 • Sometimes the buyer geta an article that not only looks well, but lasts well, and then how proud he is of his good luck ! How pleased he is to glorify the article to his admiring and halt-incredulous friends ! But what is the more common case ? A hat lasts three months at the utmost. Time was when a good hat lasted a year. That was the time, we suppose, when all hatters were mad; What with bad felt, and new shapes, hatters now ought never to be anything but the sanest in the community. Boots, again, are liable to the vice of shoddineßS. Where do you get your boots ? is a query of every day occurrence, prompted, no doubt, by misfits, bad leather, and a tendency to run down at the heels. Shoddiness is the vice of the age — a vice that betokens the degeneracy as well as the increasing dishonesty of the times. It is a short-sighted policy, moreover, for the tradesman who has a good name and a fair reputation will always advance steadily to prosperity. The shoddy man makes his money by fits and starts, by bankrupt stocks or Brummsgem wares, and though attractive enough to a certain class who love the cheap and nasty, he can never hope for the patronage which lasts a lifetime. But of all the shoddy preparations which provoke the greatest indignation in our own climate, the umbrella is perhaps the shoddiest. A companion which ought to last till it is stolen, and which therefore pro hono pullico and for the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers, ought to be u uri vailed for strength, symmetry and enduranca, has degenerated into a mere flimsy pretence, the sport, of "tie elements and the ridicule of the holder. Why TimbrelSaa are ever stolen nowadays is a matter of surprise to us. Doubtless dishonesty brings its own

Teward. But enough- of such articles. Ah *s^uno disce omnes. Let us come .to food and drink and see what terrible dangers shoddiness affords to other coats besides those on our backs. What about the silent spirit, and the champagne concocted of a delicate preparation of paraffin, fusil oil, and other luxuries from the light-hearted druggist? What about the- coffee and the chicory, the tea and hawthorn ? The Havana box full of British cigars ? All shoddy, The J matutinal milk suffers terribly from one of our most admirable institutions, the Vartry waterworks. Fines are of no avail. Aqua Pura is cheap, and there are doubtless many earnest traders whose one deep sorrow is that the Vartry can never be adulterated and sold at a profit. Cheer up, yo votaries of the*? great god Shoddy ; the time may come when the pump will dispense riches to many! But even at night, when shoddy sixops are shut, and we sit down in the calm seclusion of our study to enjoy Jbalf an hour with the beat authors, we are rutiely awakened to a sense of the unworthLaeßS of our fellow men. The gaspipes give one of their longest gulps, and the light dwindles to the luminosity of a ci-ild's patent »ight-lamp. Presently there is heard a sound as of a Bmall hurricane, and and the air rushes up to tha burner with a ' rapidity worthy of a puffing-hole, and presently there is total darkness. Then we sit still and indulge in raiiinga and revilings of shoddy ga* }/ and wonder why as steadily g*i the bills go up the lights go down. Ifc is a matter of national regret that we are so infected with this terrible disease. Steam lias produced the best and the worst materials and articles, and the worst have the superiority in number. A house can be stocked with ■.'•■ shoddy at half the price of sterling goods.

The consequences are that there is double the amount of worthlessness in the market. Take, for instance", the porcelain trade, and compare the productions now with tuC.se of twenty-five yeara ago. A ton of trash is sol4 for a pound of good taste. Good things are made -only for the great and wealthy,-' the inuHitude, nay, the substantial weli-to dp middle class, earning their money hardly, but -' willing to spend it hats dapmely, must pdtup with the shoddy. Art itself is declining iu to $he Bftine i grqpyo; &# U Wcpming * niere

vehicle for paltry knick-knacks, giving false, meretricious ideas of the beautiful. The wants of the nation seem to be growing .steadily every year, and the supply more than keeps pace with the demand. But it is a supply of Dead Sea apples, pretty enough to look at, but dust and ashes within. The commodities, like the racehorses of the time, are all speed and no staying power. They shine resplendent to-day, and are eclipsed in utter shabbiness and decay to-morrow.