THREE BRASS BALLS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 12

THREE BRASS BALLS

THE POOR MANS BANK EXPERIENCES OF A PAWNER. Wo wero talking after dinner, a faw men brought from various corners of time and space— talking of matters of finance, high finance— and suddenly tho youngest talker, who came from the "other side," announced that in his particular province of Manitoba there are no pawnshops (writes Clarence Roojt in the Daily Chronicle). You can't pawn anything but real estate, which will not fit into the shelves of a shop. " What a horrible place," laughed the man from China, and he gave a swift picture of the Chinese pawnshops that tower with their contents, a country where everybody has something in pawn to some-body else. And then a quiet Englishman averred that ho always pawned his fur coat in April artd_ got it out in November, because-— you will perceive the economy of the scheme-— they had to See it didn t get moth-eaten. And if you borrowed a sovereign on it, that was cheap storage. My own experience as a pawner is moderate, but pleasant. I had once, as a student in Leipzig, very hard up, to pack my dress clothes in a bag and take them to an obscure Jew to get 13a for University fees. Then there came tfya invitation to the dance. Tho Jew trusted me. He let out my dress clothes for 6d on condition that I brought them back next day. I, having danced, the courtesy was returned, and—well, you may reckon out what percentage was charged on my honour to restore a dres3 suit, hypothecated, borrowed, returned within twenty- four hours. IN, THE SHOP WINDOW. But as a pawner I am a wretched instance. My only modern attempt was to got rid of a bicycle. The conscientious clerk wouldn t take it unless I could produce the receipt, though I pointed the finger across the road where I had bought and paid for it. He didn't want it. If it had been a ring. Ah! If it had been a ring ! The shop— you must have observed the front of the pawnbroker's shop, which is so different from the secreted boxes at the side— offers you the most surprising bargains. You can buy anything from a flat iron to a pair of opera glasses or full set of dinner plates or a picture — 3uch pictures ! At the front and in the window the diamonds glitter. There is also a notice prevalent among the pawnbrokers that " plate and cutlery are lent on hire." The plate and cutlery are disposed most alluringly in the windows, and obviously somebody has discovered that ready-money is better than silver plate and someone else has dis- | covered that silver plate brings readymoney. I MYSTERIES OF FINANCE. It is all a mystery of high and low finance, for the pawnbroker is doing for the poor exactly what the bank is doing for the rich. There are, lam told, occasions on which a bank will lend a trader --as an overdraft — a sum of money on the mere stake of personal honour, just aa the Jew trustccf me for sixpence on my bare word to return him my dress clothes to-morrow morning. The whole world of trade is built, it seems, on banks which are glorified pawnshops, with bita of paper as securities, and an occasional access of confidence in the honour of a, man who means to meet his bills and beat them. But the rich man's bank, with its occasional and Cataclysmic collapses, has not tho perfect security of the poorman's bank. What is the weight of a bit of paper against that of a flat iron? -a weighty, necessary, ponderable thing that has its value — estimated rightly by the pawnbroker. Tho poor man's banker makes no mistakes, or at least, if he does, he is no ! competent pawnbroker. He has the legal right to charge 25 per cent, on his loan, and he has absolute security, because he holds the goods and never lends more than he chooses. And he never charges less than 25 per cent, on a loan with the security he puts in his store. There is one little difference between the financial firms and the pawnbroker, in that tjie former are dealing with the men who are doubling the value of their loans, and the latter is chaffering with men who arc halving" them. But the pawnbroker is on velvet. I cannot conceive a pawnbroker in the Bankruptcy Court. His security is on his shelves, and, if he has eyes > in his head, ho never ac.cepts anything— such as my bicyclethat no olio could ever want again.