"SPONGING" ON SHOPKEEPERS

Northern Advocate, 14 September 1932, Page 4

"SPONGING" ON SHOPKEEPERS

The London “Times” recently published a letter in which “A Shopkeeper of Forty dears’ Standing” lamented that shop after shop in. England was being compelled to shut up because people who had money to spend were hoarding it instead of spending it. Another correspondent pointed out that those who from avarice or from cowardice are playing the miser are not such pernicious elements in the social order as the people who’ “sponge” upon shopkeepers—a matter not far removed from that raised by a correspondent in the “Advocate.” today, who alleges that,some ablebodied s men in Whangarei are taking advantage of a free firewood offer. “The Times” says that economically this _ “sponging” on is merely silly, since the consequences' of getting without paying are plain to all but the meanest intellects. Morally it comes so near to stealing that it cannot he reconciled with any conception of good breeding or of gentle behaviour. It is unneigh hourly and it is unpatriotic. Adventurers like Rawdon Crawley and Becky Sharp, avowed parasites of society, living dangerously on their wits and their effrontery, may (in fiction) rouse a sneaking sympathy; and in real life there are gallant poor folk who have got innocently into debt and arc doing their utmost to get. out of it again. But there.-is. nothing attractive, noth-ing-gallant about people who have the means to pay their bills Init. do, hot pay them because they are-ioo idle, or too selfish, or too stupid, or too anxious to cut a dash and be thought grand. The shopkeeper, it may be said, has his remedies. He can refuse credit; he can sue for his money; he. can charge interest on overdue accounts. But the existence of remedies does not relieve the debtor of his obligation to pay; and any shopkeeper—especially one in a ‘small country place—could explain in five minutes how tradition, competition, a feeling of loyalty, a dislike of notoriety, a dread of losing custom, a score of causes, some material and others ~more~"subtle,’ make it all but impossible for him to insist upon his bare dues, to say nothing of any attempt to charge interest. He. prefers to hope, and to go on trusting in a rudimentary sense of honesty, which he finds too late does'not exist. He must then either make the honourable pay for the dishonourable (and that is very difficult in these days of “plain figures” and small profits), or he must drift into -bankruptcy, shut up his shop, discharge his assistants, and become a liability, instead of dicing an asset, to the parish and to the State. This is going on every day, and the consequences are serious, more serious because many professional men, doctors, dentists, and others, are in the same boat as the traders). The better sort of public opinion, “The Times” says, might do something to end the evil; it. would not be hard, perhaps, for a neighbourhood to make it clear that this sort of parasite, was not socially welcome. But it may very well be true that the shopkeepers are-more reluctant, than they need be to take strong measures; and that if, in these far from easy times, they would back each other up in insisting upon their rights, they would receive more support from the public than they expect. They would at any rate be doing a service to the country.