OCCUPATIONS

Southland Times, Issue 20791, 4 June 1929, Page 7

OCCUPATIONS

IN AND AROUND TOWN EVERY MAN HAS HIS STORY THE COUNTRY STOREKEEPER The work ot the man who has reached the top ot the ladder is generally well known, because it is assumed that the whole world is interested in success, and the successful man is given every opportunity to place hit views before the public. There is not room at the top of the ladder for all, but the man below may be as successful in his work as those in the more exalted positions. The fact that a man’s work is not known in every detail to the public does not necessarily mean that it is without interest or that the man engaged in it does not see and hear unusual things during the course of his daily toil. The country storekeeper is usually some young and ambitious shop assistant who desires to start in a business of his own and, not having sufficient capital for the town, goes further afield. He requires ambition—and it may be taken for granted that he has it, for he would not start out in the first place—a capacity for hard work, a thorough knowledge of the grocery trade, and a tactful manner. He will be expected to be always at the service of the whole district and woe betide him if he is not for nothing will more rapidly rob him of his customers than the refusal of their—often unreasonable—demands. The store has to be stocked with all the commodities necessary in the country household and many of those used about the farm and, if a farmer breaks a plough chain late in the evening and considers it beyond repair (even with a supply of fencing wire) he will cat his evening meal and then go and demand the opening of the store to provide him with a new chain. Then again the man about the farm may discover that his tobacco is exhausted round about bedtime and he will mount a horse and ride off to the store for a fresh supply. As often as not the store is also the post office and telephone bureau, and country people appear to have a habit of using the telephone and collecting mail at all sorts of unexpected hours of the night. But the storekeeper is rewarded for his customers are in the main honest and he does not have many bad debts even if some of them do remain unpaid for 12 months at a time. The storekeeper employs a youth or a girl, or, if he is lucky enough to possess a wife who can keep shop in his absence, no one at all, but someone must attend to the store in his absence and he is usually absent for the best part of each day doing the rounds of his widely scattered customers. He loads his light delivery van with orders received on his previous round, and does not forget to carry an additional supply of tobacco, cigarettes and sweets, and then he sets out over roads that are well known to him through endless journeys. He has to listen to the troubles of the housewives and the farmer’s talk about late seasons, the price of butter-fat and the prospects of a good price for lamb. He must join in the interests of his customers, or pretend to do so, or run the risk of seeing them go over to the "opposition.” He will get back to the store in time for his evening meal, and after he has spent the evening making up his books he is lucky if someone does not call and prevent him from going to bed until a late hour.

A successful business man who worked in a country store in the early days gave a Times reporter the following interesting details of conditions then. “There was a great deal of goldmining going on here at that time,” he said, "and we had some peculiar characters in the district. Many of them were known by nick-name only, . such as Billy the Boxer, Black Mac, Bowlegged Charlie and so forth, and no one knew what their real names were. Chinese were plentiful and while some of them were honest enough others required careful watching. They all considered themselves to be very cunning and we had to ask twice the value of an article and then allow them to beat us down. "Shortly after I started here the boss asked me to go and get a horse out of a paddock. I caught the horse, but when I opened the gate to take it out on to the street a mare with a foal at foot followed and I could not get them back. 1 was in the main street of the township when I met the owner of the mare and he blamed me for letting her out. I tried to explain, but he would not listen and struck at me and we had a fight in the middle of the street. I was big and active and I got the better of him and that saved me a lot of trouble later and made me popular with the miners, for they liked a man to be able to fight. “One of the first jobs I was set was to take possession of a Chinaman’s claim for debt. I was Very frightened and I think the beggar knew it but he didn’t raise any objections. There was nothing much to take charge of anyway: only a few shovels and the like. One evening a crowd of Chinese came into the township to purchase supplies. Half of them went to the opposition across the street and the other half came to us. At that time prices were much the same everywhere as the articles required by miners did not vary much in quality. Moleskins were moleskins and boots were boots in those days. Of course we started high, and whenever I brought a price down the men in the store would shout the price across the street to their mates in the other store and the opposition would come down lower and his customers would shout the result to mine. The ‘beggars’ had us holding a Dutch auction. “I was liable to be called out at any hour of the night to sell something, and if I did not get up early on a Sunday morning and go off somewhere, I would be kept busy all day Sunday. It didn’t matter what precautions I took to get home at night without being detected, I would no sooner be in bed than someone would come and call me out. They seemed to have some sixth sense which told them when I would be back. "One honest old Chinaman would come to me when any of his countrymen were going to leave the district without paying their debts. He would come in to the store and say, ‘Yong Lee, him going away. You no tell I tell. Him kill me, I kill you.’ The Chinese were all honest enough in their way. One time they had a fight amongst themselves and one of them came into the store immediately afterwards and I was asked to go to the Courthouse to give evidence regarding his condition. They lost the case, but they wanted to pay me a pound for my expenses. They were from all over China and the men from different districts would fight and they were not particular about hitting a man over the head with a shovel either. The standard remedy for all ailments then was ‘Painkiller,’ and we did a good trade in it.” It will be seen from the above that the custom of shopping by night is not a recently acquired one. Whether the ability to fight would be an asset to the modern country storekeeper or not would be hard to say, but it might be an advantage in a sawmilling or mining district where the workers still have some of the hard hitting habits of the old pioneers.