Silhouettes.

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 20, 17 March 1894, Page 13

Silhouettes.

No. a—THE COMMISSION AGENT. Ho has generally boon something olae. Sometimes a bank managor who has boon sacked for allowing his friends to havo an oxaggorated overdraft, Somotimos a merchant who has failed, sometimes an ex-ofiicial of some local body who had got too big for his oflioial boots and got “ tho run;” sometimes an cx-mem-ber of the police force who has been retrenched, or a civil servant, who oftor years of uncivility lording it over his “inferiors ” (otlicial and public) has to make way for some ono who is not of tho Tito-Barnncle order and who can do tho work much better for half tho screw. Sometimes he is a man who has merely been unfortunate and has turned to commission agoncy as the last resort for tho destitute. Somo commission agonts havo a sort of connection and do manage to transact something distinctly resembling a business. The majority havo no business to do and nevor do any. Tho commission agent ropresent companies which cansist mainly, of a high sounding title and a large array of unpaid shares. Ho likes to affect a semblance of hurry and business bustle but ho has a lot of time on his hands as a rule and this timo he generally spends at the club if his subscription hasn't run out, or at the poor man’s club, tho common or garden pub. Certain of the Wellington pubs are the special haunts of tho commission agent fraternity. There they gather together discussing tho chancos of making “ a rise ” and waiting for someone who has made “ a rise ” to shout. Very often they have to wait a long time, in which case they put on a fine air of prospective prosperity and after imbing their whiskey mutter something about having “ left the purse on the piano,” the barmaid, who knoweth full well that most venerable of chestnuts, 6miles to herself a sceptical smile as she chalks it up. The commission agent is an expensive man to havo much conversation with on business matters. If you talk to him about a

certain transaction into which you think of entering it is long odds that you get a note from him some two or three months afterwards reminding you of the hitherto unsuspected fact that it was owing to his expert advice that you did that same business and claiming a good fat commission thereon. Sometimes, when you are green in iho ways of the commission agent you pay, sometimes, if you are wise, you don’t, Take our advice and don’t —always. At election times the commission agent is busy about town in the interests of one or other of the candidates. Canvassing is, with him, an expansive term, and his “expenses” are generally very heavy and apparently very intimately connected with the consumption of alcoholic beverages. He is great in land transactions and often has a few million acres of native land which he empowered to sell or lease at “ a mere song.” As a rulo tho colonial is well up to this ancient “ wheeze," but by dint of his oily tongue the commission agent sometimes manages to get a good sum out of a new chum on speculative Australian, who, after some months “delay” with those confounded natives old fellow finds that either tho land has long ago been leased to some one else or has never even been put into the agents hands at all. The country settler suffers a good deal at times from the wiles of the commission agent. He knew him perhaps in brighter days, and when he comes into town, looks him up, and is beguiled into putting some small affair into his hands. The result is too often that the settler gets “left,” and that he votes all city men a pack of greedy rogues. The commission agent is generally well dressed and sports the bell topper, of recognised respectability. Tho respectability often begins and ends with the bell topper. How he pays his way is a mystery to most people, but need not be, for the very simple and allsufficient reason that he doesn’t pay his way any more than he can help. The times, however, are growing worse for the commission agent and unless he can get some picking in the way of touting for a local “ Shylock up to date ” or bumming upon some wealthy politician who wants someone to do his dirty work for him, he has but a poor show of making more than the barest existence. Sometimes he manages to get hold of a “ mug ” who wants to make a deal in shares and then there is rejoicing in the heart of the agent for the sharo-mania-bitten fool is the most foolish and most profitable of all fools. Of course there are exceptions to what wo have written, there are, say. a dozen men in each large centre, who, by business nous and wide experience have gained the confidence of men, who are not capable of undertaking their own affairs, but these are in the minority, and the average New Zealand commission agent would never be missed were he to disappear off the face of the land to-morrow. The day for the middleman who lives upon the labour of others is rapidly passing away and before

long the commission agent in a colonial town will be as extinct as the dodo or the moa. If half of the lawyers could be cremated at the same time the country would be all the better off. Zero.