SHODDY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5159, 4 October 1877, Page 3

SHODDY.

(Prom 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 : “ Whore 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 that materfamilias is never so happy as when she can obtain the direction ot a new shop, where she can get what she admired so much last week at a frieud’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 shoddiness in the commercial world that provokes this uneasy desire for change on the part of the customer? Sometimes the buyer gets 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 half-incredulous friends ! But what is the more common case ? A hat lasts three mouths 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 he anything but the sanest in the community. Boots, again, are liable to the vice of shoddiness. Where do you get your boots ? is a query of every-day occurrence, prompted, no doubt, by misfits, bad leather, aud a tendency to run down at the heels. Shoddiness is the vico of the age—a vice that betokens the degeneracy as well as the increasing dishonesty of the times. It is a shortsighted policy, moreover, for the tradesman who has a good name aud a fair reputation will always advance steadily to prosperity. The shoddy man makes his money by fits and aud starts, by bankrupt stocks, or Brummagem 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 tire shoddy preparations which provoke the greatest indignation in our own Irish climate, the umbrella is, perhaps, the shoddiest. A companion which ‘ ought to last till it is stolen, and which therefore, pro bono publico and for the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers, ought to be unrivalled for strength, symmetry, and endurance, has degenerated into a mere flimsy pretence, the sport of the elements and the ridicule of the holder. Why umbrellas are ever stolen nowadays is a matter of surprise to us. Doubtless, dishonesty brings its own reward. But enough of such articles. Ab 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, fusel oil, and other luxuries from the light-hearted druggist ? What about the coffee and the chicory, the tea and the hawthorn? The Havana box full of British cigars? All shoddy. The 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 aud sold at a profit. Cheer up, ye votaries of the great god Shoddy; the time may come when the pump will dispense riches to many, , But even at night, when shoddy shops are shut, and we sit down in the calm, seclusion of our study to enjoy half an hour with the beat authors, we are rudely awakened to a sense of the unworthiness of our fellow man. The gaspipes give one of their longest gulps, and the light dwindles to the luminosity of a child’s patent nightlamp. Presently there is heard a sound as of a small hurricane, and the air rushes up to the burner with a rapidity worthy of a puffing-hole, and presently there is total darkness. Then we sit still and indulge in railings aud revilings of shoddy gas, and wonder why as steadily as the bills go up the lights go down, it is a matter of national regret that we are so infected with this terrible disease. Steam has producad 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 production* now with those ot twenty-five years ago. A ton of trash is sold for a pound of good taste. Good things are made only for the great and wealthy, the multitude, nay, the substantial well to do middle class, earning their money hardly, but willing to spend it handsomely, must put up with the shoddy. Art itself is declining into the same groove, aud is becoming a mere 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 shabhinesa and decay to-morrow.