Aristocracy in Trade.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 189, 29 January 1887, Page 3

Aristocracy in Trade.

Exchange and barter, pro6t and loss, the businues of buying and selling, of catering in one or other of the many-sided methods of trade for the needs of their fellow citizens are matters which daily make larger demands upon the thoughts, time, and occupations of all manner of people. Many fresh proofs are constantly forthcoming of this incontrovertible fact. Some are merely suspected, others are posi lively known. Only a whisper has gone abroad of the great duke wfao is supposed to be the sleeping partner in one of the most colossal of London shops ; it is not generally known that the princely revenues of another are largely dependent on the sale of healing waters, or that a third does a fine busine&s as a house agent and keeps several hotels. But all the world can buy wine from one brother-in-law of a Royal Princese, and employ another as their broker in Btocks and shares. A marquis now holding high office sells his coals in the open market 1 , and his waggons which bring the coal-sacks bear his august named upon the shafts. An earl, whose peerage dates from the reigns of the Plantagenet 8 boldly paints his coronet and initiate on the improved hansom cabs which with much enterprise he has put upon the London streets. He has found many imitators in cab-owning, although all do not run as straight or achieve the same success. The honourable ecion of a noble house who figured in the police court the other day, and who gave his address as Belgrave Square, was no ornament to the cab-rank, much less to his family. It is not easy to foresee the lengths to which the new movement will go, or the changes it will bring about. The crowding of all the regular avenues of professional employment has driven many to the byways, and blue-blooded aristocrats accept service in positions which would have been thought quite ivfra dig. a generation or two ago, Wise people in the upper indigent classes, the high-born paupers who cannctmake both orids meet on a ihoui-and or two por annum, may be expected to apprentice to some humble calling the sons they cannot provide for otherwise or the daughteis for whom suitors still tarry. The levelling process is at work at both ends, The old leaders, the grandees who stood aloof, .are coming down to take their part in the arona of daily life, it ia but a step from coronated caba and c^alcarts to billheads and shop fronts bearing historic names and ancestral coats of arms. At the other end we have the elevation of the rotwner to heights undreamt of by our grandfathers. A dressmaker's daughter is presented at Court ; a prosperous tradesman, who has done good Service to t£ie Conservative cause, is elected to one of tho most exclusive and aristocratic of political clubs. We must look for still more startling surprises from tho growing universality of trade.