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Précis
Richard Cobden was sixteen when his uncle grudgingly gave him his first job, sweeping a warehouse floor. This he did so conscientiously that the warehouse manager gave him the first of a series of rapid promotions. Soon Cobden became a travelling salesman, known widely for the professional dinners he hosted, at which he read aloud from improving literature.
After he was taken on as London agent for a Manchester textile company, Cobden found that his employers regularly delivered huge stocks of valuable textiles to him, without any kind of security. When he expressed surprise, they replied ‘With us, character counts’, which so impressed him that he had ‘Character counts!’ etched into a piece of oak, for display in his office.
When Richard was sixteen he was transferred from the boarding school to his uncle’s warehouse in London. His position was that of a poor relation, and his work in the warehouse was to carry bundles and manipulate a broom. His shy and sensitive ways caught the attention of a burly and gruff superintendent, whose gruffness was only on the outside. This man said to the boy, before he had been sweeping a week, Young ’un, I obsarve with my hown hies that you sweeps in the corners. For this I raises your pay a shilling a week, and makes you monkey to the shipping clerk.
In a year the shipping clerk was needed as a salesman and Richard took his place. In another year Richard was a salesman, and canvassing London for orders. [...]
And so at twenty we find Cobden cutting loose from relatives. He went to work as a commercial traveler selling cotton prints. That English custom of the commercial dinner
, where all the bagmen
that happened to be in the hotel dine at a common table, as a family, and take up a penny collection for the waiter, had its rise in the brain of Cobden. He thought the traveling salesman should have friendly companionship, and the commercial dinner with its frank discussions and good fellowship would in degree compensate for the lack of home. This idea of brotherhood was very strong in Richard Cobden’s heart. And always at these dinners he turned the conversation into high and worthy channels, bringing up questions of interest to the boys
, and trying to show them that the more they studied the laws of travel the more they knew about commerce, the greater their power as salesmen. His journal about this time shows, Expense five shillings for Benjamin Franklin’s Essays,
and the same for Plutarch’s Lives
. And from these books he read aloud at the bagmen’s dinners. [...]
From a salesman on a salary, he evolved into a salesman on a salary and commission. Next he made a bold stand with two fellow-travelers and asked for the exclusive London agency of a Manchester print mill. A year later he was carrying a line of goods worth forty thousand pounds on unsecured credit. “Why do you entrust me with all these goods when you know I am not worth a thousand pounds in my own name?” And the senior member of the great house of Fort, Sons & Company answered, “Mr Cobden, we consider the moral risk more than we do the financial one. Our business has been built up by trusting young, active men of good habits. With us character counts.” And Cobden went up to London and ordered the words, “Character Counts!” cut deep in a two-inch oak plank which he fastened to the wall in his office.
