Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1882 — The American Shop. [ARTICLE]

The American Shop.

If we enter a shop we do not find that deferential welcome which London offers; rather a critical, inquiring attitude as of men—we think—who recollect that a chance customer like ourselves may be, perhaps, no better than he should be. Wo soon find that this undemonstrative, observant 'demeanor only indicates the intention of the shopman to ascertain our wants as thoroughly and quickly ns possible and supply them without delay; There is no time lost in ceremony; our demands are met with promptness and quiet civility*. The shop-keepers assume that we, like themselves, want to get through the work with as little delay as is consistent with finding what wo want. The shopman —or clerk, as he may be termed—and the shoeblack are the merchant and railway director and the statesman in an ■earlier stage, and do their immediate business with a thoroughness and confidence like people who feel that they are bearing their part in the larger and higher conceptions of life, and will, if they do themselves justice, be one day as comfortable and important as any of their customers. In the American clerk or workman of to-day, whatever may have been the case in tho past, there is no vulgar assertion of this equality. The people he has to deal with ordinarily never dream of disputing it. It is only in the case of a European, accustomed to the subservience of the productive or distributing classes here, that any embarassment can arise. We soon learn that the absence of the deference we are accustomed to does not mean disrespect; it is an unconscious compliment. It is giving us credit for a knoivledge-of their social system; it assumes that we are aware there is no social inferiority between the wealthy merchant and land-owner and the laborer or clerk; it attributes to us some of their own good sense to conclude that we want our business done, and done well, without loss of time.— The Cornhill Magazine.