Australian Tales - Setis

lengths, and forged marks, are as common as the goods they represent.
Take “short lengths” reel cotton for example, with the borrowed name of
some well known maker, “warranted 200 yards.” The retail buyer has no
guarantee of the quantity specified, save the honour of the shopkeeper;
for the most careful old lady in the land would hardly stay to check the
measure before paying for her reel of cotton; and it would be only when
too late for a remedy that she would discover she had been cheated, and
that she had far more wood than cotton for her money. Some good folks
may, perhaps, exclaim impatiently, “Pooh! that is a mere trifle to write
about.” But I would earnestly remind them that it is only a solitary
example of a system of fraud which is too palpable to be mistaken; and I
am sure they will not call that a trifle, especially if they bear in mind that
it generally affects a class of persons who are least able to bear such a
raid upon their pockets, and to whom these multiplied peculations swell
to a serious aggregate in the course of the year.
I know a respectable old widow who is too proud to beg or to run in
debt, but not too proud to earn her livelihood by plain needlework; and
since sewing machines have become as fashionable as pianos in
gentlefolk's houses, this honest old lady finds it a difficult matter to earn
full diet by finger stitching, for the price of her work is reduced far below
a remunerative standard. Of course, she has to find her own cotton; and if
her “200 yard reels” only turn out 100 or 120 yards each, is it not a
severe inroad upon her hardly earned income? Is not 80 or 100 per cent a
serious sum for her poor pocket to be plundered of?
Some persons may reply to that question, “Let the old lady buy her
cotton from respectable tradesmen, then she is not likely to be cheated.”
That is certainly the best remedy within her reach, but I wish that her
humble protest could reach the ears of manufacturers far away. There is
the source of the wrong; for it is clear that if they honestly refused to
“make up” short length, or short weight wares, there would be no
wholesale or retail vendors of them, nor duped purchasers either.
I don't wish to make a long chapter on this unpleasant subject, lest I
should not be able to restrain my pen from expressing strong feeling; but
I would like to gently remind those factors and dealers in deceptive
goods, that though — humanly speaking they may carry on their
nefarious traffic with impunity, and perhaps grow rich upon their spoils;
yet they will not escape the penalty, which sooner or later is visited upon
bad actions, as certainly as effects follow causes in material affairs; and a
careful consideration of passing events from day to day, even within this
city, might instil that belief into the most sceptical mind. Who of my
readers has not seen ill-gotten wealth melt from the grasp of its
possessors, and “leave not a wrack behind?” I have seen it, and expect
again to see it; and I emphatically declare that I would rather be a
corporation stone cracker, than I would luxuriate in the profits which