I went with no large expectations, intending to open a retail shop, such
as I had left; but within a week, finding that I could sell even my cut
goods for prices much beyond what I had been retailing them for over and
above the exchange, I went into the wholesale business, and with one
clerk, Mr. Jenkins Howland, greatly distinguished in after life as a man
of enterprise at Charleston, S.C., sold more goods, and for cash too,
than perhaps any three or four of what were called the large dealers
about me, with two or three clerks apiece, and at prices which fairly
took away my breath at first;--Irish linens, for example, by the case at
two dollars and fifty cents all round, worth not over eighty cents
before the war; and assorted broadcloths by the bale at fourteen dollars
a yard all round, which, within a twelvemonth, would have hung fire at
three dollars and fifty cents. And this, it will be remembered, was
after goods had been falling--falling--falling--for six months.
No wonder people's heads were turned--those of Pierpont and Lord among
the rest. We, who had large stocks on hand, were growing rich too fast.
I remember selling fourteen thousand dollars' worth of goods one day for
a clear profit of more than forty per cent, and this while my poor
friends at Boston were gasping for breath in that exhausted receiver;
but they were kept alive by the remittances I made from Baltimore, which
not only furnished them with funds for immediate use, but gave them for
a few months almost unbounded credit.
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