sold. This would bring the
trade into a better regulation, and the makers would stop their hands
when the market stopped; and when the merchant ceased to buy, the
manufacturers would cease to make, and, consequently, would not crowd or
clog the market with goods, or wrong their factors with bills.

But this would require a large discourse, and the manufacturers'
objections should be answered, namely, that they cannot stop, that they
have their particular sets of workmen and spinners, whom they are
obliged to keep employed, or, if they should dismiss them, they could
not have them again when a demand for goods came, and the markets
revived, and that, besides, the poor would starve.

These objections are easy to be answered, though that is not my present
business; but thus far it is to my purpose--it is the factor's business
to keep himself within compass: if the goods cannot be sold, the maker
must stay till they can; if the poor must be employed, the manufacturer
is right to keep them at work if he can; but if he cannot, without
oppressing the factor, then he makes the factor employ them, not
himself; and I do not see the factor has any obligation upon him to
consider the spinners and weavers, especially not at the expense of his
own credit, and his family's safety.

Upon the whole, all tradesmen that trade thus, whether by commission
from the country, or upon their own accounts, should make it the
standing order of their business not to suffer themselves to be
overdrawn by their employers, so as to straiten themselves in their
cash, and make them unable to pay their bills when accepted. It is also
to be observed, that when a tradesman once comes to suffer himself to be
thus overdrawn, and sinks his credit in kindness to his employer, he
buys his employment so dear as all his employer can do for him can never
repay the price.

And even while he is thus serving his employer, he more and more wounds
himself; for suppose he does (with difficulty) raise money, and, after
some dunning, does pay the bills, yet he loses in the very doing it, for
he never pays them with credit, but suffers in reputation by every day's
delay. In a word, a tradesman that buys upon credit, that is to say, in
a course of credit, such as I have described before, may let the
merchant or the warehouse-keeper call two or three times, and may put
him off without much damage to his credit; and if he makes them stay one
time, he makes it up again anot