“Under these circumstances my only difficulty lay in choosing what form my first enterprise should take. After a little thought I decided that what we call in Baghdad an amalgamation of competing interests would be no bad beginning.
“I began with due caution by investing a couple of thousand dinars in the merchandise of a potter who had recently died and whose widow needed ready cash to satisfy the sacred demands of the dead. She spent the money in the ornamentation of his tomb, with which unproductive expenditure the foolish woman was in no small degree concerned.”
Here the eldest of the nephews interrupted Mahmoud to ask, most respectfully, why with a capital of twelve thousand dinars he had used but two, and why he had begun his experiment upon the petty business of a poor widow.
“My son,” said his uncle affectionately, “you do well to ask these questions. They show a reasoned interest in the great art of getting. Well then, as to the smallness of my beginning, it was, I hope, due to humility. For ostentation is hateful. But a good deed is never thrown away—and how useful I found this reserve of ten thousand dinars (which I had in my meekness kept aside) you shall soon learn.
“As to why I began operations in the kiln of this poor widow, it was because I have ever loved the little ones of this world and aided them to my best endeavour. This charitable action also turned out to be wise, as such actions often do; for I could thus proceed at first unnoticed and begin my new adventures without exciting any embarrassing attention.
“I continued to live in the same small hut I had hired on my arrival, under the floor of which I kept my modest capital; and I put it about, as modesty demanded, that I was almost destitute.
“As it was indifferent to me for the moment whether I obtained a return upon this paltry investment or no, I was able to sell my wares at very much the same sum as they had cost me, and as I had bought the whole stock cheap, that sum was less than the cost of manufacture. There was a considerable store of pipkins in the old sheds, and while I sold them off at charitable rates (very disconcerting to other merchants), I had time to consider my next step.
“Upon this next step I soon determined. When, with due delay, my original stock of pipkins had been sold, I purchased a small consignment of clay, I relit the fires in the kiln, I hired a couple of starving potters, and I began to manufacture.
“The fame of my very cheap pipkins had spread, as was but natural, and secured me an increasing number of customers for my newly made wares. But I thought it wrong to debauch the peasants by selling them their pots under cost price any longer. I was constrained by the plainest rule of duty to raise my prices to the cost of manufacture—though no more, keeping justice as my guiding star. For, depend upon it, my dear nephews, in business as in every other walk of life an exact rectitude alone can lead us to the most dazzling rewards.
“This price of mine was still lower than that of all the other pipkin-makers, who had been accustomed from immemorial time to the base idea of profit, and were in a perpetual surmise what secret powers I had to permit me such quotations. But I made no mystery of the affair. I allowed all my friends to visit my simple factory and I explained to their satisfaction how organization and a close attention to costings were sufficient to account for my prosperity.
“Still, as my sales continued to grow, new doubts arose, and with them, I am glad to say, new respect for my skill in affairs.
“The simple folk wondered by what art I had contrived so difficult a financial operation, but as it was traditional among them that one who sold goods cheap was a benefactor to the community, my action was lauded, my fame spread, and the number of my customers continually increased.
“You will not be slow to perceive, my dear boys, that my competitors in the bazaar, being compelled, to compete with my ruinous prices, were all embarrassed, and that the less attentive or privileged soon began to fall into financial difficulties, the first of course being those who were the most renowned among these simpletons for their cunning, their silence, their lying, and their commercial skill in general. These, as they were perpetually trying new combinations to discover or to defeat my supposed schemes, were an easy prey. Even the straightforward fellows who knew of no art more subtle than the charging of ten percent above cost price, and who did not play into my hands by any wearisome financial strategy, began to be roped into my net as the area of my operations spread. For when I had acquired, at a calculated loss, a good half of the pottery business in this sequestered paradise, I could, by what is known as the fluctuation of the market (but I will not confuse you with technical terms), put my remaining competitors into alternate fevers of panic and expectation very destructive to a sound business judgment.
“Upon one day I would declare that a large consignment of pottery being about to reach me, I could sell pipkins at half the usual price. Pipkins fell heavily, and I bought through my agent every
