The Cart Beside the Barouche

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two yards where a carriage could be built, and a man wanting a plain cart walked past one to reach the other.

Two coachbuilders in one town, the same elm and ash, the same varnish, the same prices.
Both could build a light spring cart or a gentleman's carriage, and build it well.
One kept his finest work where the road could see it, and had the hall's custom.
The other nailed a board by his gate with eleven ordinary jobs on it.
The tradesmen of the town knew the first man's name far better.
Same timber, same prices, same skill. Why did they take their carts to the second?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is coachbuilding, and in the town I have never named it was carried on from two yards half a mile apart. Elm felloes in the steam, ash shafts stacked to season, the ring of a tyre going on hot, and over it all the smell of varnish.

The first yard stood on the turnpike road with doors wide enough to drive a carriage through, and in the near bay, under a sheet lifted for anybody who asked, stood a barouche built for the hall. Fourteen months in the making, dark green, lined out in straw colour, the arms painted on the door panels. It was the best work either yard ever turned out, and the gate said so in gold.

Carriers and shopkeepers walked that road twice a day. They looked in, saw the sheet come off the barouche, and went on to the other yard. The few who did come in to price a spring cart were quoted four pounds ten, which was the figure the other man would have asked, and said they would think it over.

The second yard was up a lane with a narrow gate, and by that gate hung a board, two feet by three, repainted every spring, with eleven lines on it in plain black. Spring cart, two horse, for the corn dealer at the wharf. Light van for the draper in the market place. Bread cart, rebuilt on the old irons, for the baker in Pump Street. Each with the trade and the street, and against some the price. At the foot, in the same hand, a carriage for a hall in another county, built nine years before.

A grocer wanting a delivery cart came up that lane in the March. At the fourth line he had found the baker out of his own street, a man whose takings he could reckon to within a pound and whose cart he could inspect at six any morning. He came not to ask whether the yard could build him a cart, but whether he could have it by the fair.

Be fair to the first man. The barouche was the better piece of work, the hall custom was worth having, and he was no dearer on a cart. He supposed that the best thing he had ever made would recommend him to everybody, when it recommended him only to people who buy barouches, of whom the parish held one.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A customer is not deciding whether your work is good, he is deciding whether it is for him, and he settles that by the example nearest to himself rather than by the best one you own. The rest of this letter is that sentence with its workings shown.

Begin with the doubt he actually brought. You imagine him wondering whether you are any good, that being the question you have an answer to. He is wondering no such thing. He assumes, roughly, that a man who has kept a yard for years can do the trade. What he does not know is whether he belongs in it, whether his job is too small to interest you, and whether he will be charged the money your usual customers can find.

So consider what the barouche told the carrier. Not that the man was capable, but that the yard was accustomed to money and would take a plain job in as a favour and finish it last. None of that was true, and all of it was reasonable.

Then consider why the nearest example does the work. A man measures himself against the people just above him, never against the top of the ladder. The hall is not a comparison, it is a different world, and a different world instructs nobody. The baker in his own street is a comparison, and an uncomfortable one in the useful way, for if that trade can keep a cart like that then so, plainly, can his. The likeness is also the proof: he can walk round the baker's cart and reckon the baker's takings, where about the hall he can check nothing and knows it. A true count of what people like him already do works by the same machinery. Mind the direction. Nearest means level with him or one step up, never below: an example from a smaller trade tells him your yard is beneath him.

Now the honest objection, for there is one. Great names do real work. Where the doubt is not belonging but risk, where the job is large or dangerous, or he must defend his choice to other men, the hall and the gold letters are what he needs. So the rule is not that your best work is worthless, but that evidence must be sorted by the doubt it answers. Lead with the near example, which settles whether you are for him. Keep the grand one lower, where it settles whether you can be trusted with the whole of it, as the hall sat at the foot of the second man's board. Your best is rarely the thing being bought.

Two cautions. Do not stretch a likeness. If the nearest job you have is not very near, say what it was and let him judge the distance, since a man who finds a resemblance manufactured will mistrust every other line you wrote. And describe people by their trade and street rather than by their names, unless you have asked and been given leave.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Who do I most want to hear from next month? Write him down as a trade and a size, not as a feeling, then find the job in your book nearest to him.
2. Which of my examples are there to impress me? Every trade keeps one or two, and they are the jobs you are proudest of.
3. What in it could he check himself? The street, the size of the shop, the figure. One particular he can verify is worth a page of adjectives he cannot.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same timber, same prices, same skill. Why did they take their carts to the second?

Because the first yard showed every man on the road its best work, and its best work told him he had come to the wrong gate. The second showed him somebody very like himself, one small step up, and a man who sees that has stopped asking whether the yard is for him.

The verse:

The carriage in green with the arms on the door
sent the carrier on down the lane.
The board at the gate had the baker's own cart,
and the grocer came up in the rain.

Until next time. Go and put at the head of your list the job most like the customer you want next, with the trade and the street on it, and your grandest job at the foot.

P.S. The example a man finds himself in does not only bring him up the lane, it teaches him what to ask for. Show him the plainest cart in your book and he will ask for the plainest. Show him one a little better than the thing he had in mind, belonging to a trade a little ahead of his own, and he will arrive asking for that. You sold him nothing. You chose what he saw first.

Also in the archive: Twenty-Two Kitchens, Never the Finest Black and The Smear on the Hall Paint.