The Estimate in the Drawer

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a price once written down went on standing wherever it had been put, and the trades that never thought about it paid for that in their busiest month. Your century writes its figures faster and dates them less.

Two sailmakers in the old town, the same number four duck and the same loft above a chandler's shop.
Both measured a wherry for a new mainsail in May, and both said nine pounds fifteen.
One wrote the figure on a half sheet and let it stand wherever it was carried.
One wrote the figure, and beneath it the last day of July.
Both were taken up in October, when canvas had risen threepence halfpenny the yard.
Same duck, same price. Which man kept his profit and his customer both?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is sailmaking. A long floor with the shapes chalked on it, the cloths seamed with a palm and a needle until flat canvas has a belly in it, then the roping and the eyelets and a fortnight gone. Nine tenths of the price is the duck and the days.

The wherryman had a mainsail gone thin at the head and patched twice along the second cloth. He asked at two lofts in the same week of May. Both men came down to the staith, both measured the same sail, and both said the same thing: a hundred and twenty yards of number four duck, a fortnight on the floor, nine pounds fifteen.

Then he did what most customers do with a sum of that size, which was nothing. Freight was slack that summer, and a sail which still sets is a hard thing to pay nine pounds to be rid of. The half sheet went into the locker with his tide tables. In the second week of October a squall above the bridge split the sail from the reef band to the leech, and by the Monday he was on the stairs of the first loft saying he had come about the mainsail, and that it was nine pounds fifteen.

It was not nine pounds fifteen. The flax harvest had been poor and the freight on it dearer, and the factor's duck had risen threepence halfpenny the yard, which on a hundred and twenty yards is thirty-five shillings. His journeyman had gone up a shilling a week at Michaelmas along with every journeyman on the river. There had been two shillings in the pound of profit in that estimate and the rise had taken all of it.

He was an honest man, so he explained it and showed the factor's list. Then he watched something he had not expected happen in the wherryman's face. The man had carried one figure in his head since May and had climbed the stairs to order a sail, not to be quoted for one. What he heard was not a poor flax harvest. It was that the price had gone up on him. He said he would think about it, and went along the quay to see what the other loft was asking, which is what any of us would have done.

The paper he had been shown there in May carried two lines under the figure. The price stood until the last day of July, the duck being priced to the sailmaker by his factor at that week's figure and no longer. After that day the sail would be measured and quoted again at the price of the day, and if nothing had moved it would be the same nine pounds fifteen.

So he climbed the second stairs already knowing his paper had run out, and asked what a mainsail was now. Ten pounds twelve, with the factor's new list on the bench if he cared to look. He grumbled about the flax, which is where the grumble belonged, and the sail was chalked out that week.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

An estimate with no date at the foot of it is a promise made against prices you do not control, and you pay for that promise either by breaking your word or by burying the cost of every rise you can imagine inside the figure you show the customers who buy at once. Two lines of writing decide which.

Begin with who accepts an old price, because they are not a fair sample of the town. A paper that comes out of a drawer comes back late by definition, which is to say after the market has had time to move, and most often from the man who went on collecting figures all summer and has found yours the cheapest thing he owns. An undated price is likeliest to be taken up exactly where it can no longer be honoured. That is not a risk spread evenly over your book. It is one which waits for the worst conditions and then arrives with your own handwriting as proof.

When it arrives you may pay in one of two coins. You may keep your word and work a fortnight for the privilege of having been careless with a piece of paper in the spring. Or you may revise the figure, which is the heavier bill, because you are no longer the man who won the work. You are the man who put his price up. The arithmetic may be unanswerable, and you will still have spent something you cannot get back, as I have argued on the day a cost rises in the middle of a job.

There is a third coin, and it is the one nobody notices paying. If you must stand behind a number for an unknown length of time, prudence makes you put something in it for a rise you cannot see, and that something is charged to everybody. The man who signs on the Tuesday pays for the man who dawdles until Christmas. A dated estimate can be priced nearer the bone, since a figure which must survive six weeks need not be padded like one which must survive a year, and pricing nearer the bone wins more of the work in front of you.

Take the date from your own supply rather than out of the air. Ask your merchant how long he will hold a figure to you, which in most trades is a week, a month, a quarter, and seldom longer. Then the date arrives with a reason attached, and a reason is the difference between a term of business and a trick. Write it plainly, as you would write a rise into an agreement before you need it, and add the second sailmaker's sentence: that afterwards you will quote at the price of the day, and that if nothing has moved the figure will not move either.

Two cautions. If you extend the window for everybody who asks, you have taught the town that your dates are decoration and you are back where you began with more paperwork. Set a period you will keep, and give the man who grumbles the same answer as the man who does not. And do not use the date as a whip. Where the delay is yours, because you were slow to call back or too busy to start, honour the old figure unasked. The date carries your costs. It is not there to hurry a householder who is entitled to think.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. How long will my own merchant hold a price to me? Ring and ask. Your estimate cannot honestly stand longer than your supply does, and most trades quote for months on materials priced to them by the week.
2. What is the oldest estimate of mine that somebody could still walk in and accept? Find it, and work out what it would cost you today if they did. That figure is what you have been gambling without deciding to.
3. What is written down to happen the day after the window closes? Measure again, quote at the day's price, the same figure if nothing has moved. A practice decided in advance is answered in a sentence. One improvised is answered in your own money.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same duck, same price. Which man kept his profit and his customer both?

The one who wrote the last day of July beneath his figure, with the reason for it and what would follow. He lost nothing in October because he had promised nothing in October. The other had made a promise with no end to it, in a trade where the price of flax has never once asked his permission.

The verse:

A figure once given lies quiet in a drawer,
While the flax fails, the freight rises, the wages are raised,
So set at its foot the day your promise ends,
And keep your word, your profit and the work.

Until next time. Go and add two lines to the foot of every estimate you send out today, naming the date your price stands until and the reason it is that date.

P.S. There is a quieter use for the date than the protection of one figure. A trade which dates its estimates raises its prices without ever announcing a rise, because every estimate is written at the price of the day it is written, and nobody stands before you holding a paper from the spring. The hard letter telling your whole book that prices have gone up can mostly be done instead by two lines at the foot of a page, one job at a time.

Also in the archive: The Old Price Until Lady Day, Until It Matched and The Bale He Could Not Buy.