The Line About the Hay

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, at the midsummer when carting was agreed for the year, two carriers took the mill work on terms alike in every particular but one.

Two carriers, the same waggons, the same four horses, the same rate a ton to the mill.
Both signed a year of carting, and both watched the hay spoil in the rain.
Both were paying half again for a load of hay by February.
One went up to the mill and asked the miller to think again.
One had nothing to ask, and was paid more from the first week of February.
What had been written in June, when hay was cheap and nobody was thinking about it?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two carriers in the town I've never named, their yards on opposite sides of one bridge. Two waggons apiece, four horses apiece, the same rate to the mill of three and sixpence the ton, agreed for the year at midsummer as the trade had always done.

That August it rained for nineteen days. The meadows were cut late and carried wet, the stacks heated and went musty, and good hay went to whoever would pay. By Candlemas a load that stood at twenty-eight shillings in June fetched forty-three. A carrier's horses eat whether the waggon is loaded or not, so the cost of every ton either man moved had risen by a fifth, and the rate had not moved.

The first carrier bore it until the new year, then walked up to the mill and put the case. He put it well. Be fair to the miller, who was no villain: he had agreed a year because a year was what he needed, having fixed his own flour prices with four bakers who cared nothing for hay. He said what any man says. We agreed a year in June. They had, and the carrier went back down the hill with the old rate.

From February to midsummer he made nothing, bought the cheaper hay and put off reshoeing. At the year's end he asked for a rate a third higher. The miller heard a man taking his turn, and for the first time in nine years he asked two other carriers what they would do it for.

The second carrier had the same hay and the same spoiled August. In June, when the agreement was drawn, he had asked for one line to go into it, and the line cost nothing to get, because in June nobody was asking anybody for anything. The rate held while meadow hay stood under thirty shillings a load at the market; for every two shillings above thirty, a penny went on the ton; and it came off again by the same reckoning when hay fell back.

In February the mill clerk, who read the market price on quarter day as routine, put the rate up fourpence the ton. There was no conversation and no walk up the hill. The following July, hay being good again, the rate came back to three and six, and the carrier wrote a note to say so. He heard afterwards that it was read aloud in the mill office.

Over three years the two were not far apart in money, since the rule cut both ways and he honoured it in the easy seasons. The ending was not close. One still had the mill work, and one was quoting against strangers for it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A price that must hold for a year is not a price but a wager, and the only honest way to carry a wager is to write down in advance the rule by which the price moves. Everything underneath you moves. The difficulty is not that costs rise but that your price was given as a flat figure, as though the world had been consulted and agreed to stand still.

Consider the two Februaries. One man asked, and an asking is an act of his own will: it can be weighed, refused, resented, remembered. The other man's rate moved by the operation of something both parties agreed to when neither needed it. People argue with a man. They do not argue with a measure, and they do not feel wronged by a rule they signed in fair weather. Nor is the objection usually to the fourpence: it is to the surprise, and to not knowing where the top is, and a rule settles both, since the bad case can be seen and budgeted for in advance.

Note where the belief comes from. A rule that only ever rises is a price increase wearing a costume, and customers read costumes quickly. The fourpence was accepted because the line that raised it would also lower it, and in July it did, and he made sure that was noticed. For the same reason the measure must sit outside you: a published price, a tariff, a supplier's list. Say instead that the price moves with our costs and you have a rule only you can read, which is no rule but a promise to be reasonable.

You will be told that customers want certainty and that giving it is good service. Certainty is a genuine article, worth selling, but it is insurance, and insurance carries a premium. Fix a price for the year by all means, but price the bad season rather than the ordinary one. What is always wrong is the third way, to fix the price, charge nothing for fixing it, then go up the hill in February to be let off your own bargain. That road ends in explaining that your costs have risen with nothing to point at but your own books. The line does the work of a rise announced with a reason and a date, only earlier, when nobody is cross.

Two cautions. The rule must be simple enough that a man who does not want to check it can do so in a minute, since a formula nobody can work out is only tolerated until it bites. And it covers the world, not your mistakes. If you under-reckoned the job in June, the hay rule is no remedy, and stretching it once teaches the customer it was never a rule.

Three questions, about the arrangements you already have:

1. Which of your prices are fixed for longer than three months? Name the three largest costs under each. If one has shifted by a tenth this year, you carry a wager you never priced.
2. What measure could you point to that is not your own word? Something published, dated and dull, that a customer can look up without ringing you. Failing that, a review date with a plain cap is a rule.
3. Which arrangement is next for renewal, and will the line be in it? It costs nothing to agree in June and cannot be bought in February at any price.

The Answer to the Riddle

What had been written in June, when hay was cheap and neither man was thinking about it?

One sentence saying how the rate would move: holding while hay stood under thirty shillings a load, rising a penny the ton for every two shillings above, and falling the same way. The first agreed a figure. The second agreed a rule, and a rule is the only kind of price that survives a year without somebody having to go and ask.

The verse:

The waggons matched, the horses matched, the rate was matched as well,
Then August rained the meadows out and hay began to tell.
One went and asked in February, and was shown the year he signed,
One had it written down in June, and nobody much minded.

Until next time. Go and find the arrangement of yours that is fixed for a year, and draft the sentence saying how its price moves.

P.S. Use the rule early and for a small amount. A clause that sits untouched for two years and then moves the price by a fifth is remembered as a price rise, whatever the paper says, since it is the first time the customer has seen it work. Fourpence in the first February buys the shilling you will want in the third.

Also in the archive: The Old Price Until Lady Day, Rot Behind the Boards and The Bale He Could Not Buy.