Trader’s diligence

Chapter VII T rader’ s diligence A trader must be endowed with great diligence and attentiveness in order to amass wealth. Christ said to his apostles: “Do not worry about what you will eat” , which, as Chrysostom interpreted it, means that a man must always remain hopeful and never doubt God’s merciful nature, and thus rely more on God’s virtues than his own diligence. St. James says all the good circumstances we are blessed with are a result of the will of God: “Every excellent gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights.” As for those inadvertent ones, it is usually said that they are the reason why sloth is one of the deadly sins. The trader should be diligent not only when it comes to his current affairs. He should equally attend to those business deals that are closed and settled, in order to avoid losses. Being too careless and inadvertent is worse than being lazy, because it is a shame to ruin one’s business due to negligence. When you see that someone is losing their earnings and acquirements due to mere negligence, bankruptcy is an inevitable consequence. I have been known to make very accurate predicaments as to such outcomes. An example is the case of one of our very orderly and seemingly very hard-working citizen who consigned to my care a storage of wheat and the key to it. When I went there to check on it, I saw that it had been flooded because the roof had holes. Although he was a reputable trader, I told him that soon he would face bankruptcy, which proved correct. Thus the trader

must be both diligent and attentive to details. I do not have in mind those who look very meticulous but are in fact everything but orderly in the way they do their business. Flailing one’s arms and legs and running about are all signs of a feeble mind, and is certainly not an innate movement. Attentiveness is something that must come from within, the same as the talent for trade. Rapid gesticulation is befitting adolescents, people of limited mental capacity and those who work as mechanics of sorts. The trader must be equally very conscientious in bookkeeping and correspondence. He must never fail to reply to a letter, no matter how trivial it might be, because each letter refers to either a present or a future matter. As Plinius says: “There was never a book written that had no value, and there is no letter which will not yield fruit, more or less directly.”