“Then you ought to thank your stars. Warranting is the most infernal device ever brought out to make men mean and dishonest. I put it down to the dealer, when I sell him, in the plainest way I know how, that we warrant an ax only against being soft or breaking from a plain flaw. When I come around in the spring he pulls from under the counter two or three or more rusty axes that he hands to me, with the remark that 'here are some poor ones.' I pick up an ax and find some idiot ground it as thin as a razor, and the edge broke out so that it looks like a saw, I ask him what is the matter with it.'Too hard; brittle as glass.' 'But I didn't warrant against being too hard.' 'But you expect your axes to stand, don't you?' 'This would stand if ground properly.' 'Oh, yes; you fellows always have some loop-hole to get out of your warrant.' This rather staggers me, so I pick up the next one. 'What is the matter with this?' 'Soft.' As I hold the edge to the light I can see a slight bend in the bit. The man who used it had it stick, and in his efforts to loosen it, he had given it such a terrible wrench that the edge had bent a trifle. To a man knowing anything of the proper temper of an ax the fact of that slight bend is in its favor, and the work of grinding it out would have been much less than it was to remove the helve. But I pass that, as there is no use to argue that a slight twist does not show soft temper, and I pick up the third one. It has a corner broken off; the break is still bright, but I am calmly told there was a bad flaw there. I start to explain why I know, from the shape of the break that there was no flaw, but he twits me again with wanting to go back on my warrant, and I stop right there. Now, this is the history of nine out of ten transactions. The retailer takes back everything a customer brings back for fear of losing that customer's trade. The jobber takes back from the retailer, knowing it is unjust, but he is afraid that any hesitancy on his part will damage his trade. And the poor devil of a manufacturer takes it off the jobber's hands and cannot help himself. There is a deuced lot of cowardice in business nowadays. It goes back through the dealers till it reaches the consumer, and it encourages him to make any kind of claim he sees fit to cover his negligence, ignorance, or maliciousness.”