The Moral Vision
Trust is Golden
~ 98 ~
TRUST IS GOLDEN
With just a few hundred rupees capital, a man from
Delhi started a business. He used to buy scraps of
cloth which he would sell from door to door. When
his business had grown somewhat, he obtained
permission to sit on the pavement in front of a shop
and sell his merchandise there.
This freelance cloth-merchant built up a good deal
of trust with his wholesaler, whom he impressed
with his honesty and fair dealing. The wholesaler
began to grant cloth on loan to the vendor, who
always made an effort to settle his debt before the
appointed date. This habit made him even more
trustworthy in the eyes of the wholesaler, who
granted him more and more cloth on loan. After just
a few years, the wholesaler was giving this street-
vendor Rs. 150,000 worth of cloth on loan, an
amount which he would not have given anybody
else except on the basis of a considerable cash down
payment.
Clearly, such a large amount of cloth could not be
accommodated on the street. The cloth-vendor now
