A Packet-Tea Merchant
coffee only with difficulty and at high prices. For people of small means home-brewed ale and home-made wine were the normal drink; the poor took cheap beer, rum and gin. Cassell had come to the conclusion that cheap tea and coffee would not only promote temperance in the masses but put money in the purse of the man who purveyed them; and he had resolved to be that man if ever enough capital came his way.
With the aid of his wife's legacy, then, he began as a tea and coffee merchant in Coleman Street, in the City. The business was an immediate success. It was moved to larger premises successively in Abchurch Lane and in Fenchurch Street. Cassell was one of the early believers in large advertising. Teetotallers, and therefore potential customers for tea, were to be found all over the country; but the only means of informing them of the existence of John Cassell and his cheap tea was the Press. Through the newspapers he reached the pledged teetotallers, and at the same time created a large clientèle among the gentile public, who, if they did not care twopence for his doctrine, were eager to take advantage of his prices. He invented the "packet" system of tea-selling which has become a commonplace of modern business.
This avatar was not a long one. But it helped him towards his real destiny in a curious way. He wanted more advertising, and wanted it cheap. He therefore bought a second-hand printing press with which to laud his wares. Very soon he was employing the idle moments of his machine in the printing of temperance tracts, which he wrote himself. Thus, simply, began his translation from the condition of tea merchant to that of publisher. One interesting point about this embryonic stage of the House of Cassell is that, having put roughly illustrated covers on one or two of his tracts, he noticed that they were much more successful than the rest. Stored up in his shrewd mind, this was the germ of the Art Department of Cassell and Co.
Taking a brother-in-law into partnership, Cassell had
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