Leadenhall Market

“ Their purchases consist of warren-rabbits, poultry, and game, of which about one-eighth of the whole amount brought to this market is bought by them. When the market is slack, and during the summer, when there is “no great call” for game, etc., the costers attending Leadenhall-market turn their hand to crockery, fruit, and fish.
The costermongers frequenting Spitalfields-market average all the year through from 700 to 1,000 each market-day. They come from all parts, as far as Edmonton, Edgeware, and Tottenham; Highgate, Hampstead, and even from Greenwich and Lewisham. ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that Leadenhall was the market, and that the Crossing at Cornhill was the carfax of London during the Middle Ages.
We have seen above that Brock said that fragments of painting were found on the site. In the British Museum are four pieces of wall painting, given by Mr. Hilton Price—1 and 2 in 1882, and 3 and 4 in 1883; the first pair are said to be from Leadenhall, the second pair from Leadenhall Market. One and 3 are fragments of large-scale scrolls of ornamental foliage of a grey-green colour; 2 is a piece of large-scale drapery, and 4 is part of a life-sized foot. ”

“ But leaving these haunts of money-dealers, let us pass over to Leadenhall Street, turn down Billiter Street, and walk on till we reach Mark Lane and the plain, spacious, substantial, Doric-fronted building on the left hand, in which the great London Corn Market is held every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—the chief market, however, being that of Monday. There are no clamorous shoutings here. These crowds of staid, well-dressed, respectable people fly no kites, deal in no flimsy paper-schemes and shares. Their commerce is in corn, flour, seeds—the sustenance of man, in short. ”

“ Then there were great food markets at Leadenhall Street and Smithfield and Covent Garden, incredible accumulations of raw stuff. At Covent Garden they sold fruits and flowers that we should think poor and undeveloped, but which everyone in those days regarded as beautiful and delicious. And in Caledonian Market were innumerable barrows where people actually bought and took away every sort of broken and second-hand rubbish, broken ornaments, decaying books with torn pages, second-hand clothing—a wonderland of litter for any boy with curiosity in his blood.... ”

“ Even the Whitechapel meat-market is less the scene of prey, for it is a series of shops, while Leadenhall presents many stalls, and the finders seem loath to enter shops without some plausible pretext. ”

“ Before the middle of the fourteenth century Leadenhall had become a market for poultry. In 1345 it was ordered that strange folk, i.e. people from outside the City, bringing poultry for sale should no longer hawk it about from house to house, but should take it to the Leaden Hall, and should there sell it, and nowhere else. Also that citizens who sell poultry should offer it on the west side of the Tun of Cornhill (Riley, pp. 220, 221) . ”

“ I am told that the trade of the tool-sellers in Newgate and Leadenhall markets is now very indifferent, owing chiefly to the butchers having been so frequently imposed upon by the street-sellers, that they are either indisposed or afraid to deal with them. When the itinerant tool-sellers are not occupied at the markets they vend their wares to tradesmen at private shops, but often without success. “It is a poor living,” said one of the hawkers to me; “sometimes little better than starving. I have gone out a whole day and haven’t taken a farthing.” ”

“ Every consumer and dealer in the country was bare of supplies and a very active demand from all sources set in immediately.
When we abandoned the brokerage business to become importers and dealers, our relations with our London friends changed. We bought of them all that we imported and they sold to no other American firm. If they bought in this market, their orders came to us. With their movements we worked in sympathy. If they advanced the price in London we did the same in New York and vice-versa. ”

“ In general, besides a few of the retail dealers, only the dilélma, or broker, has a stall, which, on this account, is called diléllam; and, no shady trees being found, both buyers and sellers are exposed to the whole force of the sun during the very hottest hours of the day, between eleven and three o’clock, when the market is most full and busy, and the crowd is often so dense that it is difficult to make one’s way through it: for the place not being regularly laid out, nor the thoroughfares limited by rows of stalls, each dealer squats down with his merchandise where he likes. ”

“ Leeds was the head-quarters of a body of merchants who were in the habit of going all over England with droves of packhorses loaded up with the cloth which had been bought in the open-air market, as already described. These travelling merchants did not sell to householders, since that would have constituted them pedlars. They kept to the wholesale business, dealing only with shopkeepers in the towns or with traders at the fairs ”

“ Our ancestors were far more alive to the advantages of ready cash, and consequent keen competition among dealers, than we are, although through the medium of Co-operative Stores, &c., we are beginning to learn the lost lesson, but, at all events, they had the acumen to know that large centres of supply were cheaper to the consumer than small, isolated shops, and the Market, was the outcome. ”

“ If he is deprived of such a market, it puts him back to the old way of doing business, when the large dealers from Liverpool, Chicago, and other quarters sent their agents direct to the farmers at harvest time, and by bringing all kinds of discouraging influences to bear upon them made them sell at a fraction above the cost of production; as against this they are at present able to hold their crop back and get the highest price. ”

“ In well-ordered states they are commonly those who are the weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose; their duty is to be in the market, and to give money in exchange for goods to those who desire to sell and to take money from those who desire to buy.
This want, then, creates a class of retail-traders in our State. Is not ‘retailer’ the term which is applied to those who sit in the market-place engaged in buying and selling, while those who wander from one city to another are called merchants? ”

“ I should have stated that the principal customers of this branch of second-hand traders are found in the public-houses and at the cigar-shops, where the goods are carried by street-sellers, who hawk from place to place.
These dealers also attend the neighbouring, and, frequently in the summer, the more distant races, where for dice and the better quality of their “boards,” &c., they generally find a prompt market. The sale at the fairs consists only of the lowest-priced goods, and in a very scant proportion compared to the races. ”

“ Buying for future delivery causes advances in prices; selling short tends to restrain inordinate advances. In each case there must be a buyer and a seller, and the interaction of their trading steadies prices. Speculation thus brings into the market a distinct class of people possessing capital and special training who assume the risks of holding and distributing the proceeds of the crops from one season to another with the minimum of cost to producer and consumer. ”

“ There were still thousands of people between the corner of Montgomery Street and Leidesdorff, and the little alley itself was packed full of shouting, struggling traders. The thousands were broken into hundreds of groups, and men were noisily buying and selling, or discussing the chances of the market when the “big Board” should open once more. ”

“ The farmer gets reasonable advances to enable him to develop his holding at 8 per cent. on deposit of his deeds, and is thus able to buy his provisions in the cheapest and to sell his produce in the dearest market, Perth being now rendered reasonably accessible by railway. Even the storekeeper has gained by the change, as, despite his huge profits on paper, the credit system and the uncertainty of the market sadly hampered his operations in practice. The Northam district is admirably suited for sub-tropical cultures, the grape production per acre being in some cases almost fabulous. ”

“ From this we may gather that Bartholomew fair was in those days a great annual mart to which merchants used to come up from the various parts of the country, and perhaps from other countries, to make their wholesale purchases, just as some of the continental fairs still are. The object of the regulations was to prevent the holding of the retail market, by which, of course, the crowd of visitors was chiefly attracted; but the wholesale market was too indispensable to the general trade of the country to be interfered with. ”

“ Fear of the potential competition of outsiders often keeps down prices to a level above which they would rise were it not for the belief that such a rise would bring into active, effective competition the outsider. England had until recently a monopoly of the market for cotton goods in certain Eastern countries, but the price at which she sold was determined by the possibility of rival French or German merchants, as well as by the direct competition of the several English firms. In certain commodities the market is conterminous with the trade, that is, we have a world-market. ”

“ We enjoyed the confidence of the large importers and dealers and were in close touch with the consuming trade throughout the country. Our facilities for getting information as to stocks in the aggregate and individually were unequalled. The large consumers posted us in advance of what their requirements would be for certain periods. If the large city dealers were manipulating the market it was done through our office and we knew their plans. ”

“ The farmer receives the price paid at Liverpool, less the cost of transportation and the profits of the intermediate operators, with the premium on gold added. But the price of those staples in the foreign market are measured by the specie standard prevailing there, and not driven up by any paper inflation; and they are also depressed by the competition of other agricultural countries. ”

“ The market advanced by leaps and bounds, until finally the price in London reached one hundred and sixty-seven pounds sterling per ton, with an equivalent value in all other markets. This represented an advance of more than one hundred per cent.
Then the members of the syndicate awakened from their pleasant dream to find a nightmare.
The hand of every man in the trade throughout the world was raised against them. They were in the meshes of an endless chain. For every ton they could sell they must buy five, or more, in order to sustain the price. ”

“ In Europe, the great public markets in the cities bring farmer and consumer closely together in many commodities, but in the United States the bulk of products are too far afield for this. The farmer must market through a long chain of manufacturers, brokers, jobbers and wholesalers with or without their own distribution system, who must establish a clientele of direct retailers ”

“ The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make them, and by sometimes even advancing their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. ”

“ In the Court of King’s Bench, on November 25th, Lord Ellenborough, who was applied to for a rule, held that individuals might buy and sell upon terms agreed to, but combining to impose terms upon the growers was calculated to enhance the price of grain in the market, and to lessen the supply in the market, which was another cause for an increased price. ”

“ When indeed the market, being that of a great city, holds out a sufficient inducement to large capitalists to engage in retail operations, it is generally found a better speculation to attract a large business by underselling others, than merely to divide the field of employment with them. This influence of competition is making itself felt more and more through the principal branches of retail trade in the large towns ”

“ THE MARKET-PLACE The market-place, where the dealing in this mass of securities is carried on, is by no means of imposing appearance from the exterior point of view. Of all the Stock Exchanges, Bourses, and Bolsas throughout the country and the world, the London Stock Exchange makes, perhaps, the least exterior show. The tourist often seeks it in vain, and thousands of Londoners pass it every day without knowing that behind the suites of offices, with their Portland-stone walls relieved by granite, is hidden the mighty market-place. ”

“ With the increase in size of cities and the general change in habits, retail purchasers find it increasingly troublesome to go to a central market, and attach an importance to the convenience of purchasing from neighboring local provision dealers, and of having the goods delivered. ”

“ Rochdale was “a market of no small resort,” says Leland, but he is silent as to its commercial doings; nevertheless, if manufacture was not carried on there, its inhabitants were doing a good business in the sale of wool and coatings, as is proved by the fact that several cases of dispute as to the non–delivery of goods of this kind were heard in the duchy court. In the reign of101 Elizabeth the manufacture of these articles soon followed, and before the end of the century this industry was well established here. ”