Acquisition

“ Does the entire economy of society not rest upon the separation of employments, the division of labour—in a word, upon exchange? And what is exchange, but a calculation which we make with a view to discontinuing direct production in every case in which we find that possible, and in which indirect acquisition enables us to effect a saving in time and in effort? ”

“ The acquisition of new territory, or of new branches of trade, may sometimes raise the profits of stock, and with them the interest of money, even in a country which is fast advancing in the acquisition of riches. ”

“ The diligence so fostered by emulative self-interest is directed to the acquisition of property, in173 great part to the acquisition of more than is possessed by those others with whom the invidious comparison in ownership is made; and under the spur of ownership simply, it is only secondarily, as a means to the emulative end of acquisition, that productive work, and therefore workmanship in its naïve sense, comes into the case at all. ”

“ As has been suggested in an earlier paragraph, it is characteristic of hedonistic economics that the large and central element in its theoretical structure is the doctrine of distribution. Consumption being taken for granted as a quantitive matter simply,—essentially a matter of an insatiable appetite,—economics becomes a theory of acquisition; production is, theoretically, a process of acquisition, and distribution a process of distributive acquisition. The theory of production is drawn in terms of the gains to be acquired by production ”

“ This is the constant multiplication of intervening agents—middle-men, factors, brokers, speculators, contractors, and distributors of every sort—between the producer and the consumer, or between the primary owner and the ultimate owner of almost everything which is the subject of ownership and trade. Those two, who are the actual persons brought chiefly into relationship by the thing in question, are put quite out of sight of one another in most of the transactions of modern industry and commerce ”

“ For you, O broker! there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. ”

“ This is no more than an expansion of its simplest signification, that of an exchange of goods, the bringing of them from the seller to the buyer, however vast the range now comprehended by the term in the progress of society. ”

“ The manufacturer supplies the wholesale dealer; the wholesale dealer provides the retail tradesman; and the retail tradesman carries on his business with his customers upon the sure foundation of credit. Not a coin is seen in the hands of either party from one year’s end to the other; and a man’s wealth is known not by the mere exchangeable property he possesses, but by the extent of the credit he is allowed. Political economy is a wonderful science, sir; and the ancients were entirely ignorant of its true principles. ”

“ Who are the most interested in commerce, the growers of the articles, the exchange and transportation of which constitute commerce, or the factors and freighters employed in the exchange and transportation of those articles? Can any man doubt for one moment that the growers, the rightful owners of the articles to be exchanged, are more deeply interested in commerce than the merchant and ship-holder, who only make a profit from the sale and transportation of the articles exchanged? ”

“ That cannot well be; but that he should have a true notion of business in general, and a knowledge how and in what manner it is carried on; that he should know where every manufacture is made, and how bought at first hand; that he should know which are the proper markets, and what the particular kinds of goods to exchange at those markets; that he should know the manner how every manufacture is managed, and the method of their sale. ”

“ There is a cause for the failure of the merchant, the lawyer, the judge, and the legislator, as well as for the success of the artisan. And the cause must be sought in the courses of training, respectively, of the two classes. Let us assume that the artisan and the merchant, the lawyer, the judge, and the legislator, graduate at the same time from the public high school, or from Harvard or Yale. The merchant at once begins to trade, to buy and sell. ”

“ An economic arrangement between companies performing similar functions in the production or sale of comparable goods or services is characterized as 'horizontal.' The effect on competition of such an arrangement depends, of course, upon its character and scope. ”

“ It arises wholly from the nature of the subject, as we shall soon see, and not at all from the insufficiency of the word, Value. We have already seen fully, that Buying and Selling in each and [34] every transaction is complex and relative, involving twelve elements every time; that Desires and Estimates and Renderings are especially relative,—each party to a trade desires something in possession of the other, estimates that something relatively to something in his own possession, and finally renders to the other his own something for the sake of receiving the other's something. ”

“ So that the party who has received the money, the seller, has only thus obtained a power to make subsequently an inverse operation, that is a purchase where and when it pleases him. The operation of selling and buying is then nothing less than the exchange of a thing for a power. ”

“ Position of property is as much a constituent of its value as its composition. A market for its products is as necessary as its products. There must be demand for the products and means of their supply, and both, I repeat, are attributes of property. ”

“ The kinds and quantities of goods and opportunities which any man can appropriate without admitting other men to some sort of partnership are limited indeed, and the point upon which I am insisting is that so soon as this partnership is entered into, whether for consumption or for production, absolute ownership ends, and a new relation with new ethical limitations begins, viz., the relation which I designate as proprietorship. ”

“ But I speak not this to discourage any man, that has a mind to improve his Estate, by adventuring upon such a Purchase; for, though the Planter, by long and tedious pain and industry, have worn out his life, in the acquist of his fortune; yet, the Buyer, by his purchase, is so well and happily seated, as he need endure no such hardships, but may go on in the managing his businesse, with much ease, and some pleasure ”

“ Even in transactions where the Company is really nothing more than a business agency, it will temporarily appear as a purchaser, and will be set down as the momentary possessor in the register of landed property. ”

“ Don't glance over this carelessly, but study it carefully, grasp the logical manner in which it is built up, the significance of each testimonial, the force and purpose of each statement made, and you will agree with us that the SELLING TALK is a strong one. It can be made stronger for your purpose, and it is the study you give the Manual which will make it stronger for you.
Paragraphs 31 and 34, Section 3, have a selling value you need. Get these into your mind so that they are a part of you. Reserve force. Lay in a good supply. ”

“ The first transaction is of a personal nature between the owners and a third party who is a purchaser; in the other transaction the third party, who is an investor, puts in money to acquire an interest and his investment becomes the common property of all the owners of whom he is now one. ”

“ The true office of commerce is to facilitate exchanges of articles between men, to the amount that their wants and interests require; but as every transfer of property leaves a profit with the merchant, he has a disposition to increase his gains, by pushing his transactions beyond the just limits of trade. ”

“ And when, by the introduction of a medium of exchange and measure of value, a distinction has been made between buyers and sellers, the demand for any sort of commodities may be defined to be, the will of persons to purchase them, combined with their general means of purchasing ”

“ The value in competitive areas is to be determined by agreement, regard being had to net profits and to the circumstances and conditions under which the company would carry on such business after the date of sale. ”

“ I have a great part of my life been engaged in all the stations of merchant, farmer and manufacturer, in which I have honestly earned and lost a great deal of property, in the character of a merchant. ”

“ People, you know, who are on the lookout for custom strive to present as smart an appearance as possible. Most of the goods merchants keep they expect to sell, but there are articles in every stock for which there is little or no demand or profit in the handling. These the merchant keeps to gratify his pride of proprietorship. Perhaps I have such a weakness, but with which face do you think I seek preferment, my son? ”

“ Now therefore let the learned Lawyer fall cheerfully to his books again, for the Merchant cannot put him down, if he have no more skill than is in his Exchange. Are these such admirable feats, when they may be so easily know and done in the course of trade? ”

“ The advance which he has in view is to come out of the prospective earnings of the capital for which he negotiates. What he has in view as his ulterior end in the transaction is the conversion of the values for which he negotiates into a larger outcome of money values, - whatever process of production and the like may intervene between the inception and the goal of his traffic. ”

“ The opening of bids and awarding contracts on sample requires actual acquaintance with the market, and experience in judging of the quality of goods of every variety. He needs the experience and judgment of a first-class country merchant. ”

“ The company were to be enabled to purchase lands, &c., and to exercise all the usual powers of bodies corporate; but were not to trade in the buying or selling of any goods or merchandise, except that they might deal in bills of exchange, and in buying and selling of bullion, gold, or silver, and in selling of any goods or merchandise which should be pledged to them for money lent thereon, and might also sell the produce of their own lands. ”

“ What government failed to effect, however, with all its patronage and all its agents, was at length brought about by the enterprise and perseverance of a single merchant, one of its adopted citizens; and this brings us to speak of the individual whose enterprise is the especial subject of the following pages; a man whose name and character are worthy of being enrolled in the history of commerce, as illustrating its noblest aims and soundest maxims. ”

“ Private property being assumed as a fact, we have next to enumerate the different classes of persons to whom it gives rise; whose concurrence, or at least whose permission, is necessary to production, and who are therefore able to stipulate for a share of the produce. ”

“ One partner may confess judgment, or give bonds, or current notes in the name, and as for the account of the company, and yet convert the effects to his own private use, leaving the stock to be answerable for the value. ”

“ Pictures, you must observe, are purchased by dealers on the supposition that the value they give will, at a future period, be so largely increased as to cover both the original cost and the accumulated interest. ”

“ The sale and the purchase constitute one identical act, an exchange between a commodity-owner and an owner of money, between two persons as opposed to each other as the two poles of a magnet. They form two distinct acts, of polar and opposite characters, when performed by one single person. ”

“ In other words, property consists in Values, in a purchasing-power, and not in possession, or in appropriation, or in the esteem in which a man holds anything he has as long as it is his own.
The test of property is a sale; that which will bring something when exposed for exchange is property; that which will bring nothing, either never was, or has now ceased to be, distinctively property. ”

“ A sale, in fact, implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is beneficial, and to buy is the reverse, every international transaction would imply the amelioration of one people, and the deterioration of another. ”

“ In many cases the producers and dealers are the same persons, at least as to the ownership of the funds and the control of the operations. The tailor, the shoemaker, the baker, and many other tradesmen, are the producers of the articles they deal in, so far as regards the last stage in the production. ”

“ In particular those things that belong into the field of economics, that is tradesmanship, bookkeeping and international exchange of money have been gathered together with great care so that one will even find the legal terminology a merchant should know if a complex deal should need the decision of a judge. ”

“ On the same grounds on which you leave the seller of gloves and the buyer of gloves to make their own contract, you ought to leave the seller of labour and the buyer of labour to make their own contract. ”

“ Now, when one country buys from another wholesale, to sell again in retail, or buys in retail, to sell again in the lump, if we trace the transaction to its ultimate results, we shall always find that commerce resolves itself into barter, products for products, services for services. ”

“ Thus, a 'gift enterprise' has been defined to be 'a scheme for the division or distribution of certain articles of property, to be determined by chance, amongst those who have taken shares in the scheme.' Bouvier's Law Dict. ”

“ In addition to selling, functions frequently performed by wholesale establishments include maintaining inventories of goods; extending credit; physically assembling, sorting, and grading goods in large lots ”

“ The merchant may thereby be enabled better to understand many commodities in trade; the handicraftsman to improve his business by new instruments, mixtures and materials; and frequently hints are given for new manufactures, or new methods of improving land, that may be set on foot greatly to the advantage of a country. ”