Cession

“ The English treaty thus summarizes the principal concessions granted: ‘All members of the principal contracting parties may carry on any wholesale or retail business, in any sort of product, manufactures and merchandise, personally or by their representatives, individually or through an association, either with other foreigners or with natives ”

“ Concessions were lavished on anyone ready to take them up, and, far from irksome conditions being imposed, valuable privileges were granted to the concessionnaires. Moreover, the national and provincial governments were only too eager to get rid of such lines as they themselves owned, and invariably worked at a loss, and to transfer them to European concerns. ”

“ The forfeiture of any concession having been decreed the nation shall acquire the ownership of the part of the way constructed free from all encumbrance and at a valuation fixed by experts named by the Executive and by the company. ”

“ When these concessions are asked for by people who intend to invest money in the country and develop a new industry it is bad enough, but the trouble is that many of these concessions are obtained by concession hunters who have barely enough money to put up as the necessary guarantee. These people, hearing of the possibility of some company starting a new industry here, immediately ask for a concession covering the industry, put up the few hundreds or thousands necessary to secure the concession, and then sell out at an enormous profit to the prospective manufacturer. ”

“ In 1742, this mercantile body, known by the appellation of the Caraccas and Guipuscoa Company, obtained an exclusive grant of the monopoly of the trade; but in consequence of the discontent which this concession raised in the minds of the colonists, a board was appointed, composed of an equal number of members of the company and of planters, the governor-general being president ”

“ So long as human nature remains the same, this splendor and pomp of processions, these lighted torches and ornamented churches, this triumphant music and glad holiday of religion will attract more than your plain conventicles, your ugly meeting-houses, and your compromise with the bass-viol. ”

“ But division of Labor would be useless were it not for Trade. Each of those frontiersmen must trade his share in the other’s habitation for the other’s share in his habitation; each of those messengers must exchange his claim to compensation for delivering one of the other’s two messages for the other’s claim to compensation for delivering one of his. This, then, is the sum and substance of Trade in Economics—adjustments of compensation for specialized Production through division of Labor. ”

“ Is it not too often typical of the glory of our rural dreams? To live in the country; to lie on green lawns, or under bowers of roses and honeysuckle; to watch the procession of the flowers, and bind upon our brows the sweetest and the fairest; to take largess of all the fruits in their season; to be entirely independent of the world, dead to its din, alive only to its beauty ”

“ No white angel ever floats more clearly before the eyes of those who look on the sculptor's finished work than before the eyes of Elizabeth appeared the shapes and hues of sounds which swept in gay or solemn procession through the windings of her father's horn, floating over the blue water, dissolving as the mist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In England, or in any other great mercantile country, the bulk of the things which are bought and sold, goes through the hands of a wholesale dealer, and it is he who higgles and bargains with an entire nation of purchasers, by entering into treaty with retail sellers. ”

“ From business on the Exchange I was barred until after final settlement with creditors. As a matter of fact this was more of a loss to the Exchange than to me. During 1895 our name had appeared on the contracts of fully ninety per cent. of all the business done on the floor, and in the five years immediately following our failure the entire business did not equal that of any two months in 1895. ”

“ In compliance with your desire, we have reflected on the business & expence which will attend the sale of and remitting for such teas as the East India Company may ship to North America, and considering that none but gentlemen of known property, integrity and of experience in trade can, with propriety and safety to the Company, be employed therein, we humbly conceive that five pr cent. commission, and one pr cent. for truckage, warehouse rent, brokerage, and other incidental charges, making in the whole six pr cent. on the gross sales, is as little as the business can be transacted for. ”

“ The commission-merchant is the type, the highest expression, of monopoly, the embodiment of commerce, that is, of civilization. Every function depends upon his, participates in it, or is assimilated to it: for, as from the standpoint of the distribution of wealth the relations of men with each other are all reducible to exchanges,—that is, to transfers of values,—it may be said that civilization is personified in the commission-merchant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In manufacturing, mining, and many wholesale trades, employers' associations have held annual or more frequent meetings at which agreements have been made as to prices, amount of production, terms of sale, length of (p. 295) credit, and other such matters. In some cases formal combinations have been made of all the operators in one trade, with provisions for enforcing trade agreements. In such a case all competition comes to an end in that particular trade, so far as the subjects of agreement extend. ”

“ In all commercial communities there is a commercial mart, or a capital, where exchanges are effected, cargoes disposed of in gross, and where all the great interests of trade concentrate, as the blood flows to and from the heart. In identified governments, like that of England, for instance, legislation may respect this natural tendency to concentration in commerce, and enact laws for its especial benefit and protection. ”

“ When a merchant treated with a seller who had come into the town, any of his fellows who happened to come in at the moment when the earnest-money was paid and the striking of hands in ratification of the bargain took place, had the right to claim a share in the transaction and to obtain the goods in question at the same price. ”

“ Ask how the rural people who here grow wheat and there pasture cattle, find it possible to occupy themselves in their special businesses? These groups can severally do it only if each gets from the others in exchange for its own surplus product, due shares of their surplus products. No longer directly effected by barter, this obtainment of their respective shares of one another's products is indirectly effected by money; and if we ask how each division of producers gets its due amount of the required money, the answer is—by fulfillment of contract. ”

“ It was no wonder that individual traders gave place to great unions of the merchants of London, Amsterdam, or Dieppe, who risked part of their means and united their resources to form companies to trade with the East and West Indies, Africa, and other outlying parts of the world.
4. Neither the possession of a monopoly nor the creation of a large, joint capital was considered enough to launch an enterprise of this kind. The grant of public or political powers by government was necessary to make its economic objects attainable, and these were given with a free hand. ”

“ A general application of the Act to all combinations of business and capital organized to suppress commercial competition is in harmony with the spirit and impulses of the times which gave it birth. 'Trusts' and 'monopolies' were the terror of the period. ”

“ So we suppose any other monstrous claim set up by a band of foreign fur traders having influence enough to start any speculation on a nominal capital in our country and failing to realize the profits anticipated, must apply for an acknowledgment of their speculation, be mentioned in a treaty, and be paid in proportion to the enormity of their demands. ”

“ The union among the merchants of any one city or league was one for joint trading privileges only, not for corporate investment or syndicated business. Each merchant or firm traded separately and independently, simply using the warehouse and office facilities secured by the efforts of the home government, and enjoying the permission to trade, exemption from duties, and whatever other privileges might have been obtained for its merchants by the same power. ”

“ The ordinary commission on transactions in wheels is 25 per cent. I am going to sell the Manitou retail at twenty English pounds apiece. You shall hev your 25 per cent. on all orders.'
'Five pounds for every machine I sell?' I exclaimed, overjoyed.
He nodded. 'That's so.'
I was simply amazed at this magnificent prospect. 'The cycle trade must be honeycombed with middlemen's profits!' I cried; for I had my misgivings.
'That's so,' he replied again. 'Then jest you take and be a middlewoman.'
'But, as a consistent socialist——'
'It is your duty to fleece the capitalist and the consumer. ”

“ The commodities must have been produced in the limits of their jurisdiction and not obtained by trading with the planters who occupied lands which were the property of the Company. Furthermore, if upon the termination of a joint stock, a quantity of goods remained in the Magazine unsold, these goods were to be exhausted by purchasers residing in the Hundreds before the adventurers of the Hundreds could furnish them with supplies of the same character. ”

“ The treaties negotiated by Clive had raised the Company from the position of a trading corporation with a monopoly, to that of the sovereign of vast and growing territories. Their income, large in reality, larger yet in popular estimation, consisted of two parts: trade profits on the one hand, territorial revenue on the other. ”

“ What buys land, will buy every thing the land produces; and what buys the product of land, will buy [Pg 193] all other goods whether home or foreign. if wine is brought from France, the merchant designs to lay out his money on goods, at interest, or on land: the commission does not receive silver money, so he cannot have a bond from the commission, unless he give the value in paper; and many of the landed men won’t take silver for their goods or lands, having occasion for paper to pay the commission. ”

“ The Trading Company.—English pioneers in exploration found an instrument for colonization in companies of merchant adventurers, which had long been employed in carrying on commerce with foreign countries. Such a corporation was composed of many persons of different ranks of society—noblemen, merchants, and gentlemen—who banded together for a particular undertaking, each contributing a sum of money and sharing in the profits of the venture. ”

“ Such a business would have been impossible in the Middle Ages when a merchant accompanied his wares or shared his responsibilities with a few associates. It was made possible now by the development of the commission trade. Commission merchants, or factors, made it their profession “to buy and sell for other business men for a certain profit which is given them for their trouble by the principals.” Sometimes they were in business on their own account also; sometimes they were specialists in various lines. ”

“ Of course, in all exchange of commodities between two countries, besides that supply of the respective wants of each which constitutes the foundation or sustaining element of the commerce, a certain portion of what the consumer pays must fall to the share of the persons by whose agency the commerce is carried on. It is this that properly forms the profits of the commerce, as distinguished from its mere advantages or conveniences. ”

“ These companies had their period of rise in the sixteenth century; a rapid and wide-spread development in the seventeenth; and a subsequent decline and discredit in the eighteenth. The movement was European; every country whose situation or ambitions would at all admit of distant trading, and whose system of commerce was not, like that of Spain and Portugal, already stereotyped under government control, adopted approximately the same policy.
2. To each of these companies was secured by its charter the monopoly of trade in a particular region. ”

“ The railroad, the theatre, the inn-keeper, are as fairly in trade, as fairly merchants, as the ship-master, the banker, or the broker. A mercantile contract is not necessarily for the payment of money. A bill of lading is for the delivery of goods; yet it is admitted that the custom governs. ”

“ It would save much trouble if an account were kept of the expence, package, wharfage, and freight of all articles which are expected to be considered as capital, that the bills of the same be forthcoming if called for, and that a correct list be made of the contents of every package belonging to the settler, that he may know the particular box he has to open for any article he may want. ”

“ 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. ”