Commerce

“ 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. ”

“ It is to the staple articles of consumption that the capitals of manufactures and commerce address their employment. Their employment depends upon the ability of the great body of the people to purchase what they produce. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Commerce is a term of the largest import. It comprehends intercourse for the purposes of trade in any and all its forms, including the transportation, purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities between the citizens of our country and the citizens or subjects of other countries, and between the citizens of different States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their commerce, at this moment, creates a new activity in all the great marts of the world. They show themselves able, by an exchange of commodities, to bear a useful part in the intercourse of nations. ”

“ Such is one result of the building up of commerce from humble beginnings, the amassing of wealth commercially and intellectually by the long intercourse and interchange of commodities and languages with other nations. ”

“ As the currency conveys right of choice out of many things in exchange for one, so Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained; and countries producing [Pg 266] only timber can obtain for their timber silk and gold; or, naturally producing only jewels and frankincense, can obtain for them cattle and corn. In this function commerce is of more importance to a country in proportion to the limitations of its products and the restlessness of its fancy;—generally of greater importance towards Northern latitudes. ”

“ In seeking for employment to a capital, manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. ”

“ Backwardness of commerce and manufactures.—The difficulties of internal commerce were so great that the life of the people was arranged in large part to enable them to exist without trade. Most of the people were engaged in agriculture and supplied themselves with nearly all the necessaries of life. Manufactures were still carried on almost exclusively by scattered artisans. ”

“ Survey of American commerce, 1789-1815.—Starting from these beginnings we have now to trace the course of our commerce through the period. So sharp were the fluctuations in this early stage that I give the annual statistics, and, for reasons which will be apparent later, call particular attention to the distinction between domestic exports, of articles produced in the United States, and foreign exports, of articles brought from some other country and re-exported. ”

“ Survey of commercial development, 1860-1914.—In the chapters introductory to the history of commerce in the nineteenth century, attention was directed to the increasing rapidity of movement, which makes the second half of the century a period by itself, distinguished above all others by its wonderful commercial development. That the United States enjoyed a full measure of the world’s progress in commerce is shown by the following table, which gives the figures of imports and exports in millions of dollars. ”

“ The trade thus carefully ordered and regulated, assumes, in the course of time, all the dimensions of a vast and increasing commerce. Abundant capital is invested in it, talent and ingenuity are exerted to make its resorts attractive and luxurious, and an insatiable demand arises for fresh young articles of commerce. ”

“ The triumphs of commerce and its auxiliaries have been exhibited in the present article. Easy transport of goods by land and sea, prompt intelligence from every point of the compass, general prevalence of mercantile law and safety, have all been accomplished; and the world is opened to trade. ”

“ Another indication of the growing extension of the commerce of the kingdom is furnished by the instances now beginning to be of frequent occurrence of individuals rising to great wealth, and sometimes to rank and power, through the successful pursuit of trade. ”

“ Business and trade have always been central to the American experience. In the period since the Industrial Revolution, the extraordinary growth of our economy has created a marketplace that is the foundation of global commerce. ”

“ These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We do not find in strictly commercial undertakings the tremendous aggregations of men and capital which have become characteristic of modern transportation and manufactures. Modern trusts, it is true, have invaded the field of commerce to a certain extent, and have effected some of their chief economies in improved methods of marketing their products. ”

“ Great growth of foreign commerce.—Assuming, for purposes of discussion, a fair degree of accuracy in the figures, some conclusions from them may be pointed out. The commerce of the world increased in this century at the astonishing rate of 1,359 per cent. ”

“ Something similar takes place among merchants, and it may be admitted as correct in principle, that every new intermediary, freely recognized by both sides in commerce,359 makes labor better or less expensive. ”

“ To abasement at the footstool of this triumphant wickedness, everything venal and sordid in the yet Free States would inevitably and intensely gravitate: commerce seeking customers; manufactures eager for markets ”

“ Commerce took on definite proportions and became of considerable importance only when a special class of traders and merchants arose, who made it their business to study wants, to inspire new ones, and to provide the means of satisfying them. ”

“ A well-regulated Commerce is not, like Law, Physick or Divinity, to be overstocked with Hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by Multitudes, and gives Employment to all its Professors. ”

“ We think nowadays that the resources of a state depend upon the prosperity of the people, no matter whether this prosperity comes from agriculture or from manufactures, 167from internal trade or from foreign trade. Statesmen, however, of the period under discussion, set a peculiarly high value on foreign commerce, and regarded it as a more important branch of industry than any other. ”

“ The progress of this market, from what it was once to what it is at present, was strongly indicative of several other curious changes which were taking place in the country. The first achievement of commerce is the establishment of a market. ”

“ Closely allied with the manufacturing occupations are those branches of industry classified in the census reports under the heading: "trading and transportation." They comprise all commercial activities. Merchants, clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen and women, typewriters, telegraph and telephone operators, etc., are enumerated in this class. Flourishing industries are invariably accompanied by flourishing commerce, and the capitalistic system of production depends upon a constant expansion of trade. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or of any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but, in general, they bear no regular proportion to those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. ”

“ He believed in the advantage of making twelve exchanges in a year in place of one, and he saw clearly that the nearer the consumer could come to the producer the larger and more profitable would be commerce. ”

“ In this practice is found the origin of the market, a medieval institution of which more will be said later. A market was a place appointed by the government, where bargains could properly be made; and only small exchanges of household produce could be made outside it, in the open country. Beginning in the need that was felt to prevent thieving it developed as a public institution, which the people found it profitable to extend as a means of collecting tolls and of regulating internal trade.
35. Society organized to exist with the minimum of commerce ”

“ At the centers of business the great merchants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both consumers and producers, study to apportion the supply so that it will reach those who stand most in need of it, and seek to regulate future production so that there may be neither waste nor want when the product is brought to market. ”

“ The product of that city, now
Far distant lands consume;
The Indian wears around his brow
The white webs of her loom.
Her vessels sweep from East to West;
Her merchants are like kings;
While wonders in her walls attest
The power that commerce brings. ”

“ Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed. ”

“ The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Money, and not morality, is the principle of commerce and commercial nations. ”

“ The merchants, therefore, who came from other countries were now reduced to the necessity of either directly bartering their commodities for the produce of the kingdom, or, if they sold them for money in the first instance, of investing the proceeds in other goods before they could be permitted to return home. ”

“ Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; ”

“ Every transaction in commerce is an independent transaction. ”

“ What is the proportion of retail and wholesale merchants in your city; how far has the specialization of wholesale trade progressed? Answers may perhaps be found in a business directory. The student who is competent to work out the history of business organization in his own town will not fail to get new light on the history of earlier development; and a report on the history of some particular branch of trade at home should be an excellent exercise to be worked out. ”

“ Because Money made of Gold and Silver is the best Rule of Commerce, and must therefore be equal, or else it is no Rule; ”

“ Industries manufacturing comparatively inexpensive articles for the retail trade, put them up in packages which become well known to customers; and those industries whose goods are sold under brands or trade-marks, or in some other form so that they are familiar to buyers, afford an example of competition of an entirely different kind. ”

“ I buy, dispense, and disperse human labor. I create wants, and I satisfy them. I will establish honest laws of trade. What I do shall be rated as commercial law. What I say shall be quoted as a way of equity and probity. That man is a King of Trade. His throne is set upon hills and seas. His subjects are all men with needs, and all men with products of the land, the coasts, the sea, or brain, or skill. This is the lawful King of Trade. He represents God's mart of exchange. Primarily, goods are not bought and sold in the market. They are first transferred in that man's brain. ”

“ Produce something that somebody else wants, whether it be a shoe string or a savings bank, and the purchaser or patron will not trouble himself to ask who the seller is. This same great economic law runs through every line of industry, whether it be farming, manufacturing, mercantile or professional pursuits. Recognize this fundamental law of trade; add to it tact, good manners, a resolute will, a tireless capacity for hard work, and you will succeed in business. ”