Commercialization

“ Another circumstance which gives a superiority of commercial advantages to States that manufacture as well as cultivate consists in the more numerous attractions which a more diversified market offers to foreign customers and in the greater scope which it affords to mercantile enterprise. It is a position of indisputable truth in commerce depending, too, on very obvious reasons, that the greatest resort will ever be to those marts where commodities, while equally abundant, are most various. ”

“ But as the state became more and more involved in business affairs, it was able to advise what products would be in demand, when it was advisable to use caution and economy and when activity would be rewarded. The functions of the state as a medium of exchange between the producer and the consumer became rapidly extended, and before the close of the century it became the chief and in many things the only buyer and seller of the products in most common use, as well as the sole factor in all monopolies and in banking, insurance, and public amusements. ”

“ In many instances, the segments of economic endeavor embraced by these two concepts of 'industry' will be substantially coextensive, since those who employ the same types of machinery to turn out the sam general product often compete in the same market. ”

“ Surely the superior capital, ingenuity, application, and integrity, of the British manufacturer would command new markets for the produce of his industry, to an equal amount, when this should be no more. ”

“ And, however great may be the differences between manufacturing and merchandizing, between banking and baking, there are certain fundamentals characteristic of substantially every branch of that production, distribution and consumption of commodities—noting that consumption, and therefore household management, is put on a par with production and distribution—which is gathered under the one comprehensive term: modern business.
The most striking characteristic of modern business is the rapidity with which it is moving from a competitive to a cooperative basis. ”

“ In industry, we must support our objective of higher industrial growth with investments in relatively labor-intensive finished consumer goods industries, the second stage of import substitution for selected intermediate and capital goods industries, and the generation of exports. ”

“ The dealer in raw materials knew that the user must come to him; the great factories were contented with the phenomenal demand for their output, not alone at home, but also abroad, where merit had already won a profitable trade. ”

“ Its sales of manufactured goods have continued to extend with a facility and promptitude of results which have excited the serious concern of countries that, for generations, had not only controlled their home markets, but had practically monopolized certain lines of trade in other lands. ”

“ This caused a new factor to enter the organisation—the merchant manufacturer, whose function it was to attend to the marketing of goods produced in each one particular industry. The wider the distance in point of time and place between producers and consumers, the more important did the functions of the merchant manufacturer become, until he, in fact, controlled the industry by virtue of his possession of capital. Without capital the gap between producer and consumer could not be bridged. ”

“ The true way to conciliate these two interests is to lay a duty on foreign manufactures of the material, the growth of which is desired to be encouraged, and to apply the produce of that duty by way of bounty either upon the production of the material itself, or upon its manufacture at home, or upon both. In this disposition of the thing the manufacturer commences his enterprise under every advantage which is attainable as to quantity or price of the raw material. ”

“ If from investigation it appears that there is a market for one’s goods in any section or universally, that quality and prices can be such as to make competition favorable, that the market can be enlarged, or should there be none that one can be created, and a determination is therefore formed to enter export trade, the next question is how the goods shall be sold. ”

“ The price at which the manufacturer sells his goods is regulated on the one hand by the amount of competition with other manufacturers with which he has to contend, and on the other hand, by the larger or smaller supply of labor. ”

“ Our stock of materials is, in many instances, equal to the greatest demand, and our artisans sufficient to work them up, even for exportation. In those cases, I take it to be the policy of every enlightened nation to give their manufacturers that degree of encouragement necessary to perfect them, without oppressing the other parts of the community; and, under this encouragement, the industry of the manufacturer will be employed to add to the wealth of the nation."—Idem, p. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or in agriculture, to the contract method, whereby specified products such as sugar beets, sweet-corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, fruits, and other products for manufacture, canning, preserving, or pickling in a factory, are raised by the farmer and sold to the manufacturer at a previously agreed-upon contract price. Under the guild plan the manufacturer or importer sold usually to the ultimate consumer. So the economic system was gradually growing more complex, and the interdependence of man upon man more pronounced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ New lines of trade are to be opened. The commercial traveler must survey the field. The manufacturer must adapt his goods to the new markets and facilities for exchange must be established. This work has been well begun, our merchants and manufacturers having entered the new fields with courage and enterprise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our commerce is certainly of a character to entitle it to favor in most countries. The commodities we offer are either necessaries of life, or materials for manufacture, or convenient subjects of revenue; and we take in exchange, either manufactures, when they have received the last finish of art and industry, or mere luxuries. ”

“ To make exchange perfect there must constantly be great stores of goods in warehouses, ships, and railroad trains—goods held to supply the market, and goods on their way to market. To make labor effective, there must be many and various tools, factories, engines—all sorts of machinery. These tools and these goods in the hands of the producer are capital. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is true, therefore, of every particular producer or dealer, that a great demand, a brisk circulation, a rapid consumption, of the commodities which he sells at his shop or produces in his manufactory, is important to him. The dealer whose shop is crowded with customers, who can dispose of a product almost the very moment it is completed, makes large profits, while his next neighbour, with an equal capital but fewer customers, gains comparatively little. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of late years there has been a marked tendency towards the formation of large corporations that buy up a very large proportion of competing manufacturing plant, and in this way secure at least a temporary monopoly of the market. ”

“ Should the price of one article rise by attempted monopoly to a prohibitive basis, another product is called in to supply its place, which, by intrinsic merits, or by combination with others based on scientific authority, supplants the previous competitor. ”

“ It is a principal mean by which the establishment of manufactures contributes to an augmentation of the produce or revenue of a country, and has an immediate and direct relation to the prosperity of agriculture.
It is evident that the exertions of the husbandman will be steady or fluctuating, vigorous or feeble, in proportion to the steadiness or fluctuation, adequateness or inadequateness of the markets on which he must depend, for the vent of the surplus which may be produced by his labor ”

“ Some businesses show a tendency to pass out of the hands of small producers or dealers into a smaller number of larger ones; but the cases in which this happens are those in which the possession of a larger capital permits the adoption of more powerful machinery, more efficient by more expensive processes, or a better organized and more economical mode of carrying on business, and this enables the large dealer legitimately and permanently to supply the commodity cheaper than can be done on the small scale ”

“ If they were entirely separate, without political or commercial connection, it is manifest, that the consumption of the manufacturing states of foreign articles could not exceed twenty millions, the sum at which the value of their exports, of domestic products, and the profit of their foreign trade is estimated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and [135] maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced. ”

“ It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs. ”

“ To secure such a market there is no other expedient than to promote manufacturing establishments. Manufacturers, who constitute the most numerous class after the cultivators of the land, are for that reason the principal consumers of the surplus of their labor. ”

“ To place on imported articles which compete with articles that can be manufactured or produced in the United States, such a rate of duty as will secure to our farmers and laborers fair prices, fair wages, and will induce our people to engage in such manufacture and production. ”

“ Mercantile Exchange.—Important as is the manufacturing industry in the life of the city, it is only a part of the economic activity that is continually going on in its streets and buildings. The mercantile houses that carry on wholesale and retail trade, the towering office-buildings, and the railway and steamship terminals contain numerous groups of workers all engaged in the social task of supplying human wants, while streets and railways are avenues of traffic. The manufacture of goods is but a part of the process; distribution is as important as production. ”

“ 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. ”