Merchant class

“ The wholesale merchant was of course a more important person, and the rise of this larger trade was in fact what raised up a wealthy city class in opposition to the landed aristocracy, and was generally the cause of overthrowing oligarchies. ”

“ But a new class of men had now arisen to extend the principles of Free-trade, and to force home the wedges of unfettered commerce with heavier blows [Pg 72] than Canning, Huskisson, or even Peel, had ever done. The people, led in this instance by men from among themselves, of the industrial classes ”

“ Its growth meant the development of a class which under the old order had been strictly subordinate to the ruling class, and naturally regarded it with a mingled feeling of respect and jealousy. The British merchant felt his superiority in business to the average country-gentleman; he got no direct share of the pensions and sinecures which so profoundly affected the working of the political machinery, and yet his highest ambition was to rise to be himself a member of the class, and to found a family which might flourish in the upper atmosphere. ”

“ The class of dealers or merchants, as distinguished from trading artisans, also greatly increased and established separate fraternities. When these various unions of dealers and of craftsmen embraced all the trades and branches of production in the town, little or no vitality remained in the old gild merchant ”

“ The great development of trade and industry in recent years has of course enriched the mercantile classes, and has introduced into them a more highly educated element, drawn chiefly from the Noblesse, which formerly eschewed such occupations; but it has not yet affected very deeply the mode of life of those who have sprung from the old merchant families and the peasantry. ”

“ The influence of the trading class is seen in two other enactments by which freedom of journeying and trade was secured to foreign merchants, and an uniformity of weights and measures was ordered to be enforced throughout the realm. ”

“ English merchants will soon enough feel the pressure of slack business and force ministers to another line of conduct. A good plan enough for the man of independent fortune, for the judge whose income was assured, or the thrifty merchant who, signing a non-importation agreement, had laid in a stock of goods to be sold at high prices. But the wage-earner, the small shopkeeper who was soon sold out, the printer who lived on his weekly margin of profit, the rising lawyer whose income rose or fell with his fees: such men were of another mind. ”

“ And thus we see, that not only the Kingdom but also the King by his Customs and Imposts may get notoriously, even when the Merchant notwithstanding shall lose grievously; which giveth us good occasion here to consider, how much more the Realm is enriched by this noble Trade, when all things pass so happily that the Merchant is a gainer also with the King and Kingdom. ”

“ In the effort to comply with this universal law of trade, many a character gives way; many a virtue gets pushed aside; the higher, nobler qualities of a man are held in small esteem.
This characteristic of the trading class appears in the thought of the people as well as their actions. ”

“ The merchant, or importer who pays the duty at first, will not consent to be so much money out of pocket. He, therefore, proportionably raises the price of his goods. It may then be said to be a contest between him and the person offering to buy, who shall lose the duty. ”

“ Most wholesale merchants are content to confine themselves to one branch of trade: lumber, iron, wool, leather, grain, etc. Most of these merchants, moreover, rely further on specialists to help them with certain parts of their business. They depend constantly on the banker, the speculator, the broker, the forwarder, the warehouseman, the commission merchant, and agents of many different kinds. It is impossible, in this book, to do more than suggest the complex commercial organization which has grown up in the course of the century. ”

“ And because the production or obtaining of any commodity involves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business the master and governor of large masses of men in a more direct, though less confessed way, than a military officer or pastor ”

“ Lastly, the King is ever sure to get by trade, when both the Commonwealth and Merchant shall lose severally as afore-written, or joyntly, as it may and doth sometimes happen, when at one and the same time our Commodities are over-ballanced by forraign wares consumed, and that the Merchants success prove no better than is before declared. ”

“ The merchant always advanced the goods or money with which to trade, and the fact that he could, if he wished to do so, fix his own profit at double the value of the capital, is an indication of the very satisfactory returns obtained at this period from foreign commerce. ”

“ For if the stranger-merchant bring in his wares, and find that our moneys are raised, shall not he likewise keep his Commodities untill he may sell them dearer? and shall not the price of the Merchants exchange with forraign Countries rise in proportion with our Moneys? All which being undoubtedly true, why may not our Moneys be carried out of the Kingdom as well and to as much profit after the raising thereof, as before the alteration? ”

“ In this age, both in our own and in other countries, commerce was not only carried on by kings and nobles as well as by the regular merchant, but among the most active traders were some of the higher clergy. In England, indeed, it had long been customary for the greatest dignitaries in the church to engage in mercantile pursuits. ”

“ Goods of a kind were only sold with their kind, and men of one trade were not to be found except with their fellows of the same craft. Thus each market was kept single and the merchants were divided according to their merchandise, each craftsman being separated from others not of his own class. ”

“ In the next place I affirm, that a Merchant by his laudable endeavors may both carry out and bring in wares to his advantage by selling them and buying them to good profit, which is the end of his labours; when nevertheless the Commonwealth shall decline and grow poor by a disorder in the people, when through Pride and other Excesses they do consume more forraign wares in value then the wealth of the Kingdom can satisfie and pay by the exportation of our own commodities, which is the very quality of an unthrift who spends beyond his means. ”

“ The merchants then are the prominent class; the most respectable, the most powerful. They know their power, but are not yet fully aware of their formidable and noble position at the head of the nation. Hence they are often ashamed of their calling; while their calling is the source of their wealth, their knowledge, and their power, and should be their boast and their glory. You see signs of this ignorance and this shame: there must not be shops under your Athenæum, it would not be in good taste; you may store tobacco, cider, rum, under the churches, out of sight, you must have no shop there ”

“ Whether the whole capital employed in such a round-about trade belong to one merchant or to three, can make no difference with regard to the country, though it may with regard to the particular merchants. ”

“ Thus in regard to merchants:
"The average man who has a little business of some kind, a factory or a wholesale or brokerage house or a hotel or a restaurant, usually has a distinctly middle-class mind." At this all the merchants and manufacturers were likely to give a very sharp ear. "As a rule, you'll find that they know just the one little line with which they're connected, and nothing more. ”

“ Yet almost wherever commerce had taken any root, there were they to be found, pursuing perseveringly under obloquy, danger, and the cruellest oppression, their peculiar trade. To draw down upon them still more of the popular suspicion and dislike in a rude and ignorant age, that trade was not any species of industry by which produce of any kind was visibly created; it did not necessarily imply even the exertion of any peculiar powers or acquirements; it was labour neither of the hand nor of the head. Yet it was, in truth, a trade as essential to the creation of wealth as any labour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The advent of trade (business) and the trading class created a small but potentially powerful class whose income and wealth were not derived from direct contact with nature but came from trade, money changing, lending, insuring and other activities associated with the accumulation and investment of wealth in profit-yielding enterprises. ”

“ The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define; but you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer, as opposed to the military license of pillage. ”

“ Consumers and dealers again became liberal buyers and their lead was soon followed by the speculative fraternity. Our office was crowded with business and a further increase in the clerical force was imperative. Long hours and hard work was the rule, while resulting profits continually mounting higher was the reward.
Our customers as a class were a fine lot of men, all of substantial means, most of them wealthy. We had no friction, we were popular with all, and other things being equal we commanded the preference from almost the entire trade. ”

“ Now our supposed observer and classifier, having noted on London Bridge the sale of material commodities, and in the Lowell Mill the sale of personal services, and within the New York Clearing-House the sale of credit-claims, has seen in substance everything that ever was or ever will be exhibited in the world of trade. He may rest. There is no other class of salable things than these three. Keen eyes and minds skilled in induction have been busy for two millenniums and a half more or less to find another class of things bought and sold among men, and have not yet found it or any trace of it. ”

“ How many Merchants, and Shop-keepers have begun with little or nothing of their own, and yet are grown very rich by trading with other mens money? do we not know, that when trading is quick and good, many men, by means of their experience, and having credit to take up money at interest, do trade for much more than they are worth of their own stock? by which diligence of the industrious, the affairs of the Common-wealth are increased, the moneys of Widows, Orphans, Lawyers, Gentlemen and others, are employed in the course of Forraign Trade, which themselves have no skill to perform. ”

“ In fact, the Company of Merchant Adventurers came to comprehend the whole body of English merchants trading to the Low Countries and Germany, a body which, in the latter part of the reign of James, is stated to have amounted to about 4000 individuals. ”

“ The sphere of trade of this body of exporting merchants extended along the coasts of France, the Netherlands, and Germany, opposite England, and some distance into the interior. [Footnote: Ibid,, xxvi.] It is true that the Merchants Adventurers had many mediaeval features which assimilated them more to the old merchant and craft guilds than to the more modern type of chartered commercial companies which were about to come into existence. They had, like the craft guilds, a system of apprenticeship and different degrees of advancement in their membership. ”

“ Greater Arts or trades from the fourteen Lesser Arts, and which raised the three occupations of banking, the manufacture and the dyeing of cloth, to a position of superiority even within the privileged circle of the seven, told though with less force on the English boroughs. The burghers of the merchant-gild gradually concentrated themselves on the greater operations of commerce, on trades which required a larger capital, while the meaner employments of general traffic were abandoned to their poorer neighbours. ”

“ Indeed, although such comparisons are not always safe, we may in this case compare what may be called the commercial requirements of the nation with the requirements of the head of the family,—a merchant suppose. There are no limits to the degree of wealth which a merchant may desire to gain, but unquestionably there are limits to the income necessary to maintain his house and family and mercantile position. ”

“ Capital was so scarce that a man worth £4000 was called wealthy. Ships were built where scarcely a shilling in currency changed hands. The workmen were paid with goods. Where neighbors united to build a vessel, they traded produce of fishery field, or forest to the merchant for such iron, sails, and cordage as they needed, or they gave him a share in the [35] vessel. The merchant traded the produce of the fisheries or forest in Europe for the outfit he gave to the builders. ”

“ Here is more poor stuff; for when I know the current prices of my Wares, both here and beyond the Seas, I may easily conjecture whether the profit of the Exchange or the gain which I expect upon my Wares will be greater. And again, as every Merchant knows well what he gains upon the Wares he buyeth and selleth, so may any other man do the like that can tell how the said Merchant hath proceeded: But what is all this to make us admire the Exchange? ”