Single market

“ In short, the open market is open to all; and every man has a right to sell there his labor, his skill, or his goods, of whatever sort he can produce, at such a price as he can obtain. The same is true of the buyer. I have a right to go into the open market and secure such goods as any one wishes to sell me at the lowest price for which he will part with them. ”

“ This changes with the rise of capitalist large production. This system not only develops all the means that enable commerce to swamp any market with goods to a degree never dreamt of before, it not only expands the separate markets into a world-market that embraces the whole globe, it not only multiplies the number of the middlemen between the producer and the consumer, it also enables production to respond to every call of trade and to extend by leaps and bounds. ”

“ Does not every one see, in a minute, how this exchanging of fairs and markets for shops creates idlers and traffickers; creates those locusts, called middle-men, who create nothing, who add to the value of nothing, who improve nothing, but who live in idleness, and who live well, too, out of the labour of the producer and the consumer. The fair and the market, those wise institutions of our forefathers, and with regard to the management of which they were so scrupulously careful; the fair and the market bring the producer and the consumer in contact with each other. ”

“ First, by raising the price of all foreign goods, and of all sorts of manufactures, it necessarily sinks the real value of the surplus produce of its own land, with which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price of which, it purchases those foreign goods and manufactures. Secondly, by giving a sort of monopoly of the home market to its own merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, it raises the rate of mercantile and manufacturing profit, in proportion to that of agricultural profit ”

“ Protection secured the home market to the home manufacturer, compelling the consumer to pay more, and sell for less, by excluding the foreign manufacturer from the market, or imposing such burdens, by way of duties, as to compel him to sell at higher prices than would be a just profit on his labor and skill under the operation of free trade, and which should exempt from his competition the home manufacturer in the American market. ”

“ In well-ordered states they are commonly those who are the weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose; their duty is to be in the market, and to give money in exchange for goods to those who desire to sell and to take money from those who desire to buy.
This want, then, creates a class of retail-traders in our State. Is not ‘retailer’ the term which is applied to those who sit in the market-place engaged in buying and selling, while those who wander from one city to another are called merchants? ”

“ An absolute monopoly of the home market for the home producer was their fixed creed. How to reconcile this prevailing motive with a favourable market for Empire goods which lay outside home production without damaging their trade relations, import and export, with foreign neighbours, has been a problem of increasing complexity. ”

“ Without a monopoly, however, a joint-stock company, it would appear from experience, cannot long carry on any branch of foreign trade. To buy in one market, in order to sell with profit in another, when there are many competitors in both; to watch over, not only the occasional variations in the demand, but the much greater and more frequent variations in the competition, or in the supply which that demand is likely to get from other people ”

“ The size of the economic unit is always determined by the radius of exchanges, and is always regulated by the human sense of value. Buyer and seller, regardless of the distance between them, either in space or culture, become members of the market place by the act of exchange. The market place is self-regulatory, operating under laws which are self-enforcing and carry their own sanctions ”

“ When he is cut out, our consumers will consent, cheerfully as a matter of course, to pay higher prices for these same goods! Then, on account of the new home business which is to spring up, there is to be no fresh capital required, no fresh plant, no additional workers, or, if there are, there is to be no increased cost in these respects, there is to be no change in any respect whatever, except that our manufacturers will have cut out the foreigner and got the home market in addition to the foreign market! ”

“ Under the system of unrestricted trade which you gentlemen recommend, we will have to reduce every element of cost down to or below that of our commercial rivals, or surrender to them our own market. No one will dispute that statement; and to go into the domestic market of our rivals would mean that production here must be so reduced that with transportation added we could undersell them in their own market; and to meet them in neutral markets and divide the trade with them would mean that we could profitably sell side by side with them at their minimum price. ”

“ It is universally conceded that combinations which engross or control the market of any particular kind of merchandise or commodity necessary to the general community, by suppressing natural and ordinary competition, whereby prices are unduly enhanced to the general consumer, are obnoxious not only to the common law but also to the public welfare. ”

“ At the present moment, you are secured in a monopoly for forty-two years, among a population of twenty-six millions of people, certain, at the close of twenty years more, to be fifty millions and likely, at the close of another half century, to be a hundred millions, and with facilities, for the disposal of your products, growing at a rate unequaled in the world. With this vast increase of market, and increase of power over that market, the consumer should be supplied more cheaply than in former times ”

“ Now, you are enriching men every year by your trade, and you are doing it by being divided, every man being for himself undertaking to market his own produce and to buy his own plows, rakes, mowers and reapers, and hauling his own produce to market and then doing the largest part of his trading with stores in which he is not interested, and his own co-operative store doing but a small languishing business. ”

“ When indeed the market, being that of a great city, holds out a sufficient inducement to large capitalists to engage in retail operations, it is generally found a better speculation to attract a large business by underselling others, than merely to divide the field of employment with them. This influence of competition is making itself felt more and more through the principal branches of retail trade in the large towns ”

“ He fares best if the sale is concentrated in one market, and ‘change’ prices simplify the struggle between buyer and seller. The search for customers, foreign as well as home, and the bearing of all possible risks of disposal, are in any case difficult enough to necessitate the whole strength of a man. The wholesale merchant alone is in a position to pay the manufacturer in cash or on sure, short terms. But especially where export is in question is the dispersal of sales an extreme impediment. ”

“ The prevention of the sale of a commodity, or even a delay in the sale, becomes ever more disastrous to the owner; it may even cause his ruin.
Through commerce the most various and widely separated markets are brought together; the general market is greatly extended, but it becomes correspondingly more difficult to control. This inconvenience is further increased by the appearance of one or more middlemen who squeeze themselves between the producers and consumers. Simultaneously with the development of trade and the means of communication the transportation of products has been facilitated ”

“ Fairs, too, and markets, are never beneath your notice; not that I would advise you to attend indiscriminately such public resorts. There is danger in this; for if, whilst selling, as you would be compelled to do, your goods at a fair market price, some of your muirland customers should observe it, your private and more lucrative trade would be endangered; but, in markets sufficiently remote from your ordinary route, no such consequences are to be apprehended, and there you may occasionally get rid of some old and rather unsaleable stock. ”

“ To give the monopoly of the home market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. ”

“ In Europe, the great public markets in the cities bring farmer and consumer closely together in many commodities, but in the United States the bulk of products are too far afield for this. The farmer must market through a long chain of manufacturers, brokers, jobbers and wholesalers with or without their own distribution system, who must establish a clientele of direct retailers ”

“ Your power can only extend to a certain limit, and within that the merchant will not enter. If supplies are coming to you, those who have grain for sale will have advice of it, and hurry their grain to market; but if you compel them, you will stop all imports by such forcible interference. Have you calculated at what price the merchant buys at a distance, at what expense he brings it, &c.? In short, you have the choice of the alternative—whether for a day or two you will submit to want, and then be relieved by the exertions of those who always hasten to a good market ”

“ How is it possible that the unplanned supply in the market for labour and means of production, and the unplanned and incalculable changes in demand nevertheless provide adequate quantities and qualities of means of production, labour and opportunities for selling which the individual capitalist needs in order to make a sale? ”

“ The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make them, and by sometimes even advancing their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. ”

“ Through the common market place provided by an exchange, on the other hand, market conditions and prices become common knowledge almost instantly over the entire country. This tends toward stabilization—a fact which, alone, helps to eliminate risks, and enables merchants to buy at lower prices than if forced to deal direct with one another. Sellers do not have to take such long chances and can thus afford to sell on a smaller margin of profit. Competition is stimulated and freed from many of its complications and uncertainties to the advantage of the seller, the buyer and the public. ”

“ The proper remedy was to protect our native industry, to protect it from the surplus products of the industry of other countries—surplus products sold in our markets without any reference to the cost of production. Manufacturers look at home consumption in the first place for their profits; that market being filled, they do not force off their surplus among their own people—that might injure their credit, or permanently lower the value of their manufactures at home. ”

“ I am one of those who believe that a home market is necessarily the best market for the producer, as it measurably emancipates him in proportion to its nearness from the exactions of the transportation companies. If the farmer could deliver his surplus produce to the consumer out of his farm-wagon his independence and his profits would be larger and surer. ”

“ Falling markets—continued stagnation—nothing doing. Such are the phrases with which we are familiar, and we meet with nothing else; wherefrom we conclude either that the manufacturers are all banded together in a league of unparalleled and very scandalous deceit, or that Free Trade, by contracting the home market, has made wild work with their profits also. ”

“ Hence we see that just as every farmer in the West and every cotton-grower in the South must have a stable market for his products, so every laborer in our great industrial field is directly concerned with the maintenance of a stable market for the securities of the company that employs him. The interests of one are the interests of all, and speculation, in one form or another, underlies all industrial progress. ”

“ Those who lived near a town were permitted to sell their products in the market place within the walls on condition that they sold directly to the consumers. They might not dispose of their whole stock to one dealer, for fear that if he had all there was of a commodity he might raise the price above a just one. ”

“ From this we may gather that Bartholomew fair was in those days a great annual mart to which merchants used to come up from the various parts of the country, and perhaps from other countries, to make their wholesale purchases, just as some of the continental fairs still are. The object of the regulations was to prevent the holding of the retail market, by which, of course, the crowd of visitors was chiefly attracted; but the wholesale market was too indispensable to the general trade of the country to be interfered with. ”

“ In regard to the latter class of goods, it is a matter of common knowledge that there has been an increasing tendency of late years to eliminate the middleman, and establish direct trading between producer and consumer. Just as the small shopkeeper will purchase from the manufacturer, and avoid the wholesale dealer, so, also, there are individual householders and others who eliminate even the shopkeeper, and deal direct with advertising manufacturers willing to supply to them the same quantities as could be obtained from a retail trader. ”