Trade or business

“ A settled little society of trading people, who understand business, and are carrying on trade in the same manner with himself, no matter whether they are of the very same trades or no, and perhaps better not of the same—such a society, I say, shall, if due observations are made from it, teach the tradesman more than his apprenticeship ”

“ The merchant may thereby be enabled better to understand many commodities in trade; the handicraftsman to improve his business by new instruments, mixtures and materials; and frequently hints are given for new manufactures, or new methods of improving land, that may be set on foot greatly to the advantage of a country. ”

“ The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, improve and economize in the cost of production. Business life, whether among ourselves, or with other peoples, is ever a sharp struggle for success. ”

“ If I remember right, there are two there which do a regular country trade, and have a general stock of dry goods, groceries, crockery, clothing, stationery, etc., etc., etc. Here he will learn two {709} things—detail and economy—without a practical knowledge of which, no man can succeed in mercantile business. ”

“ You'll look after the native trade, with the men you employ to help you, but I'll have to engage expert assistance in purchasing the trading goods and disposing of the products to the best advantage until I finish college and learn my end of the business. ”

“ To these worthy pioneers belongs the credit of laying a secure40 foundation for a trade that from humble beginnings has developed into one of the most prominent industries of the country, requiring extensive capital, liberal business capacity, and one that gives employment to a large, intelligent and skillful class of people. ”

“ To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade) , nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion) , could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. ”

“ "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ TRADE Trade, for which Money is the Economic medium and Money-terms the Economic language, consists superficially in interchanges of tangible commodities, but essentially in interchanges of human service. ”

“ I do not doubt that a very largely increased foreign trade is accessible to us without bartering for it either our home market for such products of the farm and shop as our own people can supply or the wages of our working people. ”

“ Trade is an operation, by which the wealth, or work, either of individuals, or of societies, may be exchanged, by a set of men called merchants, for an equivalent, proper for supplying every want, without any interruption to industry, or any check upon consumption. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trade and commerce are an abbreviation of this long process; a scheme invented and set on foot by merchants, from a principle of gain, supported and extended among men, from a principle of general utility to every individual, rich or poor, to every society, great or small. ”

“ Many customs do enter into Trade, even as habits enter into the life of individuals—some beneficial and some vicious, some in harmony with natural law and some defiant or evasive of it. But essentially Trade is a natural expression of Economic relationships. ”

“ 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 vulgar theory disregards this benefit, and deems the advantage of commerce to reside in the exports: as if not what a country obtains, but what it parts with, by its foreign trade, was supposed to constitute the gain to it. An extended market for its produce—an abundant consumption for its goods—a vent for its surplus—are the phrases by which it has been customary to designate the uses and recommendations of commerce with foreign countries. ”

“ A new Tract upon Trade, being a Demonstration that to be always putting the People upon customary Mourning, and wearing Black upon every State Occasion, is an excellent Encouragement to Trade, and a means to employ the Poor. ”

“ The shop instruction for particular trades, and for each trade represented, the drawing, mathematics, mechanics, physical and biological science applicable to the trade, the history of that trade, and a sound system of economics, including and emphasizing the philosophy of collective bargaining. ”

“ 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 result of all this has been to produce a state of affairs in which competition, so long considered the life of trade, is practically eliminated from many branches of industry, while the opportunities for individual enterprise, which have been active for so many centuries, have in great part vanished. ”

“ These were the first fruits of the enterprise, gathered by men as yet mere strangers in the land: but they were such as to give substantial grounds for sanguine anticipations of profit, when the country should be more completely explored, and the trade established. ”

“ The sum of the doctrine of the writers of the work on the subject of foreign commerce is given in the following words:—"That trade which makes money flow in most plentifully upon us, enables our people to subsist themselves better by their labour, raises the value of our lands, and occasions our rent to be better paid, must always be reckoned the best trade; for these are the only rules by which it is possible to state and determine the value of any particular trade, or of the general trade of the whole nation." ”

“ 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. ”

“ It fixed prices, but it also fixed wages, regulated kinds and prices of raw materials, prescribed the relation of one trade to another, forbade touting, advertising, rivalry; regulated buying and selling by merchants; protected consumers by inspection ”

“ And we are shopkeepers, and have acquired the vices and virtues that belong to trade. We peddle, we truck, we sail, we row, we ride in cars, we creep in teams, we go in canals,—to market, and for the sale of goods. The national aim and employment streams into our ways of thinking, our laws, our habits and our manners. ”

“ Lastly, when it is employed in exchanging one description of the produce of foreign industry for another, or in what is termed the carrying trade, it then serves wholly for the support and encouragement of the industry of the two foreign nations, and adds only to the annual produce of the country the profits of the merchant—book 2, chap. ”

“ The lists of imports and exports and of the places from which they flowed to and from the centres of trade, as they swelled in bulk from time to time, show how busily and steadily the threads of commerce had been weaving together the labour and interests of mankind, and extending a security and bounty of existence unknown in former ages. ”

“ Whether trade be the cause of industry, or industry the cause of trade, is a question of little importance, but the principle upon which both depend is a taste for superfluity in those who have an equivalent to give ”

“ We send school-books and machinery to China; she sends us tea, matting, and bamboo. The whole right theory of trade is a give-and-take between men and nations, based on a just price, and with a deep law of Value, not yet wholly formulated, underlying each transaction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A solid trade principle governs t’ weaving room—so much work, for so much money—but I hev girls of eighteen in my mill, who are fit and able to thread the shuttles, and manage two looms, keeping up the pieces to mark, without oversight or help. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must not however be forgotten, that even in the countries of most active competition, custom also has a considerable share in determining the profits of trade. There is sometimes an idea afloat as to what the profit of an employment should be, which though not adhered to by all the dealers, nor perhaps rigidly by any, still exercises a certain influence over their operations. ”

“ The principles of industry have been so interwoven with those of trade, through all the chapters of this second book, that it is now proper, before we dismiss the subject, to examine a little into the 454nature of the first, considered more abstractedly, and more detached from its relation to the equivalent given for it, which is the proper characteristic of trade, and from which proceeds the intimate connection between them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In making its determination, the competent investigating authority may also consider other economic factors, such as changes in prices and inventories, and the ability of firms in the industry to generate capital ”

“ The well-being of trade depends on a proper regulation of it; on the success of trade depends wealth; on wealth, the value of lands; the strength, the welfare, and happiness of a country, upon the numbers, the ease, and independence of its yeomanry. ”

“ Growth of the sphere of commerce and resulting specialization of production.—The world has gone far toward realizing the ideal of the early free trader, that wherever a man318 might be, he should share in the productive advantages of all other men, wherever they might be. Customs tariffs have been able to check the movement of commerce; they have been powerless to stop it. The sphere of ordinary trade, which was once the manor, a mere hamlet or village ”

“ World trade, whether conducted in person, on paper, or on line, remains a cornerstone of American economic growth. But even more important, trade plays a vital role in improving opportunity and prosperity around the globe. ”

“ It is in the fetching and carrying manufactures, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed. In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. ”

“ But the point they have now to consider, Can they secure this profitable trade to themselves, if the industrial resources of this country—in other words, their customers' means of paying for their goods—are daily declining? ”

“ By the testimony of all manner of men—factory inspectors, poor-law inspectors, members of great cities—the Lancashire trade, the silk trade, the flax-spinning trade, the lace trade, and, above all, the iron trade, are all so flourishing, that the want is not of work to be done, but of hands to do it. ”