THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 595 



commission business, which dispenses to a great extent with the em- 

 ployment of intermediates, and does not necessarily require the pos- 

 session or control of any capital. 



Let us next go one step farther, and see what has happened at 

 the same time to the man whose business it has been not to sell, but to 

 manufacture tin-plate into articles for domestic use, or for other con- 

 sumption. Thirty or forty years ago, the tinman, whose occupation 

 was mainly one of handicraft, was recognized as one of the leading 

 and most skillful mechanics in every village, town, and city. His oc- 

 cupation has, however, now well-nigh passed away. For example, a 

 townsman and a farmer desires a supply of milk-cans. He never 

 thinks of going to his corner tinman, because he knows that in New 

 York, and Chicago, and Philadelphia, and other large towns and cities, 

 there is a special establishment fitted up with special machinery, 

 which will make his can better and fifty per cent cheaper than he can 

 have it made by hand in his own town. And so in regard to almost 

 all the other articles which the tinman formerly made. He simply 

 keeps a stock of machine-made goods, as a small merchant, and his 

 business has come down from that of a general, comprehensive me- 

 chanic to little other than a tinker and mender of pots and pans. 

 Where great quantities of tin-plate are required for a particular use, 

 as, for example, the canning of salmon or lobsters, of biscuit, or of 

 fruit and vegetables, the plates come direct from the manufactory 

 to the manufacturer of cans or boxes, in such previously agreed upon 

 sizes and shapes as will obviate any waste of material, and reduce to a 

 minimum the time and labor necessary to adapt them to their respect- 

 ive uses. And by this arrangement alone, in one cracker (biscuit) 

 bakery in the United States, consuming forty thousand tin boxes per 

 month, forty men are now enabled to produce as large a product of 

 boxes in a given time as formerly required fifty men ; and, taken in 

 connection with machinery, the labor of twenty-five men in the entire 

 business has become equivalent to that of the fifty who until recently 

 worked by other methods. And what has been thus affirmed of tin- 

 plate might be equally affirmed of a great variety of other leading 

 commodities ; the blacksmith, for example, no longer making, but buy- 

 ing his horseshoes, nails, nuts, and bolts ; the carpenter his doors, 

 sash, blinds, and moldings ; the wheelwright his spokes, hubs, and fel- 

 lies ; the harness-maker his straps, girths, and collars ; the painter his 

 paints ground and mixed, and so on ; the change in methods of dis- 

 tribution and preparation for final consumption having been equally 

 radical in almost every case, though varying somewhat in respect to 

 particulars. 



The same influences have also to a great degree revolutionized the 

 nature of retail trade, which has been aptly described as, " until lately, 

 the recourse of men whose character, skill, thrift, and ambition, won 

 credit, and enabled them to dispense with large capital." Experience 



