PREFACE. 



The purpose of this book is to present an historical sketch of the 

 origin and development of the middleman organization that served 

 English business before the Industrial Revolution. The period 

 after that event is reserved for future study; in the throes of that 

 great industrial and commercial upheaval it is very likely that the 

 technique of business underwent great change. I find a compara- 

 tive dearth of writings depicting business life and practice of the past. 

 It may be that this contribution to the history of business may find 

 reception in the business or scholastic world. 



Three main classes of material have been used. One is political, 

 social, and economic tracts published as polemics, dissertations, com- 

 plaints, and opinions on the contemporary questions that stirred 

 the tongue and pen in the years of the past. The Yale University 

 Library has deposited with it, through the kindness of an alumnus 

 Henry R. Wagner, an invaluable collection of many thousands of 

 these tracts. Mr. Wagner, '84, is an earnest student of English 

 and Irish economic history and is assembling what is probably the 

 best collection of such materials anywhere existing. The collection, 

 which now numbers above nine thousand volumes and is being con- 

 tinuously increased, covers the economic and social life of England 

 and Ireland from the beginning of the sixteenth century and con- 

 tains some very rare literature. I have found it a great and profit- 

 able pleasure to immerse myself in the practical questions of the 

 past as they are revealed by these tractators, pamphleteers, and 

 more extensive writers. 



A second class is the published state, municipal and borough 

 papers, including parliamentary reports and the statutes. To some 

 of these papers I have not had direct access and have depended upon 

 the validity of quotations by some other writers; in such cases the 

 quoting writer is also cited. The third kind of material is local and 

 county histories. This part of the work has been much facilitated 

 by the excellent series of county histories now being published and 

 known as the Victoria histories. 



The citations will be found quite profuse, so that the reader will 

 be aided to further study of any of the points raised. The citations 



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