CHAPTER I. 



Introduction. 



The three pillars upon which the classical economists erected the 

 structure of political economy were land, labor and capital. These 

 three categories of economic life neglect a fourth element which 

 is equally important and sustains the relation of direction to the 

 other three. This element is the organization and management 

 of the means of production. Given the same capital and labor, the 

 output of the shop and the supply gotten to market vary as widely 

 as the genius of the captain of industry. In the processes of pro- 

 duction, and between production and consumption, the agent of 

 direction and the technique instituted by this agent constitute 

 as important a factor of economic life as the labor and capital 

 spent. 



Histories of the labor movement have been written. The evolu- 

 tion of the laboring class has been traced through the mediaeval and 

 modern periods. The organization of factory production and of 

 domestic or household production has been treated. But the his- 

 torical aspect of the technique of the market has been comparatively 

 neglected. The agents and machinery wherewith the wares of 

 commerce are collected and distributed are phenomena whose origin 

 is dated from the feudal era. They have passed into a relatively 

 orthodox type. There is much room for historical investigation into 

 the origin and operations of the men of trade and commerce. The 

 history of commerce might be written from this point of view. The 

 growth of English commerce is not explained by a statistical account 

 of manufactures produced, of mports and exports, of new markets 

 abroad and of colonial expansion. The volume of production and 

 the volume of consumption are entities related by the mechanism of 

 business. The degree of perfection to which this mechanism is 

 developed is one determining factor of the nature, volume, direc- 

 tion, and service of commerce. 



It is the purpose of this work to sketch in some detail the origin 

 and development of the middlemen and their functions in certain 

 leading industries of England. Middlemen are understood to in- 



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