168 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



corn owners by grinding their corn when brought to his mill.^ The 

 right to have mills for grinding corn was limited to particular persons. 

 The mills were worked by horsepower. In the time of Edward I the 

 miller paid in kind and in money certain legal amounts per quarter 

 ground. The grain was publicly weighed before it was entrusted to 

 the miller. He had a bad reputation for peculation. ^ But many 

 opportunities w^ere thrown in his way for enlarging his business and 

 combining other parts of the corn trade with this grinding. In the 

 middle of the seventeenth century a special class of "cadgers" were 

 employed by the millers of Yorkshire to collect the grain from the 

 vicinity, carry it to the mill, and deliver again the ground product.^ 



There was, about the same time, a refinement of this business 

 wherein the miller became merchant. In 1630 complaint was laid as 

 follows: "Where in some Parts of the Realme divers Millers, who 

 ought only to serve for grinding of Corne that shall be brought to 

 their Mills, have begunne lately a very corrupt trade to be common 

 Buyers of Corne, both in Markets and out of Markets, and the same 

 doe grind into Meale, and do use as Badgers, or otherwise to sell the 

 same at Markets and in other Places, seeking thereby an inordinate 

 gaine, besides the Misusing of other Mens Corne brought thither to 

 be ground, by delaying grinding, or that worse is, by changing and 

 altering their good Corne to the worse. "^ In accordance with these 

 allegations millers were prohibited from buying grain on purpose to 

 sell it again as grain or meal. 



It appears that this prohibitive legislation was quite successful 

 while the laws against ingrossing and other laws regulatory of the 

 trade were enforced. But during the first half of the eighteenth 

 century the old practices were begun again, the millers combining with 

 their milling the occupations of mealman, flour-factor and corn 

 merchant. The economic dependence of a pure miller on the corn 

 owners was undesirable and hazardous to him, and in seasons of poor 

 crops he lived a miserable existence. By buying up stores of grain 

 he could employ himself steadily and reduce the accident of crops. 

 Consequently all who could raise sufficient capital engaged in the meal 

 and flour trade. ^ And usually the corn riots of the middle of the 



1 Gent. Mag., 1758:424. 



2 Lib. Alb. I, LXXIII, 354-55; 691. 



^ Surtees, 33: 103. At this time the millers paid these cadgers about 5d. a day, 

 and thej' carried from 8 to 10 bushels on a horse. 



^ Massie, "Orders . . . . for Preventing," 20. 



5 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 178; Smith, on Com Trade, 17; "View of real griev- 

 ances," 228-29. 



