Middlemen in English Business 169 



century were violently directed against the mills of the millers as 

 ingrossers of corn.^ The combination of these se\'eral trades into one 

 integrated whole also gave the miller a much better control of the 

 flour and meal market and consequently of prices.- Besides, this 

 innovation wrought great changes in the economic position of the 

 miller. From the mean dependent employment as miller for others he 

 became a man of vast business and owner of huge mills and accessory 

 business organizations.^ As the country progressed these tendencies 

 on the part of the inillers developed. They began to employ factors 

 as buyers of corn on the Corn Exchange, as well as in the country 

 markets in the \'icinity of their mills, and otherwise extend their 

 business.^ 



MALSTER, MEALMAN, AND FLOURMAN. 



The great milling districts were in Hertfordshire, Surrey, and the 

 upper Thames.^ As flour and meal were more difficult to handle, 

 especially at sea, and more apt to spoil, foreign commerce was mostly 

 restricted to raw corn and malt; but the internal commerce of flour 

 was immense, particularly by way of the Thames and its afiiuents, 

 upon which special flour and malt barges pHed. The immensity of 

 this Thames trade can be realized from the consumption of meal by 

 the city of London, which was computed by Maitland to amount to 

 369,635 quarters annually in the period about 1730.^ The great 

 Farnham-Market corn sales were carried by land to the River Wey 

 about seven miles distant, on whose banks there were many mills; 

 having been ground and dressed, the meal was carried by barges to 

 London.'' From Reading, Henley, Maidenhead, Abingdon and 

 Farrington, large barges, carrying meal and malt, were dispatched to 

 London. By the records of the Berkshire County Sessions of the 

 date 1726 is shown that the maltsters were rebated for losses of malt 

 due to wrecking of the barges on the Thames. "Thus on 11 April, 

 1726, Benjamin and Joseph Tomkins exhibited complaint alleging 

 that . . . 130 quarters of malt was greatly damaged by . . . 

 the coasting away or sinking of a certain barge . . . transporting 



1 Gent. Mag., 1756: 408-09; Frame, County of Lanark, 67. 



2 Owens, Weekly Chronicle, 196; Gent. Mag., 1758:425. 



3 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 179. 



^ Rep. from Com. H. C, IX, 146. 

 5 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 175. 

 « Maitland. London, I, 756. 

 'Defoe, Tour, I, 217. 



