172 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



bought from the mealmen was regarded superior to that bought from 

 the farmer directly; because the mealmen bought a variety of flours 

 and meals and mixed the same; this composite flour made better 

 bread in the long run than unmixed flour did.^ But this mixing gave 

 opportunity for adulteration of good flour with poor and making the 

 latter marketable: a practice that caused no little criticism by the 

 user.- 



Originally the malting business was a domestic affair, each farmer 

 malting for his own use. The more considerable farmers malted a 

 surplus which was carried to the towns and cities. But the increase 

 of drinking in England was prodigious in the eighteenth century, and 

 the supplying of London with malt gave rise to a large business and 

 special tradesmen. The maltster farmers began to buy up the barley 

 of their neighborhood, convert it to malt, and market it in London. 

 Some gave up farming and did a pure maltster business. Outsiders, 

 attracted by the apparent advantage of the malting trade, set it up 

 by itself. Thus arose the maltster. This process is illustrated in 

 Oxford in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The malsters were 

 included in the census taken in 1587 of the dealers in corn. At 

 Thame the three "malsters" reported were respectively a bricklayer, 

 a shoemaker, and a butcher. The malting business was combined 

 also with brewing and baking and victualling.^ Charles I contem- 

 plated the reform of abuses in the Berks malting business by the for- 

 mation of an Incorporated Company of Malsters. One of the 

 provisions of the proposed charter was "that noe brewer or other 

 person useing any other traide mistery or occupacion shall conuerte 

 any graine to maulte to sell the same to theire use or with theire stock 

 by breweing of beere or ale."^ This proposed clause was most likely 

 aimed at a tendency of the day. 



Other clauses of this charter aimed to demark the malster from 

 the middleman class. "Noe person" was to "buy any corne to con- 

 uerte to maulte butt in the open markitts to sell agayne;" and "noe 

 person that conuerteth any sorte of Graine into maulte to sell" was 

 to " buy any maulte to sell againe." The former clause was a market 

 regulation common enough in that day and meant to protect the 

 consuming public against forestalling corn; the latter meant to pre- 

 ^•ent the manufacturing maltster from becoming simply a dealer in 



^ Smith, on the Com Trade, 23. 



2 Gent. Mag., 1758:425. 



»V. C. H., Oxford, II, 194. 



* V. C. H., Berks, I, 404. ' 



