Middlemen in English Business 185 



above, the excises on hops, etc., effected a change of fashion, from the 

 consumption of ale to that of beer, after 1689, and this made larger 

 the use of hops. The hop industry declined after the opening of the 

 nineteenth century. 



CONCLUSION. 



The most prominent phenomena of the history of the middlemen 

 in the corn and corn products trade, during the period 1660 to 1760 

 in particular, were movements toward the following ends: {a) freedom 

 from governmental control, the only important exception being the 

 license system imposed on the retail liquor trade; (6) speculative 

 activity, wherein the jobber and merchant were much engaged; 

 (c) extension over a broader geographical market; {d) dominance of 

 the capitalistic class, especially the bigger dealers; (e) separation of 

 functions and divisions of the middlemen's occupations; and a counter- 

 movement toward integration of businesses wherein there was a fusion 

 of functions and a fuller control of the successive processes of the 

 industry. 



The first feature was evident in the disintegration and abandonment 

 of the license system relative to corn buyers; in the reduced impor- 

 tance of the public corn market and the rise of unrestrained ingrossing 

 and regrating on the same, and in the greater freedom of internal 

 commerce that complemented the decline of the town's control. 

 Private elevators, large mills, corn-merchant-bankers, big business, 

 and the ownership of vehicles of commerce fully attest the rising 

 importance of capital in the corn trade. Great speculations in corn, 

 bought in one time or place and sold in another time or place respec- 

 tively, bespeak a wide control of capital; while the new practices of 

 seUing by sample, of deaUng in futures, of bears and bulls, etc., on 

 the newly-separated Corn Exchange indicate that the corn trade had 

 become distinctly speculative. The broad system of agency for 

 buying and selling, exemplified in such a firm as the Couttses, as well 

 as the improved ways of transporting corn, show that the territory 

 drained by particular markets was extending into broader zones. 

 And the spread of the miller's activity into the corn-buying and 

 meal-selhng and into speculations in corn, and of the distiller's incor- 

 porating the retail liquor shops into his domain, are demonstrations 

 of a tendency counter to the movement whereb>- the factor ceased 

 being merchant or jobber, and the merchant left retailing to the 

 chandler. 



