Middlemen in English Business 3d>3> 



some dealt coastwise, others made use of land and river carriage. 

 The vast variety of commodities and methods and directions and 

 agents gave an intricacy which only its common-place quahty suf- 

 fered to be unnoticed in the organization of the trade. 



To round out the historical and descriptive treatment of the market- 

 ing methods before 1760 there are needed yet the operations of the 

 general tradesman and the general merchant, the retailer and the 

 exporter class. For instance in the case of wool and woolens the 

 study of the organization of the middlemen has, on the one hand, 

 carried the woolens into the hands of the merchant exporter. He 

 has been shown to buy his goods in person or by the agency of 

 the factors and packers (a) at Blackwell Hall or (b) at the packer's 

 house, or (c) at the draper's house, or (d) at the Leeds' market, or 

 (e) directly at the clothier's house in the country; and his cargo was 

 put into portable state by the packer. The operations by which he 

 reached the foreign consumer have not been presented. On the other 

 hand, the distribution to the domestic consumer has not been complete- 

 ly followed out: the wholesale or jobbing draper disposed of his cloth 

 to retailers; the business of these general retailers is to be considered. 

 The genesis of these tradesmen was by way of the fair, market, shop, 

 and store. 



FAIR AND MARKET. 



Throughout this period the chief medium of commerce for the great 

 mass of the population was the weekly market in the market town 

 and the less frequent fair. Taken together these means of exchange 

 did such a volume of business as rendered that done at the shops and 

 stores comparatively unimportant. A major fraction of the goods 

 handled at the latter passed, at one or more stages in their preparation 

 or carriage, through the markets or fairs. But this disparity grew 

 less as the period progressed. At the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century there were permanent, fixed stores and shops only in the 

 considerable towns and cities; a gradual increase obtained in their 

 number, variety and service in the decades following. 



England was served by many extensive fairs. The most renowned 

 and greatest was at Stourbridge. Those of Bristol, Exeter, West- 

 chester, and Edinburgh were famous. They were held at various 

 seasons of the year, some having more than one session in that time. 

 The fairs tended to specialize and handle chiefly one commodity. 

 There were fairs for sheep at Weyhill and Burford; for horses at 

 Pancrass; for cattle at Bartholomew, London; for fish at Yarmouth; 



