340 Tradesman and Merchant — Commercial Populaiion 



grossing and regrating increased rapidly, and that the laws against 

 the practice fell into desuetude. The essayist mourns the decline of 

 the country markets wrought by the ambulant jobbers and in- 

 grossers; places where from one to four hundred loads of corn were 

 wont to come were at that date, 1718, "entirely left off and disused" — 

 and "the Tolls sunk to nothing."^ The "Engrossing Farmer" was 

 equally destructive; he reduced the country population; he sent his 

 produce to the larger, more distant markets. It was prophesied in 

 1758 that if the then present rate of decline continued for two decades 

 more, "half the shops in the market towns must be shut up."^ Sale 

 by use of samples was a great injury to the markets, for it reduced 

 the "concourse of people and horses, and carriage to the place."^ 

 Fairs became places where orders were taken by wholesale-men who 

 transacted their business "wholly in their Pocket-books, . . . 

 meeting their Chapmen from all parts" and making "up their Ac- 

 counts, receive(d) Money chiefly in Bills," and took orders."* Such 

 sales at Stourbridge in 1722 were said to "exceed by far the Sales 

 of Goods actually brought to the Fair and deliver'd in Kind." The 

 London wholesalers, frequently from their customers at the Fair, 

 took orders for £10,000 worth of goods or more per man. Especially 

 the dealers in heaw goods, "as wholesale grocers, sa Iters, braziers, 

 iron-merchants, wine merchants and the like," did their business in 

 this way.^ The fairs thus lost another characteristic feature, the 

 exchange and display of things in kind. 



SHOP AND STORE. 



The relative decline in the market's iinportance was accompanied 

 by the relative rise of the shop's and store's. It has been opined that 

 the licensing of pedlars may have furthered this change.^ The dis- 

 integration of the household economy made more business necessary. 

 The decay of the insistence on apprenticeship allowed the less active 



1 "Essay against Forestallers, 18, 20. 



2 Gent. Mag., 1758:509. 



3 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 183. 



■* Strjqje commenting on the Great Fire of 1666 said "it was in the long vacation, 

 being that particular time of the year, when many wealthy citizens and tradesmen 

 were wont to be in the country at Fairs and getting in of Debts, and making up 

 accounts with their chapmen." Besant, Stuart London, 248. 



* For these operations of the London wholesalemen, see Defoe, Tour, I, 94. 



^ See Chapman, above. 



