266 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



The bm'er who was most speciaHzed was the brogger. The brogger 

 was an agent or broker of a manufacturer or exporter or big wool- 

 merchant or jobber.^ He made a farm-to-farm canvas, established 

 regular customers from whom he bought from year to year, and picked 

 up what wool he could outside this regular custom. As appears from 

 some business accounts of a wool-buyer in Yorkshire early in the 

 eighteenth century the whole number of persons from whom he bought 

 ranged from ten to twenty- nine, and his purchases averaged £1 5^. 

 j)er person per year.- The brogger bought the wool, weighed it, and 

 paid for it. It appears that the brogger was a hard bargainer or 

 dishonest, for the clothiers petitiqned that "the Brogger of Woolle 

 may not buy any Woolle but what shall be first weyed by a man that 

 shall be sworne to deale truly betweene the buyer and the seller."^ 

 He either packed it up himself or employed a specialized class of 

 wool-winders or wool-packers, which arose in the wool-producing 

 sections or the markets,'* as, for example, in London, where the wool- 

 staplers, packers, winders and combers together made up the wool- 

 men's li\'ery company. After it was wound and packed the brogger 

 arranged to have it fetched away. 



Jobber and Merciianl. 



The wool-jobber and merchant was closely allied with the wool- 

 brogger on the one hand and the wool-stapler on the other. All were 

 l)uyers of wool, either direct from the wool-grower or from the first 

 buyer. The brogger has been distinguished as a buyer on another's 

 account, but sometimes the name was applied indiscriminately to 

 the buyers of wool, whether in agency or not. Wool-jobbers em- 

 braced "all those who buy and sell wool in the fleece" and deserved 

 "the Name of W^ool-mer chant."' In a strict sense, the fleeces were 

 not sorted by the jobber: he sold them in the same pack in which he 

 Ijought them. 



Two facts gave occasion to this occupation. In the hrst place, the 

 wool har\-est was quickly made: in less than a month the whole year's 

 clip was ready for sale. It at once became dead ca]-)ital in the grower's 



' "Reasons for a Limited ICxportalion," 22. 



- Smith, :Memoirs. II. 46.S-6. 



■• S. P. Dom., Jas. I, CXXVII, 76; CXXYIII, 20, ,S1; \'. C. H., Oxford, II, 196. 



^Compare Surtccs. 33:30-1; "Clothiers Comphanl," 26; and Hazlitt. Li\'. 

 Com., 670-1 , 



^ Smith, Complaints, 25. 26, 28. 29, 31. The general function of the wool- 

 jobber has been gleaned from these references. 



