Middlemen in English Business 267 



hands, and to carry the stock was an economic loss, due to the interest 

 charge against it. But, on the contrary, the needs of the manufac- 

 turers were nearly constant throughout the year: and it was an 

 ecpnomic loss to them to buy up in advance large pro\'isions for their 

 consumption during the year. They sought a seller who would sell 

 them small lots as they needed them ; whereas the wool-growers sought 

 a buyer who would take at once their whole clip. These two functions 

 were combined in the wool-jobber. 



He was a capitalist. He bought for cash large volumes of wool 

 seasonally; he owned warehouses for the storage of his purchases; he 

 sold to clothiers and manufacturers on credit and in such parcels as 

 they needed. In performing these capitalistic acts he incidentally 

 did others that promoted the wool trade. He acted as collector and 

 forwarder of the wool from the grower to the manufacturer. As a 

 buyer of wool and a seller of wool he developed a clientele of 

 buyers and sellers, both of whom he cared to preserve by fair and 

 honest dealings; and consequently reduced the frauds of the false 

 winding graziers, so much complained of where manufacturers bought 

 directly from the grazier. He conducted a wider correspondence 

 and effected broader connections than would be possible or profitable 

 to a grazier and in this way broadened the market of wool, more 

 ecjually distributed it according to needs, and at a steadier price. By 

 these labors, the manufacturer was enabled to specialize in making 

 cloth and free himself from the tasks of buying wool from the scat- 

 tered farms. 



The earlier members of this class were exporters. Their history is 

 that of the merchant staplers. Before the sixteenth century wool 

 constituted the chief commodity exported by the Merchants Adven- 

 turers and Merchants of the Staple. The rise of cloth manufacturers 

 caused their decline or necessitated their becoming importers of wool 

 rather than exporters.^ The monasteries took an active part in the 

 exportation of w^ool, but by reasons of their relations to the Holy See 

 they sold mostly to \isiting Italian merchants; oftentimes the monas- 

 tery wool was pledged years in advance for loans made to the monas- 

 teries by these alien merchants.- Another source of this class was the 

 sons of the gentry of the pro\dncial counties who acted as wool and lead 



' This is ilhistrated in the history of the Bristol merchant staplers in the six- 

 teenth century; V. C. H., Glouces., II, 158-9. 



-Instance, Furness monastery, Lancashire, in the fourtcentli century, V. C. 11., 

 Lancas. II, 270. 



