Middlemen in English Business 295 



the organizer and touchstone of the system: a pecuUar composite of 

 capitalist employer, captain of industry, and middleman. In the 

 north district the local, city, metropolitan, or alien merchant, himself 

 or through his factor, compared in some degree, with the western 

 '' clothier;" but he was not the integrating organizer that the westerner 

 was; his business was more nearly that of pure middleman and less 

 that of manufacturer; his manufacturing operations were only in 

 finishing the grey cloth; his dominance in the industry was far less 

 pronounced. In the eastern region the differentiation of the weaver 

 and clothier and merchant had never been completed. Some weavers 

 employed spinners, carders, dyers, etc., and sold their grey cloth. Some 

 clothiers in addition to these operatives, employed weavers and the 

 other craftsmen who finished the cloth ; but other clothiers employed 

 only these finishers. Some clothiers employed local finishers, others 

 sold to the London merchants and the cloths were finished in London. 

 Some clothiers sold to exporting merchants, others exported their 

 own cloths. This want of distinctive differentiation seems most 

 ascribable to the nearness of the region to the London market and to 

 the fact that the cloth was in large part manufactured in exporting 

 seaport towns. A weaver or small clothier did not need become so 

 dependent upon a capitalistic clothier or merchant, respectively, for the 

 marketing of his product, when the distance to market was so short, 

 merely to London. The passage by water from Colchester to London 

 was easy and quick: a smaller product could be profitably marketed 

 directly by the producer than in case of the longer water or land car- 

 riage from York or Wilts. In the north and west the manufacture 

 was inland: agents at the shipping seaports were necessary; likewise, 

 agents at London or abroad; this agency would necessitate a large 

 trade and large capital, and the specialized clothier or merchant 

 arose for the function. In another place, it was also shown that the 

 statutory exemption of the east section from the otherwise general 

 prohibition of clothiers' setting up in the country made the differen- 

 tiation of clothier and weaver less hkely. Very much must also be 

 ascribed to the distribution of capital : it has been shown that capital 

 was more widely held, though there was probably less per capita, in 

 the north than in the west ; the wage-class was not so well marked off 

 there, but the earlier processes of manufacture were done by small 

 capitalist fee-holders or cottiers. In other words, it was much easier 

 for a man to become more middleman and less emplo>dng manu- 

 facturer in the north than in the west; while the want of large capi- 

 talists in the much-devasted north gave opportunity to the alien and 

 metropolitan merchant resident there. 



