304 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



The prime service of a factor is to facilitate exchanges; buyers and 

 sellers are brought together through specialized representatives; wide 

 correspondence and connections swell the number of buyers and 

 sellers; there is a broader, steadier market; an economy of time, cost 

 and effort at sale is effected; the producer, in singleness of effort, is 

 enabled to produce more and better; the agent becomes an inteUi- 

 gencer to the manufacturer; and so forth. These and other functions 

 the Blackwell Hall factors did for the clothier quite without recogni- 

 tion by him. The data are not at hand to determine whether the 

 charge for factorage, etc., was so arbitrary and exorbitant as to exceed 

 the money value of the ser\dces rendered; nor to determine, as was 

 alleged whether English woolens came to market dearer than those of 

 other nations.^ Supposing the factors to have untrammeled monopoly, 

 other things being equal, an intelligent and reasonable action would 

 be, not to discourage the clothier upon whose product their livelihood 

 depended, but to aim at maximum sales at good prices. If they did 

 not have a monopoly, business principles would incline them to culti- 

 vate and befriend the clothier. In either case, on a priori grounds, 

 the conclusion is that the actual abuses were far less detrimental than 

 the allegations. 



Factor at Leeds. 



So far this stud\' of the middlemen in the wool and woolens industry 

 has been particularly devoted to the London market. The next most 

 important cloth market of England was at Leeds, where the new West 

 Riding district marketed its cloth in great part. Since factors played 

 so prominent a role in the buying at Leeds it has been deemed fitting 

 at this juncture to take some notice of the conduct of trade at this 

 market. In 1750 Pococke described the trade there as follows: "a 

 town of great trade in ever>' branch of the woolen trade, but prin- 

 cipally in cloths of the price of 2^. 6d. to 7^. a yard. . . . On one 

 side of the street, where four rows of forms are placed and extending 

 about 200 yards in length, on which they have their cloth, and great 

 sums are contracted for in one hour with very few words, the buyer 

 asking the price, then bidding in answer, and the other then setts his 

 price, and the buyer, if he likes it, orders it to be sent to such a place. "- 



Defoe^ found in his travels in 1722 that there were three sorts of 



i"Case of Clothiers and Merchants," 17,i9, in Smith, Memoirs, II, .il3. 



- Pococke, I, 52-1. 



•■* For the facts related in this exposition, see especially, Defoe, Tour, IV, 90-3. 



