Middlemen in English Business 197 



attitude toward the jobber was determined by the relative impor- 

 tance of the business he did for the graziers and the jobbers: self- 

 interest would incline him to attach himself to the one furnishing him 

 the more business. 



The salesman sometimes performed all the activities peculiar to the 

 jobbers. They owned or leased great areas of pasture land and were 

 thus enabled to withhold cattle from the market as best suited their 

 purposes. They made excursions out twenty or thirty miles on the 

 different roads to purchase for themselves or others cattle en route to 

 the market. The residue of the proceeds of the sales made for others 

 amounted to no small sum remaining in their hands for a certain 

 time, according to the distance at which their principals lived from 

 London or to the intentions of these principals of coming into town. 

 By the use of this money they could do a considerable business as 

 jobbers on their own accounts and yet be men of but small property.' 



The practices of jobbing, both by the jobbers and salesman, were 

 the subject of legislation as early as 1670,"^ when a special act was 

 passed to "prevent frauds in buying and selling of Cattle at Smith- 

 field." No jobber, salesman, or other broker or factor was to buy 

 any cattle, except pigs and calves within eighty miles of London. 

 But two years' experience proved this prohibition " to be very preju- 

 ducial to the sale of Cattle of this Realm, and a great Inconvenience 

 and Discouragement to those that feed the said Cattle in their re- 

 spective Counties, who by reason thereof are forced to make Journies 

 up in their own Persons to London, or to send others purposely for 

 that Imployment, which commonly taketh up and wasteth all or 

 the greatest Part of the Profit or Gain that they make on their said 

 Cattle." For these reasons the prohibition was repealed in so far as 

 it concerned salesmen employed by the butchers or jobbers.^ The 

 legislation, with this exception, was re-enacted under WiUiam III 

 and Anne,'' but lost its effectiveness and passed into complete decay 

 in the first half of the eighteenth century. 



The same statute of 1670 forbade the reselUng of fat cattle in Smith- 

 field; provided for marketing cattle sold there; and removed the cus- 

 toms of "foreign bought and foreign sold" from the Market.^ This 



^ Practices of this nature were listed among the " Abuses relative to provisions," 6. 



2 22 and 23 Chas. II, Cap. 19. 



3 25 Chas. II, Cap. 4. 



^ 4 and 5 Wm. & Mary, 24; 11 and 12 \Vm. Ill; Cap. IS; 5 Anne, Cap. 34. 



5 The custom of "foreign bought and foreign sold" was one used by the medieval 

 towns in their protective policj' and practice; it required non-freeman to buy from 

 and to sell to freemen only. 



