Middlemen in English Business 325 



chants having pecuUar relations to the rest of the trade, since they 

 bought from and sold to the same factors. 



Coal had the simplest and most dissevered organization; it moved 

 directly, without change of form, from one specialized middleman to 

 the next specialized middleman, or to the consumer. The middle- 

 man functions were clear-cut; there was little integration. Pools 

 took the place of integrated business. The trade had two sets of 

 factors — the fitters and the crimps; the latter were agents between 

 the travelling and the resident merchants. The explanation of these 

 peculiarities of the coal trade subsists, as shown in Chapter IV, in 

 the localization of production and consumption of the waVe, in the 

 single method and route of transport, the freedom allowed to all 

 ship-masters to trade at Newcastle, the distance between the places 

 of production and consumption, the itinerancy of the merchant 

 requiring agents at both points, the durability of the ware, the gild 

 and town monopoly system, and the nature of coal-mining, requiring 

 continuous operation. 



The live-stock and meat trade was but slightly more complex. 

 The breeder and grazier sold to the drover and jobber, who through 

 the agency of the salesman sold to the wholesaling carcass butcher., 

 and he to the retaihng cutting butcher. But this simplicity was dis- 

 turbed by the very general practice of the salesmen and butchers buy- 

 ing directly from the breeders and graziers, especially in the vicinity of 

 the City. The jobbers, salesmen and butchers, wholesale and retail, 

 competed in buying, and caused a confusion of their several functions. 

 Such over-lapping and elimination of businesses was a prominent 

 feature of the live-stock and meat trade. The cause of this feature 

 lay in the wide distribution of stock-raising. Nearly every county 

 of the British Isles contributed to London's meat supply, and the ani- 

 mals were driven on foot towards the metropolis. In these two par- 

 ticulars, viz., the dispersion of production and the number of routes 

 and directions of movement, the coal and live-stock trades differed 

 radically. In the former there was little or no opportunity for 

 fusion of businesses; in the latter the prosecution of a single business 

 was rare. It followed that the latter was less given to monopolies, 

 and that where any arose it was temporary and depended upon the 

 largeness of the buying; if jobbers or salesmen gained a monopoly of 

 any market it could only be maintained by continued large buying; 

 competition among the businesses was rife and took the direction of 

 integration at every opportunity. There was also more variaton in 

 the commoditv of this trade. The animals and the meats differed 



