Middlemen in English Business 327 



specialized businesses, such as yarn-merchants, wool-staplers, etc. 

 Three contemporary systems of distribution arose — that of the 

 Manchester men, that of the Leeds Market, and that of Blackwell 

 Hall; all three systems had interrelations and used sometimes the 

 same agents for the same or different functions: the Manchester men 

 employed the same retailers, the Leeds factors employed the same 

 wholesalers and merchants and sometimes the same Blackwell factors 

 as were used in the Blackwell Hall system. The western clothier 

 was a phenomenon peculiar to this trade; likewise the Blackwell 

 factor's relations to the other middlemen, since he dealt in both the 

 raw and manufactured ware. \ large proportion of the woolens 

 were exported and consequently the merchant played a more impor- 

 tant part in woolens than in other trades. The wholesale draper was 

 differentiated from the exporting merchant. There were both an 

 itinerant retailer and a resident retailer — -the chapman and the shop- 

 keeper. Some opportunity though not the same degree of advantage 

 as in the corn trade existed for the integration of businesses; and to 

 some extent the clothier did buy wool directly from the grower or 

 yarn from the yarn-merchant and refrain from employing the jobber, 

 stapler and factors. These many circumstances introduced elements 

 which worked very great complexity in the organization of this trade. 



Viewing severally the five successive groups of middlemen above 

 remarked, it will be noted that the coal trade lacked the buyer and 

 had instead the fitter who was factor. In the Hve-stock trade the 

 grazier was not only buyer but fattener, i.e. a sort of producer; 

 whereas in the corn and wool trades the buyers did not improve or 

 change the ware while in their hands. In the wool trade the buver 

 was eliminated in two of the three methods of marketing. 



In the coal trade the ship-master operated in both the domestic 

 and foreign trade, but the cattle drover and jobber, the corn jobber, 

 and the wool jobber and stapler were particularly engaged in the 

 domestic trade. The middleman quality of the drover was ephemeral ; 

 he was successively agent of the grazier, middleman, and servant of 

 the salesman. Several middlemen existed in the wool-jobbing group 

 on the basis of source of supply and form of the ware; the foreign 

 wool came through the hands of merchant importers, the domestic 

 through jobbers and staplers; the stapler was also an assorter; the 

 yarn-merchants dealt in a partly-manufactured form of the ware. 



The functions of the factors were similar, except that they dealt 

 between different parties. The hve-stock salesman sold to a whole- 

 saler-butcher who changed the form of the ware; the crimp sold to a 



