330 Tradesman and Merchant — Commercial Population 



operations of the specialized and general merchants were alike; and 

 the same was true of the specialized and general tradesmen. What 

 particularity has seemed necessary has been presented in the previous 

 chapters, and the following pages will be devoted to some general 

 considerations with respect to the tradesman and the merchant, or 

 grouped together, to the commercial population. 



The history of the concept attaching to the word "merchant" shows 

 that the merchant's relation to the organization of business varied in 

 the several economic stages in the evolution of commerce. The term 

 has continued in use while its concept varied with time and place. 

 Under the Merchant Gild it embraced all in any way concerned with 

 bu^ang and selling, be they craftsmen or shopkeepers.^ In the 

 Companies of Merchants in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries- it 

 applied to a strictly middleman class who bought to sell again. There- 

 after, represented in the Staplers and Merchant Adventurers,' it 

 gained the meaning of extensive dealer, wholesale trader, especially 

 those having deahngs with foreign countries.^ The first line of 

 demarcation was drawn to distinguish craftsmen who made market- 

 able commodities from those whose occupation it was to buy and sell 

 such goods, not manufactured or produced by themselves, for profit. 

 This line was traced by the elements that dissolved the Gild Merchant. 

 The second line of demarcation separated the retailer and tradesman 

 from the wholesaler and trader to foreign ports. This line was traced 

 by the very extension of commerce beyond seas and in greater mass. 

 It had become well recognized by 1631, when a writer said, "He is 



' Ashley, Ec. Hist., 1, 80, discusses the character of the merchant in the Merchant 

 Gild; see also Ibid., II, 168, where he shows that the trading class was a fruit of the 

 gilds. 



-During these centuries "merchant" was used with the modem meaning of 

 exporter and importer. The business of the Ipswich cloth merchants in 1282 

 appears to have been transmarine: "cloth of Cogeshale, Maldon, Sudbury, and of 

 other clothes that ben bought in the cuntre and comyn into the town in to mer- 

 chauntz handys for to pass from the cay to the partys of the see." Black Book 

 of the Admir., Rolls Series, II, 187; V. C. H., SufTolk, II, 255. Cf. the following 

 quotations, as listed in the New Diet.: in 1400, Mandeville, XI, 122, "Thidre 

 comethe Merchauntes with Marchandise be See;" in 1513, More, in Grafton. 

 Chron. II, 776, "A wise Marchant neuer aduentureth all his goodes in one ship;" 

 in 1596, DalrjTnple, tr., Leslie's Hist. Schtl., IX, 252, "In the meine tyme our 

 Marchantes quha feiret na 111 . . . sayled . . . to France." 



' The Merchant Adventurers would not admit shopkeepers to join their Company 

 in 1634: Macpherson, II, 381. 



^ Gross, I, 157, points out these three stages. 



