Comuicrcial Effects of Anciions ' 185 



quantity of the same goods to be sold at auction by his agent, 

 thus defeating the merchants' market.*® On account of this and 

 other devices, the old importing houses failed*^ and new houses 

 were restrained from beginning.^^ The general decline of the 

 American merchant marine after 181 5 was a leading factor in 

 this tendency to mortality of mercantile houses. 



The jobbers, as distinguished from retailers on the one hand 

 and importing merchants on the other, were opposed to seeing 

 their old customers go to auctions and were loud in their con- 

 demnation of the auction system.^^ The auctioneers, replying 

 to the jobbers' demand for legislation prohibiting auctions, urged 

 the danger of class legislation,**^ that other classes of tradesmen 

 might be abolished or regulated when once such legislation had 

 been initiated. Their efforts to abolish their new competitor 

 having failed, there arose an "intermediate grade of merchants" 

 who purchased largely at auctions, at the package sales, from 

 wholesale importers, and in such other ways as they could obtain 

 merchandise on reasonable terms, and who sold to local and 

 country retailers.^^ One of these New York houses, Reuben 

 Vose, shoe and hat store, was the first to introduce the one-price 

 plan, which has come to characterize American business ; he 

 published a catalogue describing some hundred different articles 

 with all prices marked against them ; he gained and kept the 

 ascendency over all other New York jobbers in sales to western 

 and southern merchants ; his business was conducted on a strictly 

 cash basis and he won from the credit houses their cash busi- 

 ness. *** There arose at this time in New York a company of 

 young men. called "Prime Ministers," who were the junior 



^"Remarks on Present System of Auctions," 12; BoUes, I, 389-90. 



^^Read the lamentation of a Philadelphlan in 1823, Niles, 23: 130. Of 

 the 37 names, all merchants of high standing, appearing on an insurance 

 policy in 1799, 27 had become bankrupt by 1823 ; of 54 persons or houses 

 having merchant flags in the Baltimore observatory as engaged as ship 

 owners in foreign trade and importers, 24 became bankrupts in the four 

 years ending 1823. 



^ Niles, 35 : 241. 



^ Niles, 20 : 66. 



*■ "An Examination of 'Remarks on the Present System of Auctions,' " 8. 



^ New York Assembly Journal, 1829, p. 393. A common form of such 

 transaction is detailed in Niles. 34: 298. 



"* Girard, Merchants' Sketchbook, 8. 



