382 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



where they come in contact with the civilized, we see this 

 occasional growth of wholesale transactions. Says Turner 

 concerning the Hudson s Bay Esquimos: 



Three, four, or five sledges are annually sent to the trading post 

 for the purpose of conveying the furs and other more valuable com 

 modities to be bartered for ammunition, guns, knives, files, and other 

 kinds of hardware, and tobacco. Certain persons are selected from 

 the various camps who have personally made the trip and know the 

 trail. These are commissioned to barter the furs of each individual 

 for special articles.&quot; 



There is evidence that the East, from early times down 

 wards, has had kindred systems of distribution. Movers 

 tells us that &quot; the great festivals ... of Lower Egypt . . . 

 were connected with the arrival of caravans from Phoenicia 

 twice a year; &quot; and doubtless the Assyrians had assemblages 

 of travellers carrying their commodities on trains of camels 

 through desert regions, partially protected by their num 

 bers from robbers. As w r e may infer from Chaucer s ac 

 count of the Canterbury pilgrims, there similarly resulted 

 among ourselves in early days, associations of merchants 

 whose strings of pack-horses bore their goods. This form 

 of distribution, while it generates merchants, also generates 

 carriers. Lansdell, while at Maimatchin on the Mongolian 

 frontier, was introduced to a lama. He says: 



&quot;The Mongolian lamas do not confine themselves to spiritual func 

 tions ; for this man was a contractor for the carriage of goods across 

 the desert to and from China.&quot; 



To be mentioned under this head is the rise of commis 

 sion-agents men who, instead of being themselves whole 

 sale dealers, undertake to buy for wholesale dealers in places 

 with which they are in communication. A merchant who 

 himself, or by proxy, goes to a remote part of the kingdom 

 or abroad will, by request, make a large purchase or a large 

 sale, for a merchant in his own locality; and, having done 

 this once, may thereafter be commissioned, first by a few 

 and then by many, to buy or sell for them at a distance. At 

 the present time English publishers who have set up 



