2o History of Inland Transport 



it ; who acted together by market regulation and inter- 

 municipal negotiation to secure every advantage they could 

 over rival boroughs ; who deemed it meet that every occupa- 

 tion should have its own organisation and its own representa- 

 tion in the governing authority, and who allowed and expected 

 their magistrates to carry out a searching system of industrial 

 supervision. Municipal magistracy was not yet an affair of 

 routine, bound hand and foot by the laws of the State." 



The general trade of the country in the Middle Ages was 

 conducted mainly through markets and fairs. 



Every town had its market and fixed market day, and such 

 market served the purpose of bringing in the surplus produce 

 of the surrounding agricultural district, the area of supply 

 depending, no doubt, on the distance for which the state of the 

 roads and the facilities for transport on them would allow 

 of commodities being brought. 



Held, as a rule, annually or half-yearly, fairs assumed 

 much more important proportions than the (generally) 

 weekly local markets. It was to the fairs that traders both 

 from distant counties and from foreign countries brought 

 wares and products not otherwise obtainable ; and it was at 

 the fairs that the foreign merchants, more especially, bought 

 up the large quantities of wool which were to form their 

 return cargoes. Whereas the business done at the local 

 markets was mainly retail, that done at the fairs was, to a 

 great extent, wholesale, and the latter represented the bulk 

 of such transactions as would now be done on the public ex- 

 changes or in the private warehouses of London, Liverpool, 

 Manchester, Birmingham, and other leading commercial 

 centres. 



Fairs were essentially the outcome of defective means of 

 communication. Going back in their origin to the days of 

 ancient Greece, they have been found in most countries in the 

 earlier stages of society, or under conditions which have not 

 allowed of (i) a ready distribution of commodities, (2) suffi- 

 ciently advanced manufactures, or (3) the subdivision of 

 trade over an adequately wide area. Fairs in-England began. 

 in^rrrnrt proportion an 



^ 



f actures improved and retail trade expanded j so that to-day 

 the survivals are "efffier" exclusively cattle fairs, sheep fairs, 

 horse fairs, cheese fairs, and so on, or else are little more than 



