THE TECHNIQUE OF MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 

 PRODUCE MARKETS 



By Abbott Payson Usher 

 (From the Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, April, 191 5) 



[Footnotes are omitted from this reprint. The reader is referred to the 

 original article. Ed.] 



I. FUNCTION AND NATURE OF ORGANIZED SPECULATION 



MEDI/EVAL ordinances prohibited speculative transactions 

 and were particularly severe against resale without dis- 

 placement of the goods. It was supposed that gains made by 

 conveying goods from one place to another were legitimate and 

 that gains entirely attributable to changes in value were not. The 

 function of the middleman was supposed to consist entirely in 

 the movement of commodities from one place to another. Ac- 

 cording to the letter of the law, speculation was illegal, but the 

 prohibitions could not be enforced and the arbitrage transactions 

 between different places were not free from speculation as was 

 supposed. Under the prevailing conditions of trade, changes in 

 value in a period of time could not be separated from the differ- 

 ences in value in different markets. The purchase and sale in 

 the distant markets were not simultaneous. Purchase in the low 

 markets of a producing region preceded by a considerable period 

 the eventual sale in the consuming center. The interval of time 

 that must needs elapse introduced a definitely speculative element 

 into a transaction that was officially tolerated because it was sup- 

 posed to be free from the taint of speculative gain. There were 

 some communities where life was so distinctly self-centered that 

 trade with distant markets was relatively unimportant, but such ex- 

 treme localism was not characteristic of the late mediaeval period. 

 For the most part, trading relations were elaborately developed. 



The changes in the technique of market organization in the 

 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have made it possible to 



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